The Snapple Island Ferry launches this month, giving the borough a boat nobody can complain is running late for the first time in history
A Decommissioned Ferry Gets A Second Life, And A Sponsorship Deal
Comedians and Staten Island natives Pete Davidson and Colin Jost are set to host a free comedy show aboard their very own repurposed ferry vessel, officially rebranded as the Snapple Island Ferry, launching later this month. Coverage of the announcement clarified an important technicality for anyone picturing chaos on the actual working transit line: the new vessel is a decommissioned ferry, not a currently operating Staten Island Ferry route, meaning commuters can relax knowing their 7:45 a.m. crossing will not suddenly be interrupted by a stand-up set.
The project represents the latest chapter in Davidson and Jost’s long-running, semi-serious effort to develop Staten Island’s waterfront, an initiative that began years ago as a real estate venture and has since evolved into something closer to a full-blown love letter to the city’s most underappreciated borough, one boat and one branded beverage sponsorship at a time.
Staten Island, Finally Getting Its Own Stage
Longtime Staten Island residents have greeted the announcement with a mixture of genuine excitement and the particular, weary pride reserved for a borough that has spent decades being treated as Manhattan’s forgettable afterthought, the answer to a trivia question, the place you go to catch a free ferry ride and a skyline photo before immediately turning back around. A free comedy night hosted by two of the borough’s most famous sons on their own dedicated boat represents, for many locals, a rare moment of the spotlight actually pointing their direction instead of past them toward the harbor view.
“Staten Island gets made fun of constantly,” said one lifelong resident reached near the actual ferry terminal. “The fact that two guys who grew up here are literally naming a boat after us and throwing us a free show, that’s not nothing. That’s borough pride. We’ll take it, Snapple sponsorship and all.”
A Beverage Company Enters The Municipal Transit Chat
The Snapple branding, while unusual for anything resembling a New York ferry, is not entirely without precedent in a city that has spent years selling naming rights to everything from subway stations to entire sports arenas. Marketing analysts note the partnership makes a certain sense: Snapple, itself a proudly New York-born beverage brand, gets a wholesome, hyper-local activation, while Davidson and Jost get a fully funded venue for a passion project that might otherwise have required considerably more of their own money to pull off.
Event organizers say the September 17 show will feature a lineup of comedians with Staten Island ties, alongside the two hosts themselves, with additional programming details to be announced closer to launch. Given the pair’s track record with Saturday Night Live and stand-up more broadly, expectations for the inaugural show are, unsurprisingly, high.
A Free Show, A Borough Finally In The Spotlight
Whether the Snapple Island Ferry becomes a recurring fixture of the city’s comedy and entertainment calendar or a charming one-off remains to be seen, but for at least one night this month, Staten Island gets to host the party instead of simply being the answer to where the free ferry ride takes you. Locals, understandably, seem thrilled to take the win.
For more mildly humorous reading, see Cracked.
Staten Island’s Cultural Moment Continues
The ferry event follows a string of smaller cultural investments the two comedians have made in their home borough over recent years, from supporting local businesses to appearing at community events, a pattern longtime residents describe as consistent rather than opportunistic. Whatever the borough’s reputation elsewhere in the city, Staten Islanders note that having two famous locals actively choosing to spotlight the place, repeatedly and by choice, carries real weight in a city where plenty of famous natives quietly stop mentioning their old neighborhood the moment they can afford not to.
Ferry historians, a surprisingly dedicated group given the subject matter, note that this marks one of the only times in the vessel’s long municipal history that a retired ferry has found a second act quite this prominent, joining a short but proud list of New York transit relics that outlived their original working lives in far more glamorous fashion than anyone could have predicted. For a borough that has spent decades fielding jokes about being the forgotten fifth, a free comedy night on a boat named after an iced tea brand counts, by any reasonable measure, as a genuine win. Whatever else happens this fall in Staten Island, residents say they intend to show up in force, if only to prove, decisively and on camera, that the borough can absolutely fill a boat when given the right reason. Iced tea has funded stranger civic projects, and Staten Island has waited long enough for its turn.
A Full Circle Moment For Two Local Kids Made Good
Both comedians have spoken previously about how formative their Staten Island upbringing was to their comedic sensibilities, crediting the borough’s specific blend of outer-borough humor and close-knit community feel with shaping their onstage voices long before either ever set foot in a Manhattan comedy club. Hosting a show on their own ferry, several local commentators note, reads less like a publicity stunt and more like the logical, slightly absurd endpoint of two guys who never really left.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/