It was Genco Shipping & Trading chief executive John Wobensmith who found the perfect prop to symbolise the live return of the shipping finance community in New York on Thursday.
This was a "thank you" note he had jokingly prepared for Atlas Corp chief financial officer Graham Talbot on behalf of the entire dry bulk industry.
The joke: Atlas shipowning arm Seaspan Corp had amassed an orderbook of 70 newbuilding containerships, thereby jamming up Asian shipyards and preventing bulker owners from killing their own boom market through oversupply.
Wobensmith read the card to laughs from his live audience, then walked across the dais and handed it to Talbot.
It was funny. And it was something that could not be replicated on a Zoom call.
And so it was that finance crowd was back for Marine Money's annual New York autumn forum, not on video monitors but together in a conference room or mingling by the coffee urns in the lobby.
More than 200 delegates gathered, all having shown their Covid-19 vaccination cards at the front door. Some wore masks, but most did not.
Many of the men were wearing a suit for the first time in months, while others had long been back in the routine.
About half the crowd were not wearing ties. The relatively casual look in a staid, conservative industry was once a rarity left to the likes of Greek shipowner George Economou. But now it had been adopted by the masses, perhaps used to wearing sweatpants with a shirt on Zoom calls.
One participant who wore a mask during his visit to the venue in midtown Manhattan confessed that it was a rare trip outside of his home, except for a couple of restaurant meals with his family, since the onset of the pandemic.
Bare faces
"As I looked around the room and saw so many people grouped closely together, almost none wearing masks, I can tell you I was pretty nervous," he said.
Yet others have been out and about for months now, back to flights and business lunches and pub gatherings.
And now even the Europeans were back in New York for one of the first major shipping conferences to go live in the US this year.
The conference organisers dubbed the event "putting the band back together", a line from the 1980 Blues Brothers movie.
Wobensmith delivered the "thank you" and Talbot chuckled, accepting a little joke at his very profitable company's expense and putting the card in his pocket.
"It's great to have so much support," Talbot quipped.
A funny moment, a live moment, and much to be thankful for in New York, exactly a week before the Thanksgiving Day holiday.
