Hamptons Subway Halloween Delays, People Pushers Needed

SCENE ON THE SUBWAY

Event entrepreneur Ron Delsener was spotted eating an ice cream cone on the platform at the Bridgehampton station on Friday. Rock star Paul McCartney rode the subway between Amagansett and Montauk on Saturday afternoon. Actress Mercedes Ruehl was seen reading Dan’s Papers on the Three Mile Harbor platform on Sunday.

Congressman George Santos was, for some reason, spotted in handcuffs on the Noyac platform Thursday evening. Vice President Kamala Harris was arguing with somebody on the escalator at the Westhampton Beach station on Tuesday.

HAMPTONS SUBWAY HALLOWEEN PARADE

Due to a typographical error in our advertising, 86 witches, ghosts, skeletons and Taylor Swifts between the ages of 3 and 13 came down the escalator to the Westhampton Beach platform at 2 o’clock in the morning of October 31, expecting to board a subway train to Montauk where their parents, having driven to Montauk by car, would pick them up and walk them across the platform to the up escalators where a celebrity judge would declare which kid won the first prize.

The typographical error, more of a misunderstanding actually, was that Commissioner Bill Aspinall had expected that the kids would walk to Montauk along the tracks, 40 miles through the tunnels, and, just before dawn, the first kid to stroll into the Montauk station would receive the winning prize.

As a result of this, no conductor or engineer was there in the middle of the night to take them out in a train. So, instead, the parents hijacked a train parked at the station, boarded it with their kids and, with certain parents who knew how to drive a subway train, fired it up and headed east to arrive in Montauk not at dawn but at 2:35 a.m., five hours early.

At the station, the Hamptons Police arrested 252 parents, grandparents and nannies, charging them with stealing a train and abusing their parental rights, and so, after everybody was marched off to jail and arraigned, all were bailed out by Judge Agnes Fender who declared all of them winners of the first prize. And the subway system would have to pay the first prize money to each and every one of them. Then the judge dismissed the arrests.

HUGE CROWDS ON HALLOWEEN CAUSED SYSTEMWIDE SUBWAY DELAYS

A record number of costumed people rode the Hamptons Subway over Halloween weekend, causing great stresses on the system and numerous delays at our largest and busiest platforms — Southampton, East Hampton and Westhampton Beach — where trains were held up for five or 10 minutes as security people helped riders back up onto the platforms after they were accidentally pushed down onto the tracks. Shorter delays also took place at each of the other stations.

LETTER TO THE HAMPTONS SUBWAY

Dear Sirs:

I still don’t understand why there are flags from the newly created Kingdom of Basinoba on all the trains and platforms. What is all this purple, green and puce about?

–Concerned Rider

Dear Concerned Rider:

The Kingdom of Basinoba has purchased 1.2 billion Hamptons Subway tokens to become the official currency of that new country. For legal financial reasons, during the next 11 months, the underground part of the Hamptons Subway system has to be officially part of that newly formed African nation to receive the tokens from Hamptons Subway.

At the end of the 11 months, Basinoba will pass legislation to receive the tokens, making this transfer official, and underground Basinoba will return to be part of the U.S.A. And so, since the tokens are the official currency of the subway during this time, you will be in Basinoba.

You have surely noticed that when you buy the morning paper on the platform newsstands you pay for them with tokens. Don’t fret. When you come up the escalator to breathe the clean air of the Hamptons, you are back in America.

PEOPLE PUSHERS WANTED

Because of the huge crowds of costumed children using the Hamptons Subway System over Halloween weekend, Commissioner Aspinall has ordered that we take on two dozen temporary employees as “people pushers” to work during the upcoming Thanksgiving and Christmas weekends.

Applicants will wear helmets, boxing gloves and padded vests and work during the rush hours down on all the station platforms, pushing the crowds on and off the trains. Selections for these positions will be announced on November 8, after which successful applicants will go through a one-week training session on the Hampton Bays platform, whether the riders like it or not. The pushing program will be in effect from November 18–27, and then from December 22–28.

COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE

As a result of protests by environmentalists, historians and neighbors of our Hamptons Subway headquarters, I am pleased to announce that a new approach will be taken to getting the 1.2 billion subway tokens located in a vault underneath the Hampton Bays building out from under there to be packed up for shipment to Basinoba.

We don’t know what the new way is quite yet, but this great building of ours, built in 1927 by our founder Ivan Kratz from photographs taken of a waterworks building in Berlin by Nazi architect Albrecht Speer, will not be torn down, even if our intention was simply to get the tokens out of there and subsequently rebuild the place.

A secondary reason for this decision was that we found it would take more than two years for us to get the proper permits and approvals from the Southampton Town Planning Board, the Suffolk County Health Department, the New York State Register of Historic Places (just this past week the building was placed on that list for some reason), the Southampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals, the Southampton Building Department, the Hampton Bays Downtown District Building Proportions Committee and the Federal Preservation Board for the Protection of Endangered Piping Plovers and Underground Slugs.

On another note, I want to make it clear that in no way are we just hiring burly young men to be pushers on our platforms. Members of the fairer sex are free to try out for these jobs just as much as anybody else. So don’t be timid, young ladies. And some of you retirees should get up and out of your wheelchairs, too.