Guide to the Ships of Fleet Week New York 2023

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Fleet Week came early this year, as last week the city was visited by USS Cooperstown, which became the first US Navy ship commissioned in New York City since USS New York received that honor in 2009. Named for not just the village of Cooperstown, NY, the ship also honors the 70+ members of the Baseball Hall of Fame that served in the military. The commissioning was attended by baseball greats Joe Torre and Johnny Bench, as well as lesser-known figures, like New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Secretary of the Navy Carlos del Toro.

Cooperstown has left town, but next week we will have a new crop of vessels visiting us, some repeat visitors from recent Fleet Weeks, and some exciting new additions. Below is our annual guide to some of the units that will be in town—be sure to check out full schedule of events. The ships will be open to the public starting Thursday, May 25 through Saturday, May 27, and on Memorial Day, 8am–5pm. If you can’t make out to all of these spots during the week, join us on May 24, 26, and 29 for our Fleet Week Harbor Tours with Classic Harbor Line, where we will cruise past all the docking locations, get a waterside view of the ships aboard a beautiful motor yacht, and discuss the rich naval history of the harbor. On our Memorial Day cruise, we will also be doing a live stream of the tour.

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Finding Frederick Law Olmsted in Cotton’s Kingdom with Sara Zewde | Free Virtual Program

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PAST PROGRAM | Virtual Programs

Join architect Sara Zewde for this live virtual program as she shares her recent research on the impact of Frederick Law Olmsted’s journeys through the Slave States on his practice of landscape architecture. Between 1852 and 1857, while living at Staten Island’s Tosomock Farm, Olmsted traveled extensively through the South, writing about slavery and the slave economy, as a correspondent for the New York Times, and also published a series of collected volumes, including his highly influential 1861 work, Journeys and Explorations in the Cotton Kingdom.

Sara Zewde is founding principal of Studio Zewde, a design firm in New York City practicing landscape architecture, urbanism, and public art. The studio is devoted to creating enduring places where people belong. Named to the AD100 and an Emerging Voice by the Architectural League of New York, the firm is lauded for its design methodology syncing culture, ecology, and craft. In parallel with practice, Sara serves as Assistant Professor of Practice at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Sara was named the 2014 National Olmsted Scholar by the Landscape Architecture Foundation, a 2016 Artist-in-Residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and a 2020 United States Artists Fellow. Sara holds a master’s of landscape architecture from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, a master’s of city planning from MIT, and a BA in sociology and statistics from Boston University.

This program is presented by the Friends of Olmsted-Beil House with support from Turnstile Tours.

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PRESS RELEASE: Turnstile Tours Launches New Street Food Tour of Jackson Heights, Queens

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A small bowl filled with Bangladeshi fushka and a fork sits on a green shelf attached to a food cart, with a woman reaching for the bowl.

For more than a decade, New York City-based social enterprise Turnstile Tours has been sharing the stories and flavors of Manhattan’s street food, and now they are coming to Queens. This new guided tasting tour of Jackson Heights builds on the company’s knowledge, experience, and partnerships working with street vendors, and brings visitors to one of the best food destinations — street food or otherwise — in the city.

Like Turnstile’s Food Cart Tours in Midtown and the Financial District, which they have been offering since 2010, the Jackson Heights installment will give visitors the chance to not only taste a wide diversity of foods, but also meet the vendors themselves and learn about their communities. Tastings will come from a rotating assortment of street vendors, including Tibetan momo, Colombian arepas, Mexican al pastor tacos, and much more. 

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Frederick Law Olmsted: Designer of America & His Staten Island Roots | Episode 279

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PAST PROGRAM | Virtual Programs

Join historian and filmmaker Laurence Cotton (originator of and consulting producer to the PBS special Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing America) as he shares the remarkable life and career of the Renaissance-man Olmsted—writer, philosopher, social reformer, advocate for the preservation of natural scenery, and creator of some of the most beautiful public and private parks and gardens in all of North America. Mr. Cotton will include a focus on Olmsted’s life on Staten Island and his time at Tosomock Farm.

This program is presented by the Friends of Olmsted-Beil House with support from Turnstile Tours.

