Sink or Swim? Float! ...down the Mississippi that is.

“Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.” –Mark Twain

They’re setting out any day now. For two weeks now they’ve been stationed in Minneapolis, Minnesota building and constructing and preparing. And they’re almost ready. Ready to do what?
“We want to meet people who aren’t like us. We want to meet ourselves at age 16. We want to be a living, kicking model of an entirely different world — one that in this case happens to float. Plus we suspect that there is something wildish about seeing the stars night after night from the grand old Mississippi.”
They are called The Miss Rockaway Armada. About two dozen artists, performers, and renegades from Brooklyn, Seattle, San Francisco, and a few places in between aiming to float from Minneapolis to St. Louis, stopping along the way to spread music, art, and everything they hold dear.
Their vessels, three 20-foot barges constructed with found Styrofoam and salvaged wood, run on two Volkswagen Rabbit engines converted to biodiesel and capable of running on vegetable oil.
Part snake oil medicine show, part punk band tour, part nomadic tribe...
Will they make it to New Orleans, or even St. Louis? Perhaps. And perhaps that's the best part.
For me, the core of this mission, like any adventure, lies not in the destination but the journey. In these modern times, when air-travel is as easy as a mouse click and summering tourists clog the highways, it’s absolutely beautiful to see something like Miss Rockaway: young Americans, living frugally, enacting a vision, and taking it all the way down the throat of the Mississippi River.



photo by: Tod Seelie. See morehere