The party in full swing. Photo courtesy of
@lissyellelaricchia
Elegant warehouse–two words that don’t often go together. Yet that is the best way to describe The Foundry, the setting for the third annual Aquarius Festival on January 25th, the nation’s first and only sustainable seafood festival. As you walk into the venue, you see brick walls and bare metal walkways transformed into a classy club with the help of some lighting, Instagram-able decor, and multiple bars. Food trucks and stands set up in a semi-circle in the open courtyard, with seating around a few open woodfires.
Seafood Watch is a sustainable seafood advisory list. Photo by @BarryTakesPictures
Aquarius stands out, though, with an incredible open bar of interesting cocktails and even more delectable food from a variety of ethical vendors. Some standouts included a variety of fresh oysters from the raw bar, provided by MF Events, Houseman‘s Squid with XO Sauce, and perhaps the biggest stand out: Ca’pisci with a delicious array of seafood including a spectacular swordfish skewer grilled and covered in Mint, Capers, and Lemon.
The cocktails were well prepared, drawing long lines from taste and spectacle. The Makers Mark Hickory Smoked Manhattan was especially delightful to watch and to drink. The bar staff used an actual smoker that plumed out to reveal a very nice Manhattan.
Mattitaco serves farm-to-food-truck Mexican. Photo courtesy of @Ozgonza1
The real star of the night was Aquarius’ efforts to live up to its claim and take steps towards sustainability. Using the company Cup Zero, Aquarius was able to prevent loads of plastic waste. Cup Zero is a straightforward concept: party guests pay two dollars for a reusable plastic cup when they enter. When they leave the party, they return it and get their money back. It was easy, and more events should look into this very simple step. The booths also set out for more sustainable eating, using wood or paper containers and remaining plasticware-free. Overall, Aquarius was a great experience that showed you can throw a great event while still doing your part to help the environment.
Aquarius, the only sustainable seafood festival in the United States, will make a return to Long Island City’s The Foundry on Saturday, January 25th from 8 pm – 1 am. Attendees will have the chance to experience a limitless journey of sensory and visual imagination at the 3rd annual festival where sustainable seafood and farm-fresh cocktails will be featured.
This year, Aquarius is collaborating with Oceanic Global, a non-profit organization that engages new audiences in ocean conservation. Together, they are working to incorporate The Oceanic Standard to guarantee a plastic-free event. CupZero will provide $2 cups for purchase upon entry to utilize throughout the festival. Once the event is over, guests will return their cups to the CupZero station to get their money back.
Eats:
Guests will be able to purchase sustainable seafood offerings recommended by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program. Everyone will be handed the latest sustainable seafood guide and have the chance to taste seasonal flavors by Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Executive Chef Matthew Beaudin. Hudson Square’s Houseman Restaurant’sChef Ned Baldwin will offer Fisherman’s Stew and more. Mattitaco will serve farm to food truck Oysters, Tacos and Moules Frites, courtesy of Chef Justin Schwartz. Ca’Pisci will return once again and will offer a rustic Italian menu featuring sustainable fish only. Salsa Pistolero will be on deck with a plethora of refreshing salsa flavors to snack on and My/Mo Mochi Ice Cream will pass out sweet treats. MF Events will provide a local raw bar showcasing NYC local oysters and so much more.
The immersive experience for the festival–courtesy of Brenton Wolf Design–will feature a winter séance, a symbolic sacrifice to the God of Aquarius, an art installation by Jimmy Carillo, and so much more will be showcased. The evening will also feature a performance from the Brass Queens, the all-female group that’s disrupting a male-dominated genre.
Want to take the experience home with you? Take photos in the 4Five Photo Booth consisting of fun props. Ryan Vandal will DJ the Albra Room while DJ Samantha Michelle takes over the Main Hall.
Photo Credit: Travis W. Keyes Photography
Aquarius specialty cocktails and water are free for all ticketholders. Full meals will also be available for purchase and tickets start at $95, which can be purchased by visiting: https://www.aquariusnyc.com.
Guests will also be asked to assist in saving the ocean and planet by donating $10 to Oceanic Global. Aquarius 2020 is brought to you by the talented producers of Secret Summer, Tyler Hollinger of HighLife Productions, Andrew Maturana of RAPT and Allison du Val of The Foundry.
