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Brooklyn's "Toxic" Boat Party
By
Jaya Saxena
Published Sep 1, 2009
Modified Sep 1, 2009
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By
Jaya Saxena
Published Sep 1, 2009
Modified Sep 1, 2009
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This boat is reeeeaaaaaal. In a city where privacy is all but extinct, New Yorkers relish being in on a secret, even if hundreds of other people are in on it too. The Bushwick Boat parties offer the same degree of clandestine exclusivity as PDT or Milk and Honey, which is to say not very much.
Over 1,500 people RSVP'd to Saturday's party (the boat holds 900), some of them realizing that you can get in just fine if you make up a password. The party is run by a group of artists and friends, some of whom live on the boat, offering a night of music, dance, and performance art in a couch-strewn hull. Very Lost-Boys-meets-Frat-boys. There was "Dirty Santa" enticing revelers to sit on his lap in a room full of fake snow, the "Green Fairy" offering absinthe punch from a pump on her backpack, and hosts offering everything from henna to hot tamales to "Olde Timey Hair Cuts," though most of the barber-work looked like conservative trims.
The highlight of the evening came with a show from Arkansas natives 3 Penny Acre, who drummed on trashcans and belted out bluegrass classics into the sour-milk-stenched air over the Gowanus. Though the pre-party text urged guests to show up early, the party didn't really get started until after midnight, when increasingly packed shuttles brought group after group, ready to dance until dawn. There is no information as to when the next party is, but at this rate it looks like they're gonna need a bigger boat. Or at least some new couches, as those Ikea throwaways had "bed bugs" written all over them.
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brooklyn
bushwick
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Jaya Saxena
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