Hamptons Subway Approves Magicians & Other Entertainers

SCENE ON THE SUBWAY

Recently retired Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman was seen repeatedly going up and down the escalator between the street and the platform in Amagansett. Who knew there was just a little boy in him? Natalie Portman was huddling with Nicole Kidman on the platform in Southampton. Jon Bon Jovi was seen standing holding a strap on a full subway car heading from Westhampton Beach to Quiogue to visit Schneps Media President Vicki Schneps, he said.

SLOWDOWN

The subway motormen’s union has announced that they will hold a slowdown on our entire system from noon to three next Tuesday. It is to highlight the fact that contract negotiations with management have now entered their fifth year without an agreement. Those using the system during those hours should expect that trains will be going only 3 miles an hour. A trip from Southampton to Hampton Bays should take an hour and 10 minutes, so be aware of this and plan accordingly.

SUBWAY EMPLOYEES INSTRUCTED ON NOR’EASTER PREPAREDNESS

Three different but identical meetings were held in our Hampton Bays cafeteria last Thursday to brief all employees about Nor’easter preparedness. The three meetings were necessary so all employees on each of the three shifts could attend without disrupting service.

Experts explained that when a Nor’easter approaches, the main thing to consider on the platforms and in the subway tunnels is flooding. No one is to be permitted in the subway system during a Nor’easter, and so volunteers will serve as guards at the stairs to each platform to keep people from coming down, and other volunteers are to escort all riders, food kiosk customers and employees out and up the escalators to the street.

All employees, except for one, are to huddle under tables in the Hampton Bays headquarters building cafeteria until the Nor’easter peters out. Doors are to be bolted so the subway customers cannot get in too. There’s not enough room. The one employee staying out, a volunteer, is to remain down on the Southampton subway platform with a cellphone to report on rising waters until the Nor’easter moves past.

IT’S OIL

A laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has determined once and for all that the black liquid seeping into the new subway tunnel being dug between Sag Harbor and the Foxwoods Resort Casino is oil. Apparently, there is oil under the seabed of Long Island Sound. As you know, work on that subway tunnel has been stopped by the Environmental Protection Agency because the seeping oil is being pumped out of the tunnel into the water where it rises to the surface to form what is now identified as an oil slick.

GEORGE SANTOS SIGNS A BOOK CONTRACT

As former United States Representative George Santos keeps busy with his new job as the general manager of Hamptons Subway reporting directly to Commissioner Bill Aspinall, we here at the Hamptons Subway Newsletter have learned that Santos has signed a contract to write a book about his interesting life. We hope it does not interfere too much with his duties in the executive suite of Hamptons Subway and of course we also hope that there is a chapter in it about his time working for us. Indeed, it’s been rumored that he’s earmarked a whole chapter to be called “Five Years Workin’ and Fixin’ Hamptons Subway,” so that’s good. Since he’s only been on the payroll three weeks though, it is stretching the truth a little bit, but it does help sell books. We all know that.

A MAGICIAN

Entertainers are now permitted to perform on our three biggest subway platforms, East Hampton, Southampton and Montauk, as long as they complete and notarize a form and get approval from the subway brass at the cashiers desk in the Hampton Bays office from 10 a.m.–4 p.m. every weekday except Tuesday and Thursday. There’s no charge for the permit, but entertainers are required to put a hat on the concrete in front of their performance to take in donations, which are required to be split with Hamptons Subway fifty-fifty.

On the Montauk platform last Tuesday afternoon at 3 p.m., on just the first day of this permitted use, a magician named “Bazaar” threw a blanket over the entire token booth there with Gladys Englehoffer at the desk inside and made the booth disappear with her in it at the wave of a wand. Where she went nobody knows, especially Bazaar who, after performing the feat, jumped down on the tracks and ran westward into the tunnel toward Amagansett with straphangers running behind him.

A mile down in that darkness he was seen waving his wand, which made him disappear, leaving behind on the tracks only his wand and cape. They are now in the evidence room at the East Hampton Town police station where the items are being kept in Ziploc body bags until things get sorted out.

BULL STILL AT LARGE

A large bull is loose somewhere in the subway system. He escaped while being loaded onto a truck taking him from a potato farm in Bridgehampton to a county fair in New Castle, Pennsylvania. Halfway up the ramp, however, he turned around and clattered down, then ran off and disappeared toward town where pedestrians later said he ran down the stairs to the Sagaponack platform. If you see him, report him to any subway employee. In the meantime, trains passing through the stations between Mecox and Amagansett have been slowed from 35 miles an hour to 8 miles an hour. He answers to the name “Muchacho.” And he loves apples.

COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE

Somehow, while I was away on vacation in Hawaii last week, the order was given to paint the subway cars red, white and blue in honor of the 300th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. As this declaration was issued in 1776, and the 300th anniversary will not be until 2026, I immediately upon my return home put a halt to these proceedings. However, 11 of the cars were completed before I ordered this to be stopped. As an economic measure, we will continue to have them in service with their current paint job until the time comes to celebrate that event. We will call these cars “patriot cars” and will be giving out little paper flags on toothpicks to the first 100 riders of the day every day until our stock runs out.