Hamptons Subway Newsletter: Week of March 13–20, 2014
Week of March 13–20, 2014
Riders this past week: 9,622
Rider miles this past week: 100,002
DOWN IN THE TUBE
Seen riding the subway system this past week were Mercedes Ruehl heading to Springs from downtown East Hampton, Tom Wolfe on the subway in Southampton coming in from Water Mill, and Ron Delsener riding from Bridgehampton to Sagaponack.
NUCLEAR WEAPONS FINALE
The mystery of the 68 guided missiles discovered in open-sided wooden crates found behind a rusty and locked door in a storeroom in a tunnel halfway between Water Mill and Bridgehampton two weeks ago has been solved. The missiles were put down there by the U.S. Army in 1963 and, soon thereafter, were just forgotten about. They are fully armed, but according to an Army spokesman, the fissionable material has by this time lost its potency, so they are ok.
FIGHT ON THE PLATFORM
A fight broke out on the Southampton platform last Wednesday morning at 11 a.m., which was unfortunate since it happened because of a big Hamptons Subway giveaway. We’ve done giveaways before. In this case, we had a trophy company in Maine make up 15,000 clear acrylic paperweights that say HAMPTONS SUBWAY on them and feature, floating in the middle of the plastic, an actual toy metal subway car made in Japan. These valuable five-pound souvenirs were to be given away on every platform to each 100th straphanger passing through the turnstiles, whether he or she liked it or not. Our volunteers were to obey those who didn’t want the trophy and pushed it away. They were to then offer the paperweight to the next straphanger who came in behind.
Unfortunately, a middle-aged man and an elderly man got in a fight about the paperweight, the elderly man claiming that the middle-aged man refused it and the middle-age man saying no he did not. In the end, the elderly man bashed the middle-aged man over the head with the paperweight and then ran off with it. Other straphangers followed this man and wrestled him to the ground on the up escalator which, as they struggled, took everyone up to the sidewalk, where the elderly man threw the paperweight at one of his assailants, and it just got worse and worse. Fortunately, nobody got arrested, but the melee did tie things up for the rest of the morning. The middle-aged man was taken to Southampton Hospital by ambulance, treated for a bump on the head and then released.
These things happen sometimes.
HQ NEEDS A SPRUCING UP
Our remarkable Hampton Bays headquarters building, designed and built in the 1930s by Nazi architect Albert Speer as the only example of Third Reich design in America, now needs a sprucing up and refurbishment. But where are the plans? Fortunately, we found them in the Swiss town of Schaffhausen, 32 miles north of Zurich, where the Albert Speer archives were collected at the end of the war. So, happily, we will be able to fully restore this building to exactly how it was supposed to be. Without the swastikas, of course.
COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE
As a result of the melee that broke out on the Southampton platform last Saturday morning, I met with marketing director Edwin Hollandmaker and we have decided that future prizes in subway promotions will not weigh more than a pound. We regret this decision, since it does limit us in what we can give out, but things happen and we just have to take the warranted action.