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The other day I took a quick sweep of the Upper Bay to see who was around at that moment. Back in the boro was Resolute, 1975, a Jakobson build, 93′ x 28′ and 3000 hp. bow pudding! Jakobson gets mentioned a lot on this blog.
Marjorie B. was over at Bayonne Shipyard in the spa. She was built in 1974; her numbers are 112′ x 30′ and 4000 hp.
Buchanan 5 passed by on the East River. 1982. The numbers . . . 72′ x 26′ and 2600 hp. On the other bank, that’s Brooklyn Heights.
Pathfinder was also westbound in the East River moving containerized trash toward the Arthur Kill railheads. Her numbers are 1972. 92′ x 27′ and 2250 hp. I wonder if the waste stream has seen any impact from the food scrap collection program headed up by GrowNYC and its compost creation initiative that I’m a fan of.
As the sun was setting, James Charles made its way toward the east on the same waterway as Pathfinder. James Charles’ numbers are as follows: 1970. 93′ x 29′ and 2000 hp.
I need to spend more time along this side of the boro, especially as the sun sets.
That’s Brooklyn Bridge Park on the far side.
All photos, any errors, WVD.
Many thanks to all of you who reported seeing some odd “cargo” on a barge being towed around the sixth boro. Of course, I had to check it out. The sixth boro is known for some unusual cargoes going at least as far back as some dinosaurs headed for the World’s Fair in 1964. I hope this image helps jog your memory. More recently there was a floating island, reputedly peopled with cannibals, although –ok–I just made that part up. A liveaboard “water pod” barge also once ranged the boro, as did of course John Noble’s barge and still does Lehigh Valley 79, following in the wake of lots of floating theaters, listed in the last paragraph here.
I got some photos yesterday. By then I knew the story and will share it at the end of this post. Thanks for the heads up; I missed have missed this sixth boro tugboat story altogether.
Yesterday in the sixth boro, as was the case in much of northern US yesterday, weather was wild in one way or another. No, no snow fell yet, but temperatures dropped as a gale was screaming,
and that led to some unusual items and a lot of debris floating out there.
But this statue–here juxtaposed with the Williamsburg Bridge— was unusual, and quite ambiguous in some respects.
The tugboats are Joanne Marie and James Charles, and the barge Hughes 651. This is James Charles’ first appearance on the blog as James Charles, although way back in 2008 it appeared here and here in previous liveries.
Here are two close-ups of the statue.
Some details of the story are that a rapper named Kid Cudi has just this week released his last and 9th album called Insano, and statues identical or similar to this have been towed around Long Beach CA and standing on land in Paris FR in connection with this release. I’m not familiar with his music, his personal life, or rap as a genre. All else I could say, including interpretation of the statue posture, would be speculation. I will speculate that that statues, all three of them, may have been made by the workshops I never wrote about but visited last March in New Orleans location called Mardi Gras World.
All images, any errors, WVD.
Now I’ll indulge the speculative side of my brain: maybe The Rolling Stones will engage a barge to transport a sculpted foam statue of the band around the sixth boro next. Maybe several barges could be assembled in a prime location along the water’s edge on May 5, 2024 so that the Five Boro Bike Tour could become the SIX Boro bike tour. Maybe that same assembly of barges could be left in place for another six weeks so that the mermaid parade carni-fest could happen there. One more, maybe around Labor Day 2024, a section of the Floating PLUS Pool can be condoned off for RC model tugboat race, with the RC models being stand-in replicas of actual sixth boro tugboats.
I could go on, or maybe you could help speculate, just speculate.
tugster: a waterblog 
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