Hamptons Subway Newsletter: Week of September 21– 27, 2012
Riders this past week: 13,879
Rider miles this past week: 93,412
DOWN IN THE TUBE
Dustin Hoffman was seen on the Hampton Subway with Richard Gere talking animatedly about the movie Jaws and the movie The Graduate and about which one was better. They were in Water Mill heading for Bridgehampton, but the conversation got so heated they missed the stop. Also seen on the subway was New York Jet Quarterback Mark Sanchez, his arm in a sling, after the embarrassing loss to Pittsburgh last week. We saw him in Hampton Bays. He was headed for Montauk, he said.
BEACH STOPS CLOSING
As we mentioned last week, the “beach spurs” which go the mile from Main Street in East Hampton and Southampton to Main Beach and Cooper’s Beach respectively will be closed for the season on September 27. If you go there after that, you’ll have to walk down the tracks.
LIGHTBULB REPLACEMENT TIME
After hours on Monday night, teams of workmen with ladders will be going into all the tunnels in the system to replace all 14,000 light bulbs in one night. They replace them every year whether they are out or not because there is nothing worse than a dark spot in a tunnel to confuse a motorman. Bagpipers accompany the workmen from each of the 14 stations out into the tunnels to entertain them while they work. The leftover light bulbs are given to the local public school systems. The job begins at 2 a.m. just after the subway closes for the night and ends just before reopening time at 6 p.m.
SH STATION CLOSING WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON
The Southampton Station will be closing for a private party down on the platform beginning at 9 a.m. Wednesday, September 26 and ending at 3 p.m. that day. The people who are holding this party are so important and so wealthy we cannot tell you who they are, but we can tell you Santana will play, Madonna and Taylor Swift will sing, the magician David Blaine will perform and there will be a reunion of the Beatles and Elvis. There is also a circus performance with horses, but it’s expected the manure will be hosed down and picked up before the station reopens. While the station is closed, get off in Water Mill or Shinnecock or make other transportation arrangements.
ROMNEY BUNKER
Mitt Romney’s people, in anticipation of his announced aggressive foreign policy should he become President, are planning to build 12 underground bunkers around the country to be “safe havens” for him and his family during nuclear wars should they break out while they are away from the White House. An abandoned storeroom you can enter from the Hampton Subway tunnel between Bridgehampton and Sag Harbor is in the running. Selection will be made November 8, after the win.
COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE
I do not take these frequent trips to foreign lands for my personal benefit. They are business
trips and I take them so I can import new ideas to make things better than the already extra
good service you get on Hampton Subway. Last week in Moscow, for example, while there to meet with Russian oil tycoon Vladimir Bolanaskov at his palatial new restaurant, I took the Moscow Subway to get there and noticed that the platforms are filled with magnificent 19th century hanging chandeliers. I had one of the chandeliers measured up, but sadly, it would be too tall to hang above our straphangers on the platforms in Southampton or East Hampton. They’d bump their heads.