“Saturday Night Live” star Colin Jost opened up Monday about falling in love — with the old ferry he picked up at auction with co-star Pete Davidson and their business partner.
As his beloved John F. Kennedy vessel — a recently decommissioned Staten Island ferry — set sail for the first time since the unlikely purchase, Jost reminisced about childhood trips on the boat.
“I took this exact boat every morning at 7 a.m. to go into high school in the city,” the comedian told The Post before boarding the ferry at the St. George Ferry Terminal. “Its cool. It’s weird to be back.”
Jost, a Staten Island native, bought the storied boat with Davidson and business partner Paul Italia in January for $280,000 — with plans to turn it into an entertainment space.
On Monday, he took the ride as it was towed to a temporary berth at a nearby shipyard, enjoying the fresh sea air with his father and 96-year-old grandfather.
“I wanted my grandpa to see it. He’s 96 and he’s been on Staten Island for his whole life,” Jost explained.
Jost said his father, who taught engineering at Staten Island Technical High School for 30 years, also had a special appreciation for the ship’s simplicity.
“This is such a crazy old mechanical boat. You don’t see anything like this anymore,” said Jost, who is married to Scarlett Johansson.
“And there’s nothing digital. There’s like no digital components on it. It’s all weird switches and levers and pulleys and things that I don’t understand at all but I think my dad maybe does.”
He fondly recalled riding the boat every day as part of his daily commute to high school.
“So I had like, my kids that I met up with who are also commuting in and we had like our section that we would always sit in and stuff,” he said. “I went to Regis [High School], so Regis had a section. Xavier had a section. Kids that go to Stuyvesant had a section, La Guardia. It was kind of this weird, almost like a kind of cafeteria vibe.”
The erstwhile Staten Island ferry took a short spin around the Statue of Liberty for a photo-op, then was pulled three miles up the Kill van Kull to Caddell Dry Dock and Repair on Richmond County’s north coast.
“We get all the fun jobs,” Dorothy Julian, CEO of tug firm Henry Marine Services, told The Post.
Two of her craft — the Pelham and the Robert IV — guided the JFK around Lady Liberty and back. The ferry has been unable to move under its own power since an engine failure last year hastened its decommissioning.
Monday marked the first time the ship has moved since the funnymen saved it in January.
The trio has said they plan to turn the boat into an entertainment venue, permanently moored somewhere in the New York area.
“Music, comedy, and anything else you could think of,” Italia said Monday of his plans for the ship. “I mean, we really want it to be a place that you can perform for, we hope, over 1,000 people.”
The trio has yet to secure a permanent location for the ferry, however.
In January, Italia told The Post he envisioned a Manhattan mooring — though with Staten Island and Long Island making pitches, the bridge-and-tunnel crowd has been jostling to host the boat.
“She’s got a safe place to stay afloat while they decide what their plans are,” Steve Kalil, head of the Caddell dry dock, said Monday.
Caddell holds the contract to repair the city’s current Staten Island Ferry fleet, and as of Monday evening, the JFK was berthed next to the John J. Marchi, an in-service ferry undergoing repairs.
Kalil said there weren’t any plans to repair the JFK at the moment.
“As you could see, the boat’s in great shape. And it doesn’t need repairs to float,” Italia said Monday. “And that’s all we want it to do is float. So there’s not really any mechanical repairs that we foresee.”
The safe berth might help the JFK avoid the same fate that befell the Mary Murray, a Staten Island Ferry purchased in 1975 by a New Jersey boat enthusiast who dreamed of turning it into a floating restaurant.
The Mary Murray rusted away unused on the Raritan River for 30 years before being broken down and sold for scrap.
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