Halloween is coming up, in case you couldn’t tell by the dropping temperatures and people talking about costumes and news stories that start with “Halloween is coming up.” Maybe this year, instead of being the frightenee though, you want to be the frightener? Well, the North Brooklyn Boat Club needs some volunteer performers to help scare the shit out of people on their Halloween haunted canoe rides through the not-at-all poisonous Dutch Kills. Just make sure you’re good on broats, you probably don’t wanna fall in to the Dutch Kills.
The North Brooklyn Boat Club’s canoe ride will take travelers along the Dutch Kills, a section of the Newtown Creek that’s near Long Island City. According to their Craigslist ad looking for performers, Dutch Kills is both “fetid and dangerous” and one of the “most inaccesible and abandoned” waterway in New York. So obviously that’s where you want to hang out if you’re an aerialist or a contortionist or a fire-dancer or an actor or just a person enthusiastic about scaring people.
The gig, which will involve you standing on the shores and performing as people slowly drift by you on a canoe. Due to the danger and all that, you don’t actually have to row the canoe, that job will be handled by American Canoe Association Guides. So you can just focus on scaring the bejeesus out of people in canoes, who can’t go anywhere but a gross waterway. In exchange, you get free food and drinks and access to an abandoned waterway, which is a better Halloween reward that most of us get. So, if you want in, reach out through Craigslist and remember: Stay out of the water.