Remembering Barnacle Bill yesterday in Tompkins Square Park

Yesterday, William Scott — better known as Barnacle Bill — would have turned 46. Bill passed away in 2009. In his honor, someone set up a makeshift memorial for him along Crusty Row in Tompkins Square Park...

As Lorcan Otway wrote for The Villager in May 2009:

“Barnacle” was well known in the East Village as a gentleman and a gentle man, in spite of his hardscrabble looks. Bill wore a nose ring, and had a large, upturned scar on the left side of his mouth, giving him the look of a pirate, but that was the farthest from the reality of this man.

You can read more about Barnacle Bill here.

Photos by Bobby Williams.

"Barnacle" Bill dies

The Villager has the feature obituary on William “Barnacle Bill” Scott. He died May 2. He was 44. Lorcan Otway writes the feature:

Born on July 8, 1965, “Barnacle” was well known in the East Village as a gentleman and a gentle man, in spite of his hardscrabble looks. Bill wore a nose ring, and had a large, upturned scar on the left side of his mouth, giving him the look of a pirate, but that was the farthest from the reality of this man.

He went from the Navy, where he was a petty officer, a bosun commanding small craft, to the Navy Reserve, and then honorably discharged became a merchant mariner, spending a good part of most years sailing American-flag vessels.

When not at sea, Bill spent a good deal of time in Tompkins Square Park, where he was as at home with the “crusties” as he was with the Village intelligentsia. His stories, whether of life at sea or East Village adventures, were punctuated with his trademark Homeric line, “It was not for nothing that...,” and on the story would wind.

[Villager photo by Lorcan Otway]