Hamptons Subway Newsletter: Week of February 28 – March 6, 2014
Week of February 28 – March 6, 2014
Riders this past week: 6,090
Rider miles this past week: 76,412
DOWN IN THE TUBE
Southampton Town Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst was seen on the subway traveling from Shinnecock to Southampton on Saturday. Some of our spotters thought she was a movie star, but she is not. Former East Hampton Supervisor Bill Wilkinson was seen traveling from East Hampton to Montauk last Tuesday, looking sort of hangdog. Justin Bieber was on the subway going from Sag Harbor to Noyac, carrying a pet swan in a bamboo cage on Saturday night.
DELAY ON THURSDAY
A token booth clerk in Bridgehampton noticed late Monday morning that the number of trains arriving every hour was fewer than usual. We investigated. Turns out that, at the little-used Georgica Station between East Hampton and Wainscott, someone had hired a uniformed concierge to help people on and off the train. Now, this is the most prestigious stop on the line, but no one can just have a concierge down there without our knowledge. The service, provided with care and at a slow pace, was found to be the cause of the delay. Subway police removed the concierge. They also removed the lovely potted plants he had brought down.
CHAOS
Between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning last week, vandals removed all the name-of-station signs on the streets at entrances to our subway throughout the Hamptons. As a result, many people got on the train at one station thinking they were in one town when in fact they were in another. After receiving many angry calls, we shut down the service until sign people arrived and attached new signs to the entries so people would know where they were, an operation that took until the afternoon.
VETERINARIAN WEDDING
Many weddings, some of them between celebrities, have been held on our subway system over the years. Last Friday, however, was the first time that with the people all assembled and the portable organ playing “Here Comes the Bride,” the religious leader who was to bond these two people in matrimony refused to proceed. He had learned, just then, that both the bride and the groom were licensed veterinarians. He said that for religious reasons, he would not marry veterinarians and slammed the good book shut and took the elevator up and out to the street and was gone. Our Commissioner himself solved the problem. Reached at his office, he raced over with an assistant bearing a bottle of champagne, had the bottle smashed against the wall of the platform, declaring it a ship launched, pronounced himself captain and, as captain, had the authority to proceed, having thus been vested to perform such ceremonies by the power of the State of New York. Long life to the veterinarians.
BIRTHDAY PARTY
Charles J. Vaughn, the man in charge of the service department, turns 44 on Friday, and everyone is invited to celebrate with him in the company cafeteria at 1 p.m. with a blowing out of candles and the cutting of the cake. Charles, as many of us know, had a sex change operation 10 years ago to become Valerie, didn’t like it and changed back two years later, but that’s all water under the dam. No presents please.
COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE
Hampton Subway had the annual letting loose of its Robbie the Rat weather prediction program on the Water Mill platform on Friday. If Robbie skitters west into the tunnel, there will be six more weeks of winter. He did, and there will be.