20 THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER6, 2021
glasses. “How do we get onstage?” she
bellowed, eventually finding her way. As
the two stood on the edge of the stage,
Gale said, “This place was built in 1921
by suffragists, and Margaret Sanger was
on this stage at the beginning of what
became Planned Parenthood.” He ex-
plained that the suffragists had wanted
no box seats.
“If women ran the world, I swear to
God it would be better,” Turner said.
Gale said, “You’re running this!”
Turner didn’t care for the position-
ing of the spotlight. “It’s a very severe
angle,” she said. “I wonder if we could
put a spot down the center?” She moved
around, marking out the positions of
the grand piano, the bass player, and her
guitarist. On the night of the show, she
will wear a “midnight-blue tunic and
flowing pants” (she had first asked her
designer for “heavy, heavy silk pajamas”)
and sing near a vase of red roses.
“It’s really a classy show,” Gale said.
The roses, Turner said, are a nod to
one of her most beloved traditions.
“When you open in a show, your dress-
ing room looks like a funeral parlor,” she
said. “So many bouquets. By two weeks,
they’re all dead. I like having roses. Al-
ways. So every week I have a standing
order for two dozen roses for my dress-
ing room. Because I have seen no reason
to wait for someone to give me some.”
—Rachel Syme
1
HERETOTHEREDEPT.
SPLASH
B
uses move at a glacial pace, empty
taxis are an endangered species,
Ubers cost a million bucks, biking is
like wheeled circus combat, and the sub-
way turns into a water park when it
rains. Maybe private aquatic travel isn’t
so crazy? Corey Orazem, the thirty-
year-old owner of Jersey Jet Ski, thinks
the future is a world in which office
workers Jet-Ski to their jobs. Say good-
bye to gridlock and road rage (and per-
haps to a general sense of environmen-
tal responsibility).
Currently, New York City regulations
make it illegal to park a Jet Ski along
said. His name was Binh, and he told
Orazem that he’d unsuccessfully applied
for a job at his company. (“I liked Binh,”
Orazem said later. “He’s definitely going
to work for me.”)
Orazem bought his first Jet Ski in
2016, when he was living on Staten Is-
land, where he grew up, and was dating
a dental technician who worked in Chel-
sea. The Ski, he found, offered a solu-
tion to the unbridgeable distances of in-
terborough relationships. He instructed
his girlfriend to hop over a fence at Chel-
sea Piers after her shift. “I would throw
up a waterproof bag, she would put all
her stuff in it, I’d throw her a life jacket,
she’d hop down, and we would blast right
back,” he said. (They split up a year later.)
On to Brooklyn. Orazem rounded
the tip of Manhattan. A Staten Island
ferry honked authoritatively. Sea levels
rose. He reached Wallabout Channel,
near Williamsburg, and pointed to bar-
ren banks along the water. “This whole
canal is literally perfect,” he said. He no-
ticed buses nearby with Hebrew letter-
ing. Orazem runs Jet Ski tours, and he
has many Hasidic clients. “I’ve never met
people who are more motivated to come
out in groups and go Jet-Skiing than
the Hasids,” he said. “Sometimes I have
to pull a yarmulke out of a Jet Ski pro-
peller, but it’s no problem.”
He pushed north, to Greenpoint.
Fresh ideas were percolating. Jet Ski
taxis. A courier service. He whizzed off
and said, “Forget Uber Eats.”
—Danyoung Kim
most of the shoreline without a special
permit. But Orazem has been talking
with legislators in New Jersey about up-
dating its laws, and he hopes to convince
New York, too. One warmish Saturday,
Orazem jumped on a Jet Ski at one of
the rental shops he owns, on the Hud-
son River in Jersey City, to begin his own
commute: he would be zipping around
the city’s waterways to scout potential
places where he could establish boat slips.
“Once you have that liberty on a Ski, it’s
so enthralling,” he said. “Who wouldn’t
want to transport themselves like that?”
First stop was North Cove Marina,
at Brookfield Place, in the financial dis-
trict—a mile as the crow flies, two min-
utes and fifty seconds as the jet skis. No
need for coffee on this commute. The
Hudson slapping your face will suffice.
Orazem puttered into the marina.
“Easy as that,” he said. “You’re at the
front door of the World Trade Center.”
Two security guards on the promenade
began yelling at him; he swept noisily
out. Next stop: Pier 25 Marina, in Tri-
beca, a three-minute ride. At the pier,
Orazem poked around, fantasizing about
the changes he would introduce. He ex-
plained how it would work: before em-
barking, commuters would zip them-
selves into “dry suits,” large rubber one-
sies that scuba divers—ever the vanguard
of fashion—sometimes use. “You can
wear your work clothes underneath and
pop the neckpiece on,” he said, referring
to a rubber collar. Special boots come
with the suit. Gloves are optional. Wa-
terproof backpacks would protect brief-
cases and purses. Upon landing, a com-
muter could walk to work in the dry suit
or change at, say, a gym. “Better yet, a lot
of the times, marinas have showers,” Ora-
zem said. “In the true capitalistic world,
you keep all your work clothes there.”
Annual membership for use of a slip and
a changing facility: How about two or
three thousand dollars a year?
A young man in a dinghy approached
Orazem and told him that the marina
was privately owned. “Over the sum-
mer, we had a lot of people on Jet Skis
from New Jersey jumping over the fence,”
he said.
Orazem seized the opportunity: “Do
you think that if there were slips here
for people to keep Jet Skis, something
organized—”
“That’s what I was thinking,” the man
Corey Orazem
