A decades-old tradition in New York City’s Flushing Bay may be coming to an end soon, leaving many dragon boaters with no place to call home.
The annual Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival there has been ongoing for 30 plus years, but the city says a temporary pier set up to accommodate the dragon boaters is deteriorating and they must leave, reported The City.
They’ve been told the ’24-’25 Dragon Boat season will be their last for a while, and that by the end of April, they must vacate the area.
“I think the dragon boat community has always hoped that someone would come in and get the pier fixed or replaced, and everyone knew in the back of their mind that eventually we would get to this conversation,” said Winston Liao, a coach for the Metro Athletic Dragons team. “But it has always been one of those ‘next year may be the last year’ things — every single year we say ‘next year may be the last year.’
$13 million has already been allocated for the repairs, but the project is still stuck in the design stage and construction isn’t likely to begin until the 2030’s.
The Parks Department says it provided the more than estimated 1,200 boaters 36 alternative marinas.
“Dragon boating is a fixture of Flushing Bay,” said Judd Faulkner, of the Parks Department, in a statement to the New York Post. “NYC Parks has worked closely with the dragon boating community for decades and we remain committed to providing safe, dedicated dockage space with accessible dock fees for recreational boaters throughout Queens and New York City.”
The 34th annual Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival will take place next year in nearby Meadow Lake. However, boaters say many private marinas will charge them as much as $10,000 annually and they worry about the future of dragon boating in the area.
“We literally have enough kids of 2- to 7-year-olds, that we joke about how they’re gonna form our future generation of dragon boaters,” said Jackson Koo.
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