For some reason I got to thinking about the USS Intrepid Museum at NYC’s Pier 86 and 46th Street, on the Hudson River. This in turn got me to poking around for the Intrepid Museum’s origin story, in the course of which I found a decidedly curious item, which I’ll put in bold so’s you don’t miss it. To wit:

The museum was proposed in the late 1970s as a way to preserve Intrepid, and it opened on August 3, 1982. The Intrepid Museum Foundation filed for bankruptcy protection in 1985 after struggling to attract visitors. The foundation acquired USS Growler and the destroyer USS Edson in the late 1980s to attract guests and raise money, although it remained unprofitable through the 1990s. The museum received a minor renovation in 1998 after it started turning a profit. Between 2006 and 2008, the Intrepid Museum was completely closed for a $115 million renovation. A new pavilion for the Space Shuttle Enterprise opened in 2012.

The Intrepid Museum spans three of the carrier’s decks; from top to bottom, they are the flight, hangar, and gallery decks. Most of the museum’s collection is composed of aircraft, which are exhibited on the flight deck. Among the museum’s collection are a Concorde SST, a Lockheed A-12 (a/ka the SR71 Blackbird; I’ve seen it, it’s awesome—M) supersonic reconnaissance plane, and the Space Shuttle Enterprise. The hangar and gallery decks contain a variety of attractions such as exhibit halls, a theater, and flight simulators, as well as individual objects like a cockpit and an air turbine. Several craft and other objects have been sold off or removed from the museum’s collection over the years. The museum serves as a space for community and national events, such as Fleet Week and awards ceremonies.

Mayor Ed Koch announced plans for the Intrepid’s conversion in mid-April 1981, and the United States Department of the Navy transferred the Intrepid to Fisher, who led the nonprofit Intrepid Museum Foundation, on April 27, 1981. The conversion of the carrier’s top two decks cost $22 million and was funded by $2.4 million in private donations, as well as $15.2 million of tax-exempt bonds and $4.5 million from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. After the New York City Board of Estimate gave the Intrepid Museum Foundation permission to sell tax-exempt bonds in December 1980, the bonds were sold to the public in July 1981. The federal grant was approved in January 1982, even though the project “had nothing to do with housing”. The renovation involved the addition of a theater, several planes on Intrepid’s deck, and aviation and maritime exhibit halls. The carrier’s navigation and flight bridges were also restored. The city spent around $2.5 million to renovate Pier 86 on the West Side of Manhattan, where Intrepid was to be docked. The museum leased the pier from the city for 33 years at $50,000 per year, making annual payments in lieu of taxes totaling $400,000.

Now, I’ve toured the Intrepid a whole bunch of times over the years, spending hours upon hours prowling the old girl’s flight deck closely inspecting the remarkable variety of air- and/or spacecraft resident thereon, and have thoroughly enjoyed every last one of said visits. So far be it from me to carp overmuch about it, but still: HUD? SRSLY?!? WTAF, man?

Ah well, whatevs. I’m just happy to know that the Intrepid Museum—having somehow survived years of sparse attendance, financial woes, and even one (1) filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1985 (!)—is still afloat and open for public viewing by cake-eating civilians, military aviation buffs, veterans both retired and active-duty, and assorted looky-loos with some free time on their hands alike. If you’ve never been and find yourself at loose ends in NYC some fine day, I can think of a great many worse ways to kill an idle afternoon (weather permitting, natch) than a trip to Midtown West to stroll the Intrepid’s decks. Two snaps enthusiastically Up, and highly, highly recommended.

Having likewise toured the USS North Carolina and the USS Yorktown many times*, I can assure you that, good as they were—and they were—neither of those thankfully-preserved pieces of real, true American history can so much as hold a candle to the USS Intrepid, and that’s a fact.

* As well as the Brit destroyer HMS Bristol once, when she made a Wilmington port call on her way back from the Falklands dustup, a few Jack Tar swabbies took in a show the BPs did there, and graciously invited us out to the boat the next day, even going so far as to bring us below decks to drink piss-warm English beer, smoke a few fags, and share a few laughs with ‘em; great guys all, those lads were