We celebrated City of Water Day by hosting a free learn-to-row event at our boat launch in Canarsie, Brooklyn. The Waterfront Alliance‘s City of Water Day strives to increase access to waterways by hosting events in NYC, Yonkers and New Jersey through partner organizations such as Row New York. Patricia Destine, a Brooklyn native, Row New York alumna, and coach planned this year’s City of Water Day at our Brooklyn site.
Patricia’s Story: City of Water Day
150 people! I still can’t believe that so many people were able to experience rowing in Brooklyn. Everyone keeps telling me “congrats” but I tell them I didn’t do anything more than anyone else would have done. When I was asked to help plan City of Water (COW) Day, I didn’t think it would be too hard. I had helped plan my high school prom for about 180 students and teachers.
I was excited to plan COW day because it was a chance to go to Brooklyn and support the borough I grew up in.
But I didn’t even know how to start planning. I turned to Denise (Director of Community Rowing) who has done her fair share of event planning. I had a slight headache once everything was written and panic set in as I saw everything that needed to get done. It helped knowing I wasn’t doing this alone.
For about 3 weeks, all I did was plan COW day. I was in the office for more hours during those three weeks than I had been the entire year thus far. I was dedicated to making Row New York Brooklyn the talk of the town. Two Mondays before the event, the staff and I went to hand out flyers and prepare the site for visitors. Denise and I left the site sweaty and dirty at 5 pm and we left Patrick behind, covered in leaves from weed whacking, to run practice. As we were leaving, I bumped into some student-athletes on the Brooklyn team, introduced myself and asked if they were spreading the word about City of Water Day. One kid said he actually told all his friends about it. It made me really excited that the kids were looking forward to the event.
As the weekend got closer, we got busier spreading the word. On Friday, we hauled tables and chairs tables from the Peter Jay Sharp Boathouse to the Brooklyn site and spent the rest of the day preparing the location. Saturday, we went to Kings Plaza Mall and gave out about 150 flyers. Sunday afternoon, we went to Prospect Park with 200 flyers and started a “dance party” while we passed out information. We stood outside Smorgasburg and caught people as they were looking for the entrance.
When the big day came, I was worried no one would show up. For some odd reason, on my way to the site, I kept thinking of an episode of The Fairly Oddparents where Trudy invited everyone to her birthday party but no one showed up. I arrived at 9:08 am, and although the event didn’t start for another two hours, there was already a person waiting for us to start. Even more people continued to arrive before we kicked off our event. Brooklyn was ready to learn to row!
Our staff showed up excited and ready to go. Our volunteer, Nicholas, quickly started teaching the participants to row on the rowing machines. Later on, Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul, Councilman Alan Maisel (District 46), Senator Roxanne Persaud (District 19), and Assemblywoman Jaime Williams (District 59) stopped by to check out our barges and show their support.
The entire event ran smoothly and I was happy to see people hanging out, eating food and enjoying the welcoming feeling that Brooklyn gives everyone.
After everyone left and the event was over, I was so glad. I thought I would love to do this again.
I felt like I did on race day. I would get nervous walking the boat to the launching dock and even more so while sitting at the starting line with butterflies in the pit of my stomach. The nervousness always goes away once the race begins and you leave all your effort out on the water.
The event itself felt just like that. I forgot all the tired nights and stressed moments as I thought about how much better this could be next year. This was an amazing experience and I will give anyone who plans an event the respect they deserve because I now understand what they go through.
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