One of the few photos recovered from the 2nd dark Tuesday. You can see the remains of another Utopian dream reduced to a pile of rubble. But wait, there's something in the bottom left hand corner!




It seems to be some angry Flushtopian! The bartender of Sleezer's, now out of work, with no place to go, left to wandering the musty halls of a forgotten ice skating rink, along with the engineers who make sure the boiler doesn't explode, and the trapped pigeons who just can't find the hole they originally squeezed through in search of a better place...

while i was mixing drinks at sleezers, my mom clearly sited something terrible emerging from Meadow lake:



what could it have been?

A kind of meta-mediation of our otherwise very hands-on-experiental discovery of Flushtopia

ah! what a marvelous weekend on the water!

friday evening:

kush, sophie, justin and i kicked back and enjoyed the sun setting over flushtopia. it was absolutely beautiful (and the cocktails were delicious too). then we made a mad-trip on some double-bikes for some intense chinese food in flushing.



later, gisella, chuck, and chris d. showed up. we breathed the night air and constructed a cathedral-tent for ourselves with the rowboats kush has been painting. our improvised house was a stunning structure, i'd say. it was a wonderful and beautiful moment.

we snuggled into out sleeping bags, watched a cowboy movie, and drifted off to sleep.










on saturday:

we dismantled the cathedral-tent, and took the double-bikes to the diner, stopping traffic and turning heads the whole way. it was the year's first hot day, and the lake immediately filled with people, families, dates, and kids using boats and bikes to take a vacation from new york city. we invited some new friends out to flushtopia and grilled.... and discovered a flat-tailed rodent stow-away living on the island.

The project is still going on..in different ways and forms..

The 4th of April the Islands were launched out from the boathouse where we had been working for two months and where “turist/infomation-disks” were mapping out, through text and images, this process. We hosted an event, though which was contested by the bad, rainy and stormy weather that day. Another event will therefor take place, but as well the environment is continously being explored and investigated - fx this weekend a camp-out takes places.
Because I am now in Denmark though, i can only follw the experience via skype..it looks like this:

Today was a great day at the 'topias. I picked up a nice, big, silt anchor in Lindenhurst, and then Doug and I did a major 'depot run for rope, chain, and such. We assembled a massive conglomerate anchor, and then Doug, Chuck, and Justin rowed a three-boat convoy out there while I circled on DorkBike patrol. Pretty much the lake pushed us where it wanted us to be, and once we had been shoved out of the boat house's way, we dropped our quadro-power anchor into the depths.

The lake couldn't a picked a better spot. Right in front of the parking lot, public access instead of that smarmy yacht club scene, and the world's fair glistening in its rusted wreckage behind it.

It was a windy and sunny day. We all got pretty wet (I fell in all the way to my neck), and chuck spent most of the day standing just below the surface of the water on his oil slick island.

Hopping from tipsy island to tipsy island, trying to make every connection as redundant as possible, getting all the islands online, we were networking in the wild towards windburn and wet feet.

More photos here!

It feels good to have all those islands back out there, and I feel confident they'll stay there this time. I think (hope) we've learned something about anchoring islands in mud, and now that the weather has turned for the spring, there are tons of people noticing and asking about the islands.

Now we have to figure out how to capture those people and get them out there...

Tuesday was another rough day at the lake.

As Chuck and I approached the Boat Hours I noticed a couple of Hydro Bikes parked rather suspiciously under the bridge. Pretty soon we realized all of the Hydro Bikes and some boats were washed ashore in various parts of the lake. We got punked... By punks... We first rescued the Hydro Bikes. As we approached the two under the bridge, Chuck motioned to my left, I looked over and there was a gentleman with a black hoody on crouching in the reeds watching our every move. That pretty much set the tone for the day.

After the unexpected hour and a half delay Chuck and I got to work on the most pressing issues of Flushtopia, the oil rig, a chair stuck in the bottom of the lake ready to ruin the rowing team’s day, and a sign that had been torn to bits also stuck in the lake. We came up with a great plan, we (or Chuck rather) would use Sleazer’s (Sleazer’s is the Flushtopia bar made from all the scraps) as a platform to pull the two things stuck in the muck ashore.

I rowed him out, and sort of realized Sleazer’s was not that easy to drag as it’s barely above the water line. Chuck began with the sign. Little by little it came up, until Chuck pulled a giant bag that was attached to the flag that had filled with water onto the boat. Sleazer’s was put to the test as an additional 100 pounds was thrown onto it’s bow... Chuck was sinking, and didn’t realize it until we was up to his chest. He acted quickly and and hit the floor of Sleazer’s (it’s always a rough day when you hit the floor of Sleazer’s) in order to stabilize the raft. Crisis averted. Chuck managed to pull the Sign and the chair with his brute force and the precarious balance Sleazer’s provided. Mission accomplished. We felt good knowing people wouldn’t be killing themselves running into our failed constructions. But we actually felt pretty bad, because it was cold, totally windy, and we just lost all the daylight before we got to rescue the rig.

We quickly jumped on the rig, which had been washed ashore on the fateful opening day. It was pretty messed up and needed some serious work. We started taking things apart, adding screws, and managed to get a barrel strapped to the rig that might stay on... It looked pretty suspicious, as we were next to the parking lot, in total darkness with power drills and a giant wooden oil rig facade... But there are few rules in these parts. I rowed over in one of the boats, Chuck knee deep in water in low cut blue shorts in sub 40 degree weather managed to get me tied on. I paddled with all my might, the wind had really picked up at this point. The familiar white caps were appearing. I made it about 15 feet, then the wind Really picked up. I was blown back to shore immediately. I looked at Chuck, then he started explaining how we can tow the rig along the dock but began cursing and saying his feet were bleeding. He soon disappeared. I couldn’t feel my feet either. My hands were blistered to hell. It was time to go. The rig will have to survive the elements on shore for a few more days.

I would like to add some updates about the recent crime wave in Flushtopia. I talked to Kush today (Thursday the 9th), and he explained how people had tried to steal a boat the other day by tying it to their pick-up truck. Also kids this afternoon came by and tried to make off with some spray paint... The Hydro Boats are locked up till further notice...