Hamptons Subway Newsletter: Week of May 4–10, 2016
Week of May 4 – 10, 2016
Riders this past week: 12,912
Rider miles this past week: 106,865
DOWN IN THE TUBE
Steven Spielberg was seen getting on the subway at the exclusive Georgica stop heading west to points unknown, carrying an inflatable toy rubber shark as big as he was. No idea what that was all about. Perhaps a gift for a grandchild? With him was his actor pal Tom Hanks. Maybe a re-enactment of the movie Castaway? Also seen on the subway was Royal Pains star Mark Feuerstein, wearing a stethoscope while standing on the East Hampton platform and Jon Stewart, who hasn’t been seen on the subway for awhile, getting on a train in Bridgehampton with Louis C.K. headed for Sag Harbor.
BEACH SPURS NOW OPEN
The Hamptons Subway was originally built secretly underground in 1931 with building material stolen from the Lexington Avenue Subway construction site, was discovered in 2007 when environmental workers on a Superfund Pollution site in Sag Harbor dug down, and was most recently expanded with a new stop at Georgica, where there was none before, and with two beach spurs connecting Main Street East Hampton with Main Beach and Jobs Lane Southampton with Cooper’s Beach. Decorated with college banners and surfboards and with the Beach Boys blaring on the sound system, these two spurs afford the quickest and least expensive way to get to the beach.
The beach spurs opened on May 1 but this year there is something new added. Beachgoers who get off the trains at the end of the line, halfway up a sand dune there, will notice that there are enormous 14-foot steel doors on hinges in the “open” position which let beachgoers through to come and go. Should a huge storm come, however, 30 men using long poles will unlatch these doors where they are held open and then slam them shut to close all access to the end of the tunnel there. To alert bathers ahead of time not to get caught and squished when the door closes, five minutes before this happens a bright red light over the beach exit opening will flash on and off and an extremely loud horn will sound. If you are caught on the beach when the doors close, leave your beach umbrellas, surfboards and towels where they are and run sideways down the beach until you find a place to scamper up and over the beach dunes there, then run for your lives. What we WILL NOT have, however, is a flooded subway system.
HISTORICAL RE-ENACTMENT
June 17 this year marks the 85th anniversary of the day when the stolen building material from the Lexington Avenue Line arrived in moving vans from the city for the start of the dig that soon became the Hamptons Subway. Local residents will perform a re-enactment of the arrival of those trucks to the “first dig” at the Montauk Circle in the downtown of that town where it all began. Ten moving vans filled with empty cardboard refrigerator boxes will be unloaded at noon and placed there on the ground by local residents dressed as “hired hands” of Ivan Kratz, the crook, who later was arrested and imprisoned, but who on this occasion sat shotgun next to the driver in the first truck. Kratz, wearing a morning coat, a starched collar, bowtie, spats, suspenders and bowler hat, will be played by East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell and yes, he will be smoking a Havana, the favorite of the late and beloved Kratz.
COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE
Rumor has it that Hamptons Subway is to be re-named Trump Subway, in honor of that man’s takeover of this company. It is not true.
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