There’s nothing like standing on the Hudson River esplanade these days, the wind in your face, the sun glistening on the water as you watch a veritable floating parade pass by: sailboats and yachts, tugs and tankers, giant cream cheese ads…
Cream cheese ads?

		NY Waterway has turned three of its ferries between Lower Manhattan and Hoboken into billboards for a bagel-and-cream-cheese breakfast product, aimed at thousands of ferry commuters and anyone enjoying the river. But whether the ads whet people’s appetites or offend their tastes, in the city’s eyes they are illegal. City zoning prohibits advertising signs on vessels “within view of an arterial highway” (such as West Street, a.k.a. the Joe DiMaggio Highway) and adjacent to a residential, commercial or manufacturing district, unless the ad is for the boat’s own services. Sid Dinsay, a spokesman for the Buildings Department, which enforces zoning rules, said that based on a description, the NY Waterway ads appeared to be in violation, although the agency had received no complaints.
“If there is indeed advertising of an illegal nature on these boats, we could very well take action,” he said. In 2000, Dirtpile.com, a now-defunct company that leased construction equipment, hired a tugboat to pull a huge billboard up and down the Hudson. The Buildings Department’s acting commissioner sent an inspector out on a police boat to board the tug and issue a citation. Hudson River Park, which runs along the waterfront from the Battery to 59th Street and includes the waters out to the pier line, forbids advertising without a permit. But Chris Martin, a Trust spokesman, said NY Waterway is authorized to advertise on park water. Pat Smith, a spokesman for NY Waterway, said that “there’s never been a hint or a peep about the advertising being inappropriate. It’s a revenue generator that helps keep fares down. As long as we stay within good taste parameters, it’s appropriate.” Smith said that three years ago, the company ran ads for Animal Planet, a television station. “You’ve got ads on New York City subways, buses and taxis, so ferries can carry advertising,” Smith said. But, said the Buildings Department’s Dinsay, “It’s one thing for the MTA to plaster ads on the sides of their buses. It’s another thing for a vessel going from one shore to another to be transformed into a billboard. One is governed by traffic regulations, the other by zoning rules.” Some people said they were worried that other boat owners will follow NY Waterway’s precedent. “I would not like to see a lot of ads going by on the water, although I don’t like seeing it on the street, either, and I see a lot more there,” said John Doswell, president of Friends of Hudson River Park. Huntley Gill, who owns the restored fireboat John J. Harvey, at Pier 63, said that he and his partners had considered advertising on their vessel. “The revenue would have been very, very useful, but we didn’t want to offend the local community boards and the Hudson River Park Trust, because they were against it,” Gill said. But Gill disputed the city’s jurisdiction over boats, especially if they stay 1,500 feet offshore. Others also question the Buildings Department’s power on the river, where city, state and federal jurisdictions overlap. In the Dirtpile case, the company moved the tug closer to the New Jersey shore, claiming that was outside the city’s jurisdiction. When the city disagreed, the tug left town. “I didn’t want to fight City Hall,” Larry Corbeil, Dirtpile’s former chief operating officer, said last month. Regarding NY Waterway’s ads, he said, “God love ’em. I hope they’ve got some good lawyers behind them.” Feds Investigating Ferry Fraud Possibly illicit ads may be the least of NY Waterway’s problems. The New York Times reported last month that federal authorities are investigating possible fraud by the company in connection with millions of dollars in government subsidies it has received for expanded ferry services since Sept. 11, 2001. The company, which dominates ferry service in New York Harbor, gets about $1.74 million a month under contracts with the Port Authority. Most of the money, which comes from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, subsidizes routes between Hoboken and Lower Manhattan that replaced the destroyed PATH line. According to the Times, investigators are examining whether NY Waterway overbilled the Port Authority, in part by charging for expenses already covered by the companies that leased boats to NY Waterway. Investigators may also be looking at whether NY Waterway illegally tried to monopolize the ferry business in the late 1990s. “We are cooperating fully with the Justice Department in an inquiry concerning ferry service in New York harbor,” NY Waterway said in a statement. “We are confident that this inquiry will confirm our good work.”