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  • 2022-05-02 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Grimes Unsuccessfully Sail the Mississippi in Homemade Houseboat? (en)
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  • Before Grimes was known for her music or her unconventional parenting choices with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, she was simply Claire Boucher, a girl trying and failing to sail down the Mississippi River in a homemade boat. Back in 2009, when Grimes was just a 21-year-old college student eager to go on an adventure, she paired up with 23-year-old William Gratz, who she met at school in Montreal, according to a 2009 Star Tribune report. The couple packed chickens, a sewing machine, and 20 pounds of potatoes into a houseboat that they built from scratch. They named the boat Velvet Glove Cast in Iron and called themselves Veruschka and Zelda Xox, seemingly with the goal of taking off on a journey worthy of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a book they packed for the ride but had not read. They had spent more than a month constructing the 20-foot boat on a friend’s property in Bemidji, Minnesota, from where they hauled it to Minneapolis. They installed accordion folding doors, glass windows, pink shutters and painted murals in black, white and red paint of fantastical creatures on the sides. Strangers gave them bikes, a mattress and the sewing machine (powered by on-board batteries). According to the Star Tribune report, they intended to sail from Minneapolis to New Orleans, but their journey ended up being only a few miles downstream after boat engine troubles and run-ins with law enforcement: They ended up reaching a small island in north Minneapolis, near the Lowry Avenue Bridge, where they tried to fix their engine: Ultimately, the great journey failed after only a few miles of travel. The experience was featured in a 2018 episode of Drawn & Recorded, an animated show telling stories from music history that aired on AT&T AUDIENCE Network. According to a 2022 Vanity Fair profile, Grimes' real name is Claire Boucher, and she answers to Grimes or Claire, or even better, c, as in the speed of light. Grimes’ houseboat story also came up in that Vanity Fair piece where she described how she used to be more radically leftist in her politics: Her younger brother, Mac, described the houseboat incident to Vanity Fair as one of the first adult choices she made. (en)
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