Hamptons Subway Commissioner Locked Up

Hi, everybody. I’m Gertrude Knolls from Hampton Bays, and I’m taking over the editing of the Hamptons Subway Newsletter for a while because nobody else has volunteered to do it, and you really ought to know what is going on. Things are pretty fluid just now. I also will turn over part of this newsletter this week for commentary from the chief of the Hamptons Police and for commentary from our New York State Assemblyman Ted Teal Jr.

Anyway, here’s my part. The subway ridership numbers are now soaring as people have realized that it is back in business. We are now running at 80% capacity by volunteers. And so, yes, you can get from Westhampton Beach to East Hampton underground in just a few minutes if you’re willing to wait 20 minutes for a train instead of the usual 10, when the subway was last open.

Everyone is so excited. We’ve had five cleaning companies volunteering to keep the platforms spotless. Also teams of painters have come in and have already painted many of the subway cars a glossy green to keep with the fact that taking the subway is far more efficient than taking a car anywhere as far as carbon emissions go. And after the painters offered to detail the subway cars, we decided to name them all. We’ve already named cars for all the various towns, villages and hamlets, but there are 112 subway cars in total, either in service or out, in the Montauk yards. We’re accepting suggestions. Email them to us at dan@danspapers.com.

So come on down. The subway is running. And it’s free, for now anyway. We’ve got tokens galore in buckets right next to the turnstiles, about which you will soon learn as I turn this over, tag-team fashion, to our beloved chief of police.

FROM THE CHIEF OF THE HAMPTONS POLICE DEPARTMENT

Hello, everyone. As you know, the former commissioner of the Hamptons Subway, Bill Aspinall, is sitting on death row awaiting his fate for the multitude of embezzlement crimes for which he has been convicted. But now police detectives, rummaging through his files and emails, have discovered that there is far worse than what he has already been convicted of.

There is evidence that Aspinall was planning to sell the vast horde of old New York City subway tokens we have found in an underground vault under the Hamptons Subway offices in Hampton Bays. From our early estimates as we continue to count them, it appears there may be more than a billion subway tokens piled up loose to the ceiling in that vault. We continue to dig.

The sale is confirmed in correspondence that Aspinall has had with the premier of the new African country, Basinoba, which declared its independence and was accepted in the United Nations just one month ago. Basinoba wants to have its own currency. It currently is operating with U.S. dollars.

And Aspinall has offered to sell 1.2 billion subway tokens that he writes are in his private collection in exchange for an equal number of U.S. dollars that are in circulation in Basinoba. Paperwork is in the files, signed by the premier, and just waiting for Aspinall’s signature. We also have found one-way plane tickets for Aspinall and his wife to Havana. He was obviously intending to flee. We have turned over these documents to the grand jury. Death by electric chair might not be the only penalty that Aspinall has to endure.

Meanwhile, I have to report that the Hamptons Police Department has taken over the securing of the safety of Hamptons Subway riders and their volunteers. Paperwork we have found confirms that Aspinall never consummated the deal that announced he was the seller of the subway system to the two Middle Eastern billionaire buyers, who were moving forward to turn the subway into a private club.

But we cannot contact Aspinall, to ask what he wants done about all these thousands of deliriously happy trespassers on his property (he is still the owner) because he is on death row and cannot take calls.

The security chief hired by Aspinall, Rudy Giuliani, has left the area. And so, in this vacuum we have stepped in to see that the banjo music being played on the platform in East Hampton and the fruit vendors who have set up an underground market on the Southampton platform are all operating as they should.

We are told that the governor of New York is ordering the Long Island National Guard to take over, and that is fine, but we have not yet received any word about that since the announcement was made 10 days ago. The L.I. National Guard’s civilian head these days is Mikael Brand, formerly the head of FEMA, and he has not yet returned our phone calls.

Tom Brody Hamptons Chief of Police  

FROM THE NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY

Fellow citizens:

I have been following with interest and, frankly, joy as the people of the Hamptons have risen up to take back the Hamptons Subway from those who had planned to make it into a private club for the ultra-rich.

But I do have to say that we have here on the agenda up in Albany a bill to authorize the use of $1.2 billion in real estate transfer tax money — an amount that will reduce to zero any money brought in by this tax and potentially used for saving farmland during the next 10 years — for use in purchasing the subway and making it a state-run public service transit system.

It appears that this might not be necessary just now, but just in case, we are continuing to keep this on the agenda and are planning to act on it on October 17, if the volunteers who are currently running the service appear to be petering out. That is, by the way, the same day that Aspinall is scheduled to die.

Just letting you know that we are watching.

Ted Teal Jr. New York State Assemblyman