Gowanus Residents to Honor 'Patron Saint of Flooding' With Canal Procession

One month after a flash flood turned the streets surrounding Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal into a raucous puddle of literal crap, a group of proactive residents will attempt to ward of future floods with a superstitious parade down the waterfront.

“Please join us for the first annual pageant and procession in honor of Saint Florian, patron saint of flooding!” says an e-vite from the Gowanus-based Morbid Anatomy Museum, who’s hosting the tribute this Sunday, August 16, at 2:30 p.m.

As the museum sees it:

“Gowanusites are keenly aware that their livelihoods rely on keeping the good favor of Gowanus Canal. By reviving a lost ritual to honor Saint Florian, The Morbid Anatomy Museum hopes to draw attention to the predicament of this improbably gentrifying neighborhood and encourage new rituals to serve as a basis for a new community, all with a sense of whimsy and spectacle.”

Participants in the procession plan to carry a papier mâché effigy of Saint Florian down 3rd Avenue, parallel to the canal.

They’ll begin at the Morbid Anatomy Museum around 2:30 p.m. and end one half-mile south at the Royal Palms Shuffleboard Court. There, guests can enjoy $4 ”Gowanus Canal Juice” cocktails, unlimited shuffleboard games and a three-hour “variety show” of short lectures, films and musical sets “ inspired by the Gowanus.”

If the idea of warding off literal crap floods of the future by day-partying with a papier mâché effigy isn’t enough to sell you on the $20 entrance fee, the speaker lineup should do it.

• Rutgers University grad student E. P. Bell, tracing the roots of this lost ritual and how it was discovered.
• Forensic pathologist Jay Stahl-Herz, MD, on the post-mortem challenges presented by bodies found in water.
• Ksenya Malina, on processional banners used by members of lay confraternity orders in medieval and Renaissance Italy.
• American Museum of Natural History senior new media specialist Erin Chapman, with “A Short Illustrated Bestiary of the Gowanus.”
• Lady Ayea, on the complexities involved in finding the right patron saint for sideshow performers with sword swallowing demonstration.
• Abandoned NYC urban explorer Will Ellis, on The Batcave, a famous Gowanus abandoned space.
• Queens College professor Amy Herzog, TBA.
  

For more, see the official event page.

UPDATE: Organizers tell Patch that the procession itself will be free; it’s only the 3 p.m. fundraiser at the shuffleboard court that will cost $20.

Gowanus-inspired procession costumes, we’re told, are encouraged.