He’s the Commander-in-need-of-a-bath!
A green-eyed float of President Donald Trump surrounded by reptiles buoyed in the fetid Gowanus Canal over the weekend, leaving locals baffled and amused at the cartoon-like commander-in-chief, which trolled beneath the Carroll Street Bridge.
“I think it’s pretty funny,” said Gowanus Canal Conservancy head Andrea Parker. “It’s creepy. And one thing I really like about it is how it’s going in and out of from under the bridge with the tides.”
Readers of the local blog Pardon Me For Asking first spotted the inflatable president — donning his signature red power tie — in Brooklyn’s Nautical Purgatory during the neighborhood arts event Gowanus Open Studios, leading some Brooklynites to speculate that sculpture was meant as a statement piece to mock the Oval Office’s orange occupant.
“As we approached the old Figliolia building, I jumped a few inches in the air because I saw snakes and tentacles writhing in the dark between two parked cars.’” said Brad Vogel of the Gowanus Dredgers canoe club. “Only then did I see the Trumpian part of it and the human figure.”
A representative for Gowanus Open Studios did not return a request for comment by press time.
Vogel could not make out the artist’s identity, but described a “sort of a gray, hooded figure.”
This is not the first time Trump has had an imprint on the Gowanus, as a honcho with the city’s Department of Environmental Protection recently blamed the controversial president for vetoing a city plan to construct a massive sewage tunnel under the canal.
“President Trump’s EPA is at it again: ignoring science and facts when making significant decisions that impact New Yorkers’ lives,” department spokesman Ted Timbers told the Brooklyn Eagle at the time.
But Gowanusaurs have a good relationship with the federal agency’s reps, according to Parker, who said any anti-Trump sentiment probably had different motivations.
“I don’t think folks from the neighborhood think that the EPA is ‘Trump’s EPA,’” said Parker. “We have a very good relationship with the folks over at that agency.”
