Spirit of Milwaukee Boat lives on in new music videos

It’s been just over two weeks since the Milwaukee Boat—a.k.a. the Minnow, the S.S. Milwaukee, Deep Thought, or just the Boat–was cruelly taken from us. On May 6, after nearly seven months of being stranded between Bradford and McKinley beaches (and after endless unsuccessful salvage attempts), All City Towing pulled the sucker out of the water and over the rocks, loaded it on a flatbed, and towed it away.

The Boat is still sitting in the All City lot, apparently, but we haven’t visited it. We don’t like to cry in public—especially at tow lots. (Been there, done that.)

But cry not, Milwaukee, for the spirit of the Boat lives on! In two new music videos! The first comes from rough-and-tumble Milwaukee rock band Bellends. The Cole McCormack-directed clip for Bellends’ “Pocket Knife” features the Boat, the Hoan Bridge, those darn electric scooters, and a hot dog costume. What more do you need? (Expect a new Bellends album soon.)

The next video doesn’t actually feature the Boat, but, well, you’ll see. “We know you, like everyone else in the press business, really, really, really miss talking about that abandoned boat,” the frontman for Milwaukee country band The Slow Harvest, Bryan Kroes, recently wrote us. “Well, we made a little video to keep the memory going: we decided to become the boat.” (The Slow Harvest’s debut album, Selections From The Sad Bastard Songbook, is out now.)