Hamptons Subway Competition Abounds with Firecracker 200 & Pusher Boxing

SCENE ON THE SUBWAY

Actress Mariska Hargitay and her husband Peter Hermann were seen on the Hampton Bays platform waiting for an eastbound train last Thursday at 8 p.m. Sag Harbor’s Billy Joel was seen last Wednesday afternoon at the Montauk Lighthouse station with Joe Gaviola, the lighthouse keeper, to discuss a possible concert on the lawn there sometime next summer after Joel’s monthly gig at Madison Square Garden comes to an end in July. Sienna Miller and Jessica Seinfeld were seen on the platform in East Hampton having a footlong roast beef and pickle sub at the Subway kiosk there.

DELAYS

The Southampton to Shinnecock line will be shut down on this coming Friday afternoon between 2–5 p.m. so animal rights veterinarians can try again to coax a 55-pound raccoon out of an air duct near Shinnecock Lane. This is the third raccoon to settle in an air duct on the system since Labor Day last September.

PUSHER BOXING CHAMPIONSHIPS

Preliminary boxing bouts are taking place every evening in the company cafeteria in Hampton Bays as the 22 young people who worked all summer as pushers to get subway riders on the trains continue along with their tournament.

The affairs are three rounds long, and the pushers get to wear the same padding, helmets and boxing gloves they wore when they were employed between Memorial Day and Labor Day last summer. A standout in the tournament so far is “Wild Bill” Katrasokovski of Noyac, who at 6 foot 4 inches tall and 255 pounds has, so far, won all three of his heavyweight preliminaries. He was the pusher, you might recall, who got the most complaints over the summer and who we had to get to go a bit more gently at it. Two of his wins have been by knockout.

The biggest surprise, however, is Emily “Wildcat” Parsons, who gave up her job as the librarian in Water Mill to be a pusher for the summer. Now back at that job, she has, after work, fought as a middleweight and has knocked all three of her opponents out with one punch in the first round — all of whom are men. Only four of the 22 pushers hired were women. And some people complained about that imbalance. Emily appears to be taking matters into her own hands.

The big finale, with the championships at stake, will take place next Saturday evening on the Southampton platform, so be sure to be there. The first bout will begin at 10 p.m. and will be televised on ESPN8.

ESCALATOR PROBLEMS

Last Friday evening, the down escalator from Jobs Lane in Southampton to the platform below began to operate more slowly. The usual speed for the escalators is 3 miles per hour, giving people coming down to the platform plenty of time to get to an incoming train, which on occasion they would hear entering the station down below when they begin their descent.

However, at 6:23 p.m., at the end of rush hour, the down escalator speed suddenly slowed to 1.2 miles per hour, resulting in customers missing the trains because they could not run down quickly enough. Efforts to fix it that evening failed. And the next day, crews from our electrical department, transmission department and supply department worked all day, even changing out the gears and belts, but still could not fix it. It remains, to this writing, a mystery.

Then, last night, the same thing happened to the down escalator in Bridgehampton, and again, no one has been able to fix it.

All this has created quite a bit of anxiety. Is East Hampton going to be next?

What is going on here?

HAMPTONS SUBWAY FIRECRACKER 200 ENDS IN A DEAD HEAT

This past Sunday morning, riders of the subway got to watch six subway drivers, aka motormen, compete in a 200-mile race with six different empty subway trains, four times around the subway system, passing each station at speeds up to 90 miles an hour as they went. Train Two, driven by Alex Bratomski, and Train Four, driven by Harry Randolph, came across the finish line at the Southampton station in a dead heat for first place.

The event was held between 3–5 a.m. because that is when the subway system closes for the night every night for maintenance. We had hoped that on this particular night, huge crowds would come down at that hour to sit on the temporary stands we set up at each station and watch as the trains came barreling through, but that didn’t happen. Apparently, the lateness of the hour and the rainstorm raging topside kept everybody home in their beds.

Two trains actually sideswiped each other while negotiating the turn up at Trout Pond in Noyac and will be out of service for several weeks while they are being repaired. The time between trains will therefore be 22 minutes instead of the usual 15. Sorry about that.

COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE

The Hamptons Subway is now in possession of massive amounts of hot dogs, Cracker Jacks, cold soda and beer, left over from the Firecracker 200. We also have lots of pennants and flags and balloons that had been put up on the various platforms due to the overestimation of the success of the Firecracker 200.

It was a nice effort on behalf of Todd Greenfield, our recently hired public relations and marketing director, and we know the outcome of this was not his fault. We also wish him well in his new job, which, we are told, is at the Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, painting trailers.

In any case, I had a lot of fun firing the cannon that started the race.

And we’d particularly like to thank the high school bands of Pierson, East Hampton, Bridgehampton, Hampton Bays, Southampton and Westhampton Beach for playing on their own hometown platforms. It was a great effort, and it was just too bad nobody was there.