Hamptons Subway Newsletter: Week of January 18–24, 2019

By Dan Rattiner

5 minute 01/21/2019

Hamptons Subway riders experienced a terrible smell this week, Photo: auremar, Vereshchagin Dmitry/123RF

Week of January 18–24, 2019
Riders this past week: 33,333
Rider miles this past week: 88,888

DOWN IN THE TUBE
Eli Manning, with his arm in a sling and a Band-Aid on his forehead, was seen Friday morning being helped onto the subway at the Westhampton Beach platform for an eastbound train bound for Quogue, where he has a home. Robert De Niro and Ralph Lauren were seen getting off the subway at the Montauk station after a bouncy trip through Napeague on that train that still needs new shock absorbers, which have not yet arrived.

PARTIAL SHUTDOWN
Hampton Subway is not owned by the Federal Government as President Trump inaccurately stated in a little twit the other morning. The majority of the Subway stock belongs to his good friend Bill Aspinall, a frequent visitor at Mar-a-Lago, who is also the Hampton Subway commissioner, re-elected over and over annually for the last 10 years. Hoping to keep in lockstep with Donald Trump, Aspinall ordered a one-day partial shutdown of the Hampton Subway last Thursday when all the motormen and token booth employees were furloughed.

The riders hardly noticed the difference, however, because volunteers were quickly found to man the token booths and drive the trains from among the pedestrians walking the streets in Hampton Bays. Earlier in the day, after the partial was announced, the clerical staff in the Hamptons Subway building on Ponquogue Avenue were ordered out to find volunteers that morning and they were successful right away. The shutdown ended the next day when Trump, in his next morning twit, mentioned Aspinall, calling him a pal and congratulating him for sending the real Americans working for him on a free one-day vacation, without pay but nevertheless. A special shout out goes to the five sisters from Water Mill who “played” at being motormen during those 24 hours.

FUNKY SMELL
Many passengers on Hampton Subway trains traveling eastbound through the tunnel linking Bridgehampton and Sagaponack reported a “funky” smell about midway through at 10 p.m. Friday. Our seven, in-house SWAT team members, who sleep on cots in the Hamptons Subway building’s fifth-floor apartment, were rousted out of bed and sent off down the pole with the company Funk-o-Meter to document the problem, but by the time they got to where the funk smell had been, it wasn’t there anymore. If you smell the funk coming back, immediately bring it to the attention of any subway employee. They will know what to do.

DEER ON THE TRACKS DELAY
Once again a wayward deer caused a delay on the system, this time for one half hour at 3 p.m. on Saturday when the poor doe—it was a doe—came down the escalator confused, climbed down onto the tracks and fought off sharpshooters with dart guns whose shots kept falling off her flanks. It doesn’t help that the local laws now require all dart guns to have rubber suction ends, but in the end, the doe, at least a little disturbed, leaped back onto the platform and took the up elevator to the street ending the incident.

The doe was last seen clip-clopping down Jobs Lane toward Monument Square where she commenced sniffing the cannonballs. We regret the systemwide delay. It’s especially onerous because it was only last Tuesday that Commissioner Aspinall made a New Year’s resolution to have no problem with the service for the full year of 2019.

COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE
Laurie—Tell the commissioner we are awaiting his message and will be forced to send this out without it in 15 minutes. I don’t care if he’s still in the john. —Jed