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Would You Be Into A Hudson Mustache?
By
John Del Signore
Published Aug 4, 2014
Modified Aug 4, 2014
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By
John Del Signore
Published Aug 4, 2014
Modified Aug 4, 2014
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New York is a city fully freaky people, but perhaps the freakiest of all are those who pay good money to receive a "Hudson Mustache." Hey, whatever you're into. For some people, $285.00 plus a $17.50 processing fee is a small price to pay for the experience, which is known to decorate swimmers' upper lips during the New York City Triathalon. Let the Paper of Record initiate you into this bizarre kinky underworld:
They call it the Hudson Mustache, the thick band of silty debris that clings to a swimmer’s upper lip after a nearly mile-long paddle down the Hudson River in the New York City Triathlon.
“Everyone has been telling me I’ll come out with three eyes or a couple arms,” [participant Corinne] Fitzgerald said. “But I know doing this race is a rare opportunity. It takes a lot of grit to get in the Hudson, and it seems worth it.”
According to Riverkeeper, "23 percent of samples taken on a particular day along the Hudson River indicated conditions that were not safe for swimming." The problem is that when there's a heavy rain, the city's waste water treatment system can't handle all the storm runoff, so it ends up pumping raw sewage right straight into the river and onto your upper lip. There was a light rain on Sunday, but apparently it wasn't enough to force the Hudson Mustache portion of the triathlon to be canceled.
Participant Danielle McNally tells the Times, "Last year, when I got out I had a chunk of sludge stuck on my cheek; it took a bottle of water to get it off." That is called a Cheeky Fecaly, and is not to be confused with a Hudson Mustache, or a Newtown Necklace, for that matter.
Tagged
hudson mustache
nyc triathlon
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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