The Hampton Subway Newsletter: Mayor Bloomberg, Georgica Group

Week of September 30- October 5, 2011 Riders this week: 10,412 
Rider miles this week: 92,411

DOWN IN THE TUBE

Mayor Bloomberg was seen on the subway riding from Hampton Bays to Shinnecock, where his new home is located. He was wearing sneakers, which is unusual because he always wears the same Italian shoe model and has dozens of identical ones that he has worn every day for years. He must have either forgotten to bring them out from the city, our spy figured, or else he was on his way to go shopping in Hampton Bays when he realized he’d put on the wrong shoes and so was going back home to get the right ones. He’s a regular subway rider in New York, so this is nothing new to him, riding the subway we mean, not the sneakers. [expand]

GEORGICA STOP DEMAND BEING CONSIDERED

A group of rich men in ties and jackets stopped the first subway of the morning in the tunnel at gunpoint as it came along the tracks from East Hampton heading for the Sagaponack stop. They leaped out from a storage room on the south side of the tracks in Georgica and, waving firearms, brought the train to a halt with several warning shots into the ceiling. Their demands, spoken over a bullhorn, were directed to the motorman, who stood looking at them wide-eyed from the front of the train. They wanted their own stop at Georgica. They had come down to the storage room from an emergency exit at the corner of Georgica Road and Montauk Highway, which they said could easily be converted to an entrance. They weren’t going to let the train pass until their demands were forwarded to subway headquarters in Hampton Bays, which the motorman, Carl Vickman, did by radiophone immediately. Then the Georgica Group, as they have named themselves, let the train pass.

UMBRELLA STANDS

After last week’s rainy weekend, it was decided, at the urging of new Marketing Director Alan Wilson-Lefkowitz, that umbrella stands be placed on all the platforms so riders could store their umbrellas without getting water all over themselves and everybody else on the packed subway cars. It was an easy thing to do and the stands were in place by Tuesday morning. But so far, even though there has been more rain, no one has used them.
 A reporter for a local radio station asked a straphanger, who was carrying an umbrella, about why he didn’t use the umbrella stand there. “We need our umbrellas when we get to where we are going,” he said.

NEARLY KILLED

An older man with earphones and a long metal wand almost got killed when subway service people in a subway train came around a curve at 3 a.m. to perform their regular nightly maintenance, after the subway shuts for the night. They didn’t see him. The man did not see them or hear them either because of his earphones, but the driver, with great reflexes, squealed his train to a halt just in time. He was out there, the man said, looking for metal objects on the tracks. He already had a brass button. He held it up. Perhaps somebody’s diamond ring was there. Police were called and they took him away.

MORE SUBWAY CARS GET NAMES

Our imaginative subway car cleaning crew out in Montauk continues to paint names on the sides of the subway cars next to the sliding doors, as authorized by our Commissioner. The latest batch of names includes Underground Bullet, Carlsbad Caverns, Arrest Extremists and Vroom, Vroom.

Newsletter readers are welcome to contribute suggestions for the names. There are 39 cars in the fleet and so far 7 have been named. Send suggestions to askdan@danspapers.com.

COMMISSIONER MESSAGE

Hampton Subway is for getting from point A to point B. That, however, was apparently not the case last Friday night between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. when a group of male revelers, apparently having a bachelor party for a groom prior to a wedding the next day, commandeered one car on one train. They transformed it into a night’s revelry, including pole dancing and strippers and a naked girl jumping out of a big cake as they went around and around the subway system for three hours drinking and carrying on. After regular riders in adjacent cars complained, we sent out our security police in another train which overtook this lascivious bacchanal train, pulled it over, boarded it and put a stop to what was going on. There may have been a wedding the next day, but the groom was in jail. Too bad for him.