At 7:35 am on September 28th, teams of rowers will set out along the East River. No, this isn’t a mass exodus, nor is it an attempt to avoid morning traffic. It’s part of Rocking Manhattan, a 9-hour journey to circumnavigate Manhattan island in rowboats.
Rocking Manhattan is a 30-mile rowing event, providing participants with a rare perspective of New York City and a shared experience with a committed group of fellow New Yorkers (with a few Californians and Rhode Islanders mixed in). Formed into teams of between 4 and 12 people, they circle Manhattan Island along its three rivers—north up the East, west across the Harlem, and south down the Hudson.
Each team is charged with raising at least $25,000 to support Rocking the Boat’s programs for youth in the South Bronx. Most raise significantly more towards the goal of $400,000, or 13% of Rocking the Boat’s annual budget.
Event participants include rowers, coxswains, and powerboat drivers. Event beneficiaries are the roughly 4,000 members of the Hunts Point community who take part in Rocking the Boat’s youth development and public programs.
Groups of relatives, friends, and co-workers form the always creatively named teams rowing around Manhattan Island in Rocking Manhattan, including Flotsam and Jetsam, Dismasted, Knots Unlimited, Shore Thing, Going Full Circle, Rabble Rowsers, Either Oar, Sirens and Argonauts, Ebb and Flow, Rock Lobster. Some have been involved since the first circumnavigation in 2009, others are rowing for the very first time. Some started as members of other teams and have now taken the plunge to captain their own team. Rocking the Boat Board members are leading six of this year’s nine teams. Rocking the Boat’s Founder an Executive Director, Adam Green, always rows one or two of the three legs.
Graduates of Rocking the Boat’s after school youth development program serve as coxswains, steering the boats and keeping their rowers synchronized and motivated. They are members of Rocking the Boat’s Alumni Rowing Team, which trains all summer for the event.
A dear friend of Downtown’s Alies Van Den Berg, will be rowing two legs. We felt that this was something everyone can get out to support.
Members of the tight-knit sailing community in Barnegat Bay, NJ fill a vital role driving safety boats that accompany the rowing gigs throughout the day, providing support as needed from filling empty water bottles to giving weary rowers a short tow.
Starting and ending at One°15 Brooklyn Marina in Brooklyn Bridge Park, the route includes a breakfast stop at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City and a lunch stop at Muscota Marsh in Inwood and brings rowers under bridges, past landmarks, and adjacent to ferries, cruise ships, and coast guard vessels.
A celebration dinner and award presentation (for generating the most dollars, not rowing the fastest) takes place in Brooklyn once everyone returns to the dock.
Outside of a few smallish corporate sponsorships, this is a peer-to-peer fundraiser. Everyone involved has an individual fundraising page complete with progress thermometer. They post photos, write brief stories about their connection to the organization, and then proceed to hit up their networks for donations!
Rocking the Boat posts updates on social media and engages sponsors like Hydroflask for water bottles and Hornblower (the operator of NYC Ferry and Hornblower Cruises) for dry bags.
Rocking the Boat brings tremendous positive impact to the high-need youth of Hunts Point by sustaining a hub of crucial resources and opportunities that help students overcome the circumstantial disadvantages that threaten to stifle their full potential. Activities centered on small boats and local waters are the unique vehicles Rocking the Boat uses to affect profound changes in the lives of young people and the vitality of their community. Wooden boatbuilding, sailing, and environmental research and restoration captivate and challenge young people, expose them to new experiences, and show them they are capable of doing things they never imagined, or only dreamed of. In doing so they develop the technical, social and emotional skills to replicate the successes they have in the shop and on the water in their personal, academic, and professional lives.
The event is a circumnavigation of Manhattan Island over the course of nine hours. The boats, the rowers, the hydration and snacks, and the accumulated enthusiasm of over 100 volunteers are all in place…the only element we cannot plan for (other than the weather!) is a cheering section. Downtown has assembled the following list of locations and estimated times (+/- 10 minutes) for anyone who wants to have a one-of-a-kind New York experience coming out and cheering on the rowers.
Schedule – Enjoy a one-of-a-kind New York experience come on out to cheer on the rowers at any of these viewing areas along the New York Waterway.
Leg 1: East River
Empire Ferry Fulton Ferry Park (base of Brooklyn Bridge): 7:35 a.m.
Main Street Park (base of the Manhattan Bridge): 7:40 a.m.
Gantry Plaza State Park (Hunters Point): 8:10 a.m.
