Pete Davidson and Colin Jost Test Staten Island Ferry Comedy Venue

For years, Pete Davidson and Colin Jost’s involvement in buying the retired Staten Island Ferry John F. Kennedy seemed custom-built for a punchline. A decommissioned vessel is not the usual starting point for an entertainment venture, and the skepticism was intensified by the ferry’s age, reported mechanical problems and the potentially daunting work needed to turn it into a viable venue.

But a one-night comedy event has now supplied the most concrete public demonstration yet of what the pair and their fellow investors envisioned. Partnering with Snapple, Davidson and Jost turned the vessel into the brightly branded “Snapple Staten Island Ferry” for a free floating show in New York. It was not confirmation of a permanent, ongoing venue. It was, however, an important proof of concept: people boarded, the rooms filled, a stage show happened, and a famously mocked project became an actual entertainment space for an evening.

That distinction matters. The original idea was always bigger than simply owning a famous old boat. Davidson and Jost were among a group of investors that acquired the ferry at a city auction in 2022 for $280,000, with the intention of remaking it as a floating entertainment destination. Built in 1965, the John F. Kennedy had been the oldest vessel in the Staten Island fleet when it was retired in August following mechanical failures. The ferry has consequently carried both a potent New York identity and very obvious practical baggage.

Those realities made the online reaction predictable. A retired ferry becoming a club or performance space is the kind of high-concept plan that attracts immediate jokes about rust, cramped quarters, heat and the possibility that the whole thing is less glamorous than its celebrity owners might make it sound. The one-night event did not erase those concerns. By accounts from the show, it was crowded and muggy. Yet those same conditions were folded into the material, and the crowd’s turnout demonstrated why the concept remains compelling in the first place.

A test run rather than a grand opening

The Snapple event was deliberately limited. Free tickets were released daily from September 3 through September 8, creating a sense of scarcity around a single performance rather than selling the night as a conventional high-priced show. Davidson and Jost appeared at the start, thanked the audience and sponsor, acknowledged the years of ridicule, then introduced the evening before other comics took over much of the program.

That format is worth separating from the broader ferry project. A proof of concept is a small-scale demonstration that an idea can operate in practice; it does not prove that every part of a future business plan is viable. In this case, the test showed that a retired ferry can be staged and branded for comedy, that an audience will make the trip, and that a distinctive location can itself be the event’s attraction. It did not answer questions about regular programming, accessibility, comfort, maintenance, operating costs or how the ship might function at a larger and more consistent scale.

The vessel’s layout also shaped the night. Rather than a single uninterrupted theater-like room, the ferry required a main performance area and an overflow space with a live projection of the stage. That is not necessarily a deal-breaker for an unconventional venue, but it illustrates the challenge of adapting transport infrastructure for live entertainment. A ferry is designed to move passengers, not to offer every guest the same sightline, sound environment or climate-controlled experience.

Still, entertainment spaces do not always succeed by resembling purpose-built theaters. The appeal here is precisely that it is a ferry. Its history, unusual geometry and location turn a comedy booking into an experience with a story attached. That makes the project closer to an event-driven destination than a generic room with a microphone and folding chairs.

Comedy was a fitting first use

Stand-up was particularly well suited to the occasion because it can accommodate imperfection. Davidson and Jost did not try to pretend the setting was frictionless. They made the heat, the ferry’s reputation and their own onstage uncertainty part of the opening. The self-deprecation was not merely a way to deflect criticism; it aligned the show with the reality of an experimental venue.

Matt Richards emceed, while Sal Vulcano and Caitlin Peluffo were among the comics who appeared. The material was described as adult and intentionally provocative, with crowd work playing a prominent role. Crowd work is a stand-up technique in which a comedian directly engages audience members, improvising around their answers, clothing, behavior or reactions. It can make a room feel uniquely alive, because no two exchanges are exactly repeatable. It can also make the audience sharply aware that a seat near the front is not a passive viewing position.

That live unpredictability is a meaningful contrast to the carefully polished clips that dominate feeds. Several performers tested jokes, reacted to uneven laughs and openly adjusted to the room. One comic stopped when a phone was raised near the stage, before realizing the person was working as a photographer. The moment underscored a practical tension for modern live events: organizers may want online attention, but performers often need audiences to be present rather than recording every work-in-progress moment.

A comedy club has long been a place where performers find the edges of a bit in front of a real audience. That process is not the same as releasing a finished special. A joke can be revised, redirected or abandoned based on a room’s immediate response. On the ferry, the venue’s novelty amplified that sense of exposure. The audience was watching comics test material, but it was also watching Davidson and Jost test a physical space that had been treated as an improbable purchase.

Snapple’s glass-bottle revival met the ferry’s nostalgia

The event served two revivals at once. The ferry was a retired New York fixture being recast as an entertainment space, while Snapple used the show to spotlight its return to glass bottles in select New York bodegas and retailers. Snapple began replacing its signature glass bottles with plastic in 2017, completing that transition by 2021. In fall 2025, the company introduced a limited glass-bottle revival after consumer demand for the earlier packaging.

The fit between brand and location was unusually direct. A glass bottle is a physical object associated with the older version of Snapple; the John F. Kennedy is a physical remnant of an older version of the city’s transit fleet. Putting the two together did more than place a sponsor logo on a stage. It made nostalgia part of the event’s premise. Guests were sent away with Snapple, including glass Peach Tea, while the ferry itself offered a larger-scale version of the same “old thing, newly repurposed” idea.

For a brand, this is a form of activation: an event created to give people an in-person encounter with a product and an associated identity, rather than merely showing them an advertisement. The free-ticket release made access feel competitive, and the single-night format gave attendees a reason to share that they had been there. Such a campaign can generate cultural attention without requiring a permanent commitment. Snapple has not committed to a full, permanent return to glass packaging, and the show should not be read as evidence that it has.

The ferry’s future should be viewed with the same caution. A packed branded night shows potential, not completion. The fact that the cabin was hot and that overflow viewing was needed are not trivial complaints; they are useful information about what a repeatable operation would need to address. The technical and financial work of transforming an old vessel into a regular venue remains substantial.

Why the ferry idea now looks less absurd

The strongest outcome of the event is not that every skeptical joke has been disproved. Some were grounded in legitimate questions around an aging ship. Instead, the show changed the conversation from “Could this ever be a venue?” to “What would it take for this to become one consistently?” That is a far more useful question.

There is also a wider lesson for entertainment concepts that initially sound too strange to survive the group chat. The internet is extremely effective at spotting the funniest possible version of a risky project. It is less equipped to value a limited trial, where the objective is to discover whether the supposedly ridiculous premise has a real audience. Davidson and Jost’s ferry was never going to become credible through an argument; it needed people on board, a functioning show and a reason for attendees to care.

There is no evidence yet of a schedule for additional shows or a permanent launch. What exists is a singular event that used the ferry’s rough edges rather than denying them, tied the idea to a sponsor with its own nostalgia-driven message, and brought a notable lineup into a setting that cannot be mistaken for another ordinary New York comedy club.

For more on how scarcity and event culture can shape a crowd, see our coverage of the scalper rush around GTA 6 promo shirts at Tokyo Game Show. The contexts are different, but the basic dynamic is familiar: limited access can create attention fast, while also making planning and the audience experience more complicated.

Davidson and Jost have not solved every challenge attached to the John F. Kennedy. They did something more modest and more meaningful: they got the doubters’ punchline to host a crowd. For one night, at least, the retired ferry did not merely float as an idea.