Here’s What a Silent Disco Aboard the Staten Ferry Looks Like

What the Float achieved true buoyancy late Saturday night as it took its street-roaming silent disco onto the Staten Island Ferry.

This edition of the party, held the third weekend of every month in a different location, started at nearby Trinity Place’s Blarney Stone Pub, where What The Float’s organizers Annie Shapiro, Nikklo, and Jeremy Anderson-Burg distributed headphones, checked everyone’s bags into a support vehicle and told everyone the details.

From there, some two score people danced through the winding paths of Battery Park, their headphones creating waves of light that splashed towards Whitehall Terminal. Once aboard the ferry, Jeremy led the party to the top deck’s promenade. Onlookers took cell phone photos as their late-night frowns turned upside down.

After disembarking, partiers toured Staten Island’s Borough Hall, dancing among its stone fountains and getting down on every step of the entranceway’s stairs. As they rounded the building, Jeremy’s concluded his DJ set and announced a pit stop at neighboring Jimmie Steiny’s Pub. Regrouping at nearby Baker Square, the party made its way down the hill, sloping like fireflies in the wind towards St. George Terminal, where their returning ferry awaited.

With lower Manhattan looking marshmallowy in the fog, What The Float tore up the linoleum-covered steel plating on one of the S.I Ferry fleet’s two smaller sized boats. Named respectively for painter John A. Noble and photographer Alice Austin, these petite public yachts gave this party the tightness it needed to climax upon reaching Manhattan. There, everyone took over the Whitehall Terminal’s plaza. As Annie ended the second half of the night’s DJ set, applause rang out again and hugs sprang forth from every direction. The headphones made it seem like charged particles were bouncing off each other; the more they came together, the brighter everyone glowed.