We partied w/ Alysia Reiner and David Alan Basche

Alysia Reiner and David Alan Basche are not only super talented artists, but incredible human beings. We get the opportunity to meet a lot of people with + POOL, but we’re beyond lucky to have met these two.

In 2014, we were so heads dead preparing for the launch of Float Lab—our first in-river filtration tests of the system—that we hadn’t spent any time since Kickstarter talking to the huge community of friends around the project, and certainly not building it. Alysia had heard about the project through a friend of ours, Kanessa Tixe at Dynamic Theories, we met for lunch, and she asked what she could do to help. A huge environmentalist herself, she was obsessed with what + POOL meant for awareness around water quality not just in New York, but everywhere else, too.

Within weeks, she opened up her doors to her house, threw a cocktail party, and invited a bunch of friends. It was huge for us. We not only met a ton of amazing people, but it gave us a vote of confidence.

Two big things happened that night: Joshua David told us we had what it took to make + POOL a reality, and the Deputy Commissioner of Community Outreach for Parks and Recreation gave us his gold Parks maple leaf pin, and said “this is going to happen.” Not a bad night. Thanks, Alysia!