Hochul Says NYC Should Take Over the Hamptons Subway

SCENE ON THE SUBWAY

Anderson Cooper was in town last week with his kids, and was seen taking the subway from Westhampton Beach to Eastport to go see, he said, the Long Island Game Farm, which is in Manorville. He was going to take a taxi from Eastport.

NYC SUBWAY TO TAKEOVER HAMPTONS SUBWAY?

Governor Kathy Hochul has announced her intention to have the New York City Subway system take over the Hamptons Subway.

“The level of incompetence at Hamptons Subway is beyond measure,” she said. “Between the lack of maintenance, frequent blackouts, mechanical breakdowns and excessive graft, there seems no choice but to move in this direction. In particular, the subway commissioner, Bill Aspinall, seems to have less than half a brain.”

The governor said that her experience on the subway, where she was detained briefly by an errant set of closing doors entrapping her ankle at the Quogue station, had nothing to do with this announcement, which had been in the works for “weeks — no, years.”

CLOSING DOORS CRIME WATCH BEGINS

As we mentioned last week, the system where employees at our Hampton Bays headquarters monitor the goings-on in all the subway cars by overhead surveillance cameras is now in effect. On Thursday, when a man was seen smoking aboard a crowded subway car between Water Mill and Bridgehampton, the fire department was on hand when the train arrived in Bridgehampton. The doors opened, and the firemen hosed the situation down.

The monitors also have the ability, at their discretion, to have the subway doors close on any purse-snatcher trying to leave a subway car with the goods in hand. So far that has not been necessary, although on one occasion, one of our employees accidentally pressed the button to entrap a person who turned out to be an unidentified illegal immigrant.

The commissioner has apologized profusely for the error and offered appropriate compensation. Hamptons Subway believes this system will serve as a model for all future subway surveillance systems around the country to keep crime down.

COMEDIANS ENTERTAIN ON EAST HAMPTON PLATFORM

The program of musical entertainment on the subway platforms continues. Next week, a harpist will be at the eastern end of the Amagansett platform, and a banjo picker will be at the western end. In Sag Harbor, two comedians will tell jokes at opposite ends of the platform. Parents with small children are advised to keep their kids out of earshot of the comedian at the western end because much of the routine is x-rated. At the eastern end, a comedian pretending to be a character from SpongeBob SquarePants will perform, so that is probably safe.

THE ELEVATOR

Every stop on the Hamptons Subway system has escalators to take travelers down to the platform or, if getting off onto a platform from an arriving train, back up.

In 2022, however, after some problems with the escalators at the Southampton station resulting in everybody using the stairs — an inconvenience for both the elderly and small toddlers — it was decided to install an elevator as a third possibility for getting up and down to the platforms. The reasoning was that Southampton was our busiest station and, if successful, we might offer elevators at some of the other stations.

In making the installation, having successfully hired the commissioner’s brother, Biff Aspinall, who has a long history of winning contracts at the best prices for things, the elevator was finally opened to the public last January with officials, including Vice President Kamala Harris, in attendance.

Everything went well and, of course, there are only two stops, which are up and down, so you have to press one or the other of the two buttons after the doors close. Unfortunately, the green button, which would take you up, instead takes you down, and the red button when pressed takes you down instead of up. It is believed that the panel with the buttons might have been installed upside down.

Because overrun prices almost doubled the cost of the installation, it was decided to put a little note on top of the two buttons rather than take everything apart at great further expense to fix this. The note reads: “Press red for up.” It works well, except that with increasing frequency, people either forget to read it or don’t understand it, and the elevator stays where it is for a while, angering other patrons in the elevator who thus miss their trains and sometimes get physical in there.

We have for a long time regretted all this, and finally, this week, we have found the money in a heretofore unknown subway account, to be able to pay the contractor the extra $245,000 to fix it. The elevator will be out of service until September when it is expected that the job will be completed.

WATCH OUT FOR BOGUS GIFT-GIVERS

The fellow giving out free samples of stuff on the Hampton Bays platform last Thursday was not from the Hamptons Subway. Only accept free samples from people wearing official-looking Hamptons Subway Approved Vendor badges. This particular fellow made a lot of people sick.

COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE

The idea that the New York City Transit system could run Hamptons Subway better than I is ridiculous, and I have the trophies and awards given to me over the years in the trophy room adjacent to the library in our oceanfront Southampton mansion to prove it. We apologized to the governor. She will travel for free anytime she wants in the future. Enough is enough.

As for that just-found new bank account in my personal name at Hamptons Subway, it had been opened and the money put in it for a time in the future when it could be needed to paint the trains, or something. We will therefore have to put off painting the trains when the time comes. But first things first — violence in the elevator has to stop, so we are fixing the red and green buttons.