Canoe club keeps ‘Gowanus Strong’

The boats of the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club – an organization that advocates for aquatic recreation and environmental conservation in Brooklyn – are a familiar sight on the Gowanus Canal. Starting in March, pedestrians on the canal’s bridges and esplanades may have noticed a couple changes when they observed the usual paddlers on the water.

First, for the sake of social distancing, the two-person canoes had become solo vessels. And the voyagers inside had turned them into floating billboards, taking turns holding a sign promoting the club’s latest initiative: supporting Gowanus’s vulnerable small business community during the coronavirus shutdown.

The idea was to convince Gowanus residents to buy gift local certificates as a means to sustain neighborhood stores until New Yorkers’ usual shopping and dining habits could resume. At the same time, the organization’s members began spontaneously to compile a list of Gowanus businesses that had remained open during the pandemic, with information about hours and services; their Google Document remains active.

Eventually, club captain Brad Vogel came up with the idea of using $2,000 from the Dredgers’ own coffers as an infusion to buoy the local economy. The club bought a stockpile of gift certificates from establishments including bars, bakeries, and plant nurseries, and then created a website on the online auction platform Clickbid (which waived its usual fees) in order to distribute the certificates as raffle prizes throughout the month of April. All ticket revenue beyond the initial $2,000 investment will go to the nonprofit Arts Gowanus.

“The underlying mission of the Gowanus Dredgers is to keep our waterfront alive, but our waterfront community includes everybody around it, so we need to keep these businesses alive as well,” club treasurer Owen Foote said.

In cases where businesses did not normally sell gift certificates, the Dredgers persuaded them to produce some. The raffles have been a success. 

“A lot of people are writing back to say they didn’t even know those businesses existed, like a company that makes custom cards in Gowanus. I know people are placing orders because they didn’t win the raffle,” Foote noted.

On March 27, Vogel and Foote drafted a letter to local landlords to encourage them to cancel or reduce commercial rent in April and May, arguing that, without short-term relief, local storefronts would not survive COVID-19. They don’t know whether any Gowanus property owners complied.

In April, the Dredgers’ civic involvement during the pandemic began to coalesce into a program of activism with its own hashtag: #GowanusStrong. “We have over a hundred unpaid members who are pitching in, and that’s one of the reasons why we’ve been so quick to respond,” Foote explained.

While the raffles have primarily benefited restaurants and shops, Foote and other Dredgers noticed an additional crisis in the fitness and wellness sector, which also makes up a significant portion of the Gowanus economy. Gyms had shut down, and to make things worse, trainers and yoga teachers often work as independent contractors, which makes it difficult for them to collect unemployment benefits.

The Dredgers put together a virtual “tip jar” for these workers in April. The web host, ioby, will match contributions, dollar for dollar, until the fund reaches $8,000. Foote hopes to distribute checks in time for the May rent.

#GowanusStrong is a fluid project. The Dredgers expect to continue their activism in May but, as of this writing, can’t be sure what shape it’ll take.

“We have heard from so many people that they are just glad to see some small step in their own neighborhood that is sort of a lightning strike for good, some little thing that is making people feel they have agency – they can pitch into this new effort that is doing something to alleviate the pain out there,” Vogel said.

For more information and to stay up-to-date, visit gowanuscanal.org.