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Virtual Inside Industry at the Brooklyn Navy Yard for Open House New York | Episode 278

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PAST PROGRAM | Virtual Programs

More than 50 Brooklyn Navy Yard tenants welcomed the public on Open House New York Weekend, with manufacturers, artists, designers, and eateries hosting tours and open studios. We again hosted a series of virtual tours on the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s Instagram Live @bklynnavyyard, featuring woodworking school Bien Hecho Academy, artist Nina Summer, non-profit Little Essentials, green builder Urbanstrong, and fashion designer Courtney Washington.

Watch on the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s Instagram IGTV.

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NSMBL: Planning a trip to New York? Then this Food Cart Tour in Queens is highly recommended

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NSMBL (Netherlands), October 17, 2022

by Emma Toussain

About three weeks ago we visited the city that never sleeps; New York City. There is plenty to do, almost too much. Not in a negative sense, because it’s all fun. It is almost necessary to book a stay of about three months, because otherwise it is impossible to see everything you want to see. That’s not a bad thing, especially if you know where your priorities lie and which activities you want to check off anyway. We can help you with that, because we have really discovered a pearl of an activity. One where you get to know the real New York, not just the Manhattan from the movies. We are talking about a Food Cart Tour (how New York of us) in Queens. From Manhattan it’s about 20 minutes by subway, but immediately you are in a completely different and cozy world.

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De Telegraaf: Up To Date in New York

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De Telegraaf logo, a stylized Gothic letter T in a black circle

De Telegraaf (Netherlands), September 24, 2022

by Babette Wieringa

We will have lunch this time on the street. Walking, during a real Food Cart Tour in Midtown (bookable via turnstiletours.com). New York has a long history when it comes to street vending, and although everyone knows pretzels and hot dogs, there are carts selling dishes from around the world. Street food is one of the best kept secrets. It’s not for nothing that a prestigious prize was handed out every year to the street vendor with the tastiest dishes. …

Finally we ended in Bryant Park, at the kiosk of Wafels and Dinges. This is the work of a Belgian immigrant, who has been so successful that he exchanged street carts for a number of fixed kiosks. A success story, and that’s not surprising: if we had a waffle with whipped cream in front of us, can’t help but eat every last cumb.

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The Tideshift Project: Session 3 | Episode 277

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PAST PROGRAM | Virtual Programs

The Waterfront Museum presents the final session of The Tideshift Project, featuring stories of waterfront workers from the pre-containerization era and people working in today’s final mile shipping industry. Tideshift is a three-part series of oral history collecting events presented live, virtually, and in person aboard the 1914 Lehigh Valley Railroad No. 79 wooden lighterage barge moored at 290 Conover St in Red Hook, Brooklyn. In this series of events, The Waterfront Museum has recorded stories from waterfront workers who have handled freight in and near Red Hook, and from their descendants. In this episode, we were joined by waterfront veterans Geof Gaertner and Gaetano Pennisi, who both worked from the 1960s through the 1980s on docks in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and New Jersey during the transition from breakbulk to containerized cargo.

The Tideshift Project was funded in part by Humanities New York with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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Boxed in Brooklyn: Robert Gair and the Packaging Revolution | Episode 276

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PAST PROGRAM | Virtual Programs

In 1879, Scottish-born businessman Robert Gair stumbled upon an invention that would transform packaging and consumer products forever: a fast, mechanized way to manufacture cardboard boxes. This invention would grow into an empire of paper mills, box factories, printing plants, and even marketing and advertising arm—a vertically-integrated packaging company, based in today’s DUMBO, Brooklyn. This virtual program will look at how, a century ago, this present-day corner of the “Brooklyn Tech Triangle” was also a center of innovation for packaged food and household products.

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Fleet Week Tours of New York Harbor | May 24–29

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2023 Fleet Week Harbor Tours:

  • Wednesday, May 24, 2:30pm
  • Friday, May 26, 9:45am
  • Monday, May 29, 10am

Join us for a special series of in-depth tours of the rich military history of New York Harbor to celebrate Fleet Week to New York City! Starting from Chelsea Piers, this 2.5-hour cruise aboard one of Classic Harbor Line‘s beautiful motor yachts will explore the military history of New York Harbor from the Revolutionary War to today, with special emphasis on the role of the port from World War II to today. The tour will visit historic military sites, monuments, and fortifications, including the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Brooklyn Army Terminal, Staten Island Navy pier, and the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, as well as give you a waterside view of the active Navy and Coast Guard vessels in town for Fleet Week.

If you can’t make it to a tour in person, our May 29 cruise will be live streamed with our friends at Urbanist: Exploring Cities on YouTube.

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