Queensboro Bridge: 8:20 a.m.
Queens Bridge Park (Long Island City): 8:20 a.m.
Roosevelt Island Bridge: 8:40 a.m.
Leg 2: Hell Gate and Harlem River
Carl Schurz Park: 10 a.m.
Thomas Jefferson Park: 10:15 a.m.
The High Bridge: 11:15 a.m.
Sherman Creek Park: 11:40 a.m.
Leg 3: Hudson River
George Washington Bridge / The Little Red Lighthouse: 2:15 p.m.
Riverside Park promenade at 116th Street: 3:15 p.m.
Riverside Park Boat Basin at 79th Street: 3:45 p.m.
If you don’t win our tickets or can’t make it Friday night, there are still tickets left for Sunday! This month’s edition is party animal themed and takes place at Sound River Studios in Long Island City. More than twenty vendors will be serving up all sorts of colorful sweets for you to snap pictures of in front of one of many Instagram friendly backdrops. Save up your sweets for this weekend because you’ll be in a sugar coma by the end of Dessert Goals!
When it comes to serendipitous decisions, minimal lighting design brand, Stickbulb, is right on target. Earlier this fall, co-founders Russell Greenberg and Christopher Beardsley opened up their first gallery/showroom in Long Island City just steps away from MoMa’s PS1. The gallery, which forms part of 10,000-square-foot comprehensive design studio and production facility, opened a mere three months before e-commerce giant Amazon confirmed the waterfront neighborhood as one of its secondary headquarters.
Long a creative hub for artists and designers alike, the brand is deeply engrained in the fabric of the industrially chic neighborhood. “Our roots run deep here,” says Greenberg,“because we carefully built Stickbulb around a network of local vendors.”
Co-founders Russell Greenberg and Christopher Beardsley.
The creative, yet in some cases neglected, laboratory that is Long Island City, beautifully intertwines with Stickbulb’s sustainably-minded ethos of creating cutting-edge lighting while preventing waste. The ideology of the brand—salvaging wood from fallen trees, dilapidated buildings, and old, abandoned water towers to build light—aptly extends into their current space. Stickbulb is housed in a former industrial factory that overlooks a metal scrapyard facing the Queensboro Bridge. When visitors enter, they are greeted by one of the brand’s most stunning examples of adaptive reuse.
Ambassador, the colossal yet fully functional illuminated archway seen above, was crafted from 300-year-old Redwood beams. The sculpture is so visually stunning it won NYCxDesign’s Best in Show in 2017. Set against the showroom/gallery’s raw space, the dichotomy exemplifies Long Island City to perfection—while also making a strong case for Stickulb’s scraps to splendor notion. Considering the changing dynamic of the neighborhood (luxury residential buildings and all) it’s quite uplifting to see brands that stick to their original intent. “We love our neighbors” says Greenberg. “There is a sense of ‘being at the right place, at the right time’ in LIC. We are dedicated to being active, engaged, and responsible members of the community.”
Stickbulb’s gallery/showroom
Just how much the neighborhood changes with the arrival of Amazon remains to be seen, but at Stickbulb, it’s comforting to know the creative culture will remain the same.
Gordo’s Cantina, a well-known festival and street food kiosk, has a new location in Long Island City selling their authentic Mexican food.
“Everything on the menu is homemade,” said JR Savage, the owner and founder of Gordo’s Cantina.
The brick and mortar café is situated alongside the 59th Street Bridge. The old-fashioned cafe has a hip and homey feel to it, perfect for family and friends to dine.
Gobernador Taco from Gordo’s Cantina
Downtown got to taste some tasty items on the menu, including Taco Gobernador, a dish served with grilled tortillas, shrimp, poblano peppers and menonita cheese. If you’re ever in the area, an item to try is the Pollo Burrito, served with flour tortillas, refried bean spread, chihuahua cheese and grilled marinated chicken.
If you’re looking for something sweet to complete your meal, Gordo’s offers classic Mexican Churros with cajeta and chocolate sauce.
From open face quesadillas to Chorizo Tacos, whatever you’re craving, Gordo’s Cantina will serve something up to satisfy.
Enchiladas Suizas from Gordo’s Cantina
Mariah Brown is a lifestyle writer and events enthusiast. She currently resides in Brooklyn, New York. Mariah Brown can be followed on Twitter via @mariahbrownnyc.
