Raise $500 in donations, and you can race a canoe through water filled with mercury and gonorrhea

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from Grist:


Raise $500 in donations, and you can race a canoe through water filled with mercury and gonorrhea
By Sarah Laskow


Get out your regatta flags and your best boating cap — this June 15, the Gowanus Dredgers will take on the Red Hook Boaters in the first Gowanus Challenge, the only boating race we’ve ever known to take place entirely in a polluted, smelly Superfund site.

The New York Daily News reports:



And yet! People do boat in this disgusting waterway. (A very small number of people have lived in houseboats there, as well.) And this regatta will hopefully make the canal a little less disgusting; the race is a fundraiser for the Gowanus Dredgers’ Canoe Club, so canoe teams are being asked to raise $500 and kayakers $200. There’s no cash prize or anything; the awards banquet will feature “a specially designed Artisinal [sic] Superfund Pizzas produced in Brooklyn that feature exotic ingredients from around the world.” Superfund pizza. Mmm.

Also, you don’t have to wear a shirt, but pants are preferred. And really, you want to wear both. There’s gonorrhea in that water.