New York Times journo, a fellow Irish boy named Randy Kennedy, reports that Mr. Riley said, “I’m not really a very technical kind of guy,†…[He was] sitting shirtless on the pier Thursday with various green things still clinging to his arms from the water. “I just guessed a lot on this.†Asked how he planned to get back to shore after the tide carried him out to the cruise ship, he grinned. “I haven’t really thought about that yet,†he said.
“Yesterday afternoon, as he, Mr. Bushnell and Mr. Cushing were being taken into custody, still dripping wet, Mr. Riley’s dealers, Alberto Magnan and Dara Metz, said they planned to display the submarine in a show soon at their Chelsea gallery. And to post Mr. Riley’s bail, if needed.”
The first report I heard of this, via police monitor, via a friend in New York, was that there was a submarine in harbor waters that was approaching the ship, Queen Mary. For a while, all hell broke loose with the T and the E words being thrown about liberally and conservatively, and much mad rushing about.
By this evening, I received another email from a different correspondent in New York, noting the story in much calmer terms. It appears, upon actual investigation, it turned out that what looked about as much like a nuclear submarine as a ham on rye sub from the local sandwich shop, it was discovered, this was not T, and was not E… it was far far worse. It was ART!!
Eeeek, Qweek! Di Russhins Air Comink, Di Russhins Air Comink! Qweek, Hite Di Cheeldrins!!
Ok, ok, everyone calmed down. The, ‘art’ was a wooden form shaped more it seemed like a diving bell than submarine, but the artist said he constructed it from pictures of the first submarine ever, one used in the Revolutionary War. (With subs like this, you wonder if they also went to war wearing tin cooking pots on their heads… it’s a wonder anyone won that war.)
The artist just “wanted to float north in the Buttermilk Channel to stage an incursion against the Queen Mary 2, which had just docked in Red Hook, the mission objective mostly just to get close enough to the ship to videotape himself against its immensity for a coming gallery show.”
There were three people inside ‘the sub’ making it seem a little like a clown car or a VW Bug college student trick considering its size. Most interesting would be how the ‘sub’ was constructed so that it didn’t, from the weight of its wood alone, sink like a rock. Video at 11 pm I hope. Did the artist draw from some secret Noah’s blueprints about how to seal the wood so it wouldn’t water log and drown them all? How do you get such a heavy creature past rip tides…if there are riptides at the input.
And could it be, the artist hadn’t planned how to get back to shore because he was pretty sure the coastguard, harbor patrol, police boats, news helicopters, police choppers and everyone and their mother who had a badge were going to descend on the wooden war bell? He’s reported to have stowed no oars, and there was no motor gerry-rigged to the ‘sub.’ I hear that after all the “promise us you’re not a terrorist,” was settled, his wooden ‘sub’ did get a none too gentle police-tow back to shore.
Nonetheless, I wish I’d been able to travel inside that ‘sub’ if for no other reason that to see the faces of the police, often Irishmen themselves some of them, confront another daft and talented son of The Green. And now The Blue.
Leave it up to an Irishman to create a modern event from archaic technology. Even though portside, er stern, um, well maybe aft (how does one tell where the bow is on an almost circular ‘sub’?) there is, on the police boat there, a really big guy with a really big automatic firearm poised. But too, the artist is reportedly walking art ammunition himself; He’s reportedly covered with tattoos. Another kind of message/weapon altogether.
t/h N. Lalo, NY