The Poverty Jet Set

The Miss Rockaway Armada

Arthur Magazine’s blog Magpie has been fantastic reading for the past few months. At least once a week I find something fascinating being delved into with reckless abandon. It’s fresh and interesting. I highly recommend you checking it out if the mystical, the psychedelic, the musical, the dreamy, the progressive political strike your fancy.

Today, they post about The Miss Rockaway Armada a group of self-made Mississippi River pirates floating downstream from end to end on a crazy raft made of recycled, reused and repurposed materials. Fun! Here’s a quote from the gang:

We want to create: to invent a new sustainable way to travel, to demonstrate different ways of living and moving that are friendlier to the environment and to each other, to indulge in that essential urge to make something out of nothing. We want to meet people: to learn from new folks along the way, to teach what we know, to share our art, our music and our performance, and to make new friends. Finally, for adventure: to reclaim and reinvent the old American urge to strike out and discover the vast, mysterious land we inhabit and see it for ourselves.

I love adventure, but I really love cool weirdo stuff like this. Living passionately is the only way to be!

This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 1:36 pm and is filed under DIY, adventure, sustainability, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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CaffiNation Paul 12/14/2007 01:55 PM 1 point
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Thats pretty sweet there. Makes me think of the old Disney movie. Davy Crockette & the River boat pirates. Now i'm going to have to find that flick again.

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http://www.caffination.com

joshua 12/14/2007 03:05 PM 1 point
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yeah boy i love that stuff. my friend Heather, while on tour with psalters in Europe made a friend who built a boat out of leavings. She took a bunch of pics and stuff and posted in this blog of hers. pretty cool.

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http://circleofhope.net

Jimmy CraicHead 12/14/2007 04:21 PM 1 point
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Man would I love to see this floating junk find its way up to the Chesapeake Bay. Boat drinks on me!

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http://www.jchtv.com

Suzy 12/17/2007 10:02 AM 1 point
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As cool as the concept of Miss Rockaway seems at first, the kids on it are elitist jerks. they stole their concept from a bunch of for real boat punks who have lived on the river for well over five years. By being rich kids the armada could play at disrespect with their parents money. they could afford to get the media attention while patronizing the hell out of the people in the towns they came to.

The actual boat punks who were respectful and doing it out of love as opposed to novelty went down the river a few weeks after the Rockaway and were turned away at every port because the Rockaways kids were loud, obnoxious, stole things and in general made themselves unwelcome.

Some people didn't learn the part of kindergarten where being a jerk ruined things for the whole class.

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Jimmy CraicHead 12/26/2007 10:59 AM 1 point
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Thanks for the real story Suzy. This might explain all the "Trustafarians" that are littered in West Philadelphia. Rich kids with trust funds that parade around as beatniks.

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http://www.jchtv.com

Wes 12/31/2007 07:20 AM 1 point
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Sounds like you need to get a clue Suzy! I spent several weeks following the kids on the Rockaway and can tell you that they were far from being "elitist jerks". They were a great bunch of people from every walk of life that came together with a goal in mind and did it. The only thing they stole on their trip down the river were people's hearts and imaginations.

The "actual boat" punks that followed down the river a few weeks later didn't seem to have a problem docking in my home town. Their boat tied up one of our public docks just as long as the Rockaway. If they were turned away it wasn't because of the Miss Rockaway, it was because most docks along the river are not placed there for overnight stays.

You shouldn't judge people based solely on their appearance and hear say. Take the time to get to know someone before you form an opinion and decide to cut them down.

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Suzy 12/31/2007 10:50 AM 1 point
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I honestly hope you're right. I'd love nothing more then for the people i met to not be a representative of the whole, and for the hostility I've heard from other places to be misguided.

I tend to place more loyalty on the people who do these kind of trips for the adventure and the learning, than for the spectacle and the novelty. Perhaps I'm the elitist.

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Mark 12/31/2007 11:01 AM 1 point
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I guess the real point is that people do weird and awesome things all the time, and it doesn't matter who you are because if you're doing something unusual, if you're (pardon the reverse pun), swimming against stream, you got a special place in my heart.

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http://thepovertyjetset.com

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