Tea Party Descends Upon Hamptons Subway

A FIRST

The number of riders on the subway this week exactly matched the same number for last week. This has never happened before. — Newsletter Editor Janet Bronkowski

SCENE ON THE SUBWAY

Politician Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was on the subway heading from North Haven to Sag Harbor after visiting his family on Shelter Island last Thursday. He was telling people wearing masks in his subway car to remove them as they don’t help in preventing COVID-19.

Paul McCartney and Jon Bon Jovi were seen on the Amagansett platform with guitars last Sunday at 9 p.m., waiting to board a Montauk-bound subway for a surprise gig at one of the clubs out there.

CAFETERIA TO OPEN FOR LUNCH

As a means of raising revenue, Hamptons Subway will be opening its company cafeteria to the general public next Thursday. The cafeteria is located in the basement of the Hamptons Subway building on Ponquogue Avenue in Hampton Bays. All are welcome to enjoy the meat loaf, whipped potatoes, fruit jello molds and turkey loaf anytime from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Come mingle with the employees. Cash only.

ONE PLAN REJECTED, ANOTHER SPROUTS

A plan to raise some of the subway tracks in certain places on the line so that the trains could be fitted with glass roofs, allowing straphangers to get a little sunshine as they passed these locations — specifically Shinnecock and North Sea — was shot down by President Joe Biden on Monday, after he transferred the sums set aside for this project, $11.4 billion, to the Gulf Oil Spill Fund of Funds.

Though disappointed, Hamptons Subway has put together a new plan to landscape all the tunnels and platforms. The cost will be much less — a piddly $1,845,500 according to the projections — and moving ahead on the presumption that this money can be moved back into the subway fund (it would amount to just 110 square feet of ocean surface oil cleanup lost) we have hired renowned landscape architect Bolognesa di Fabricatti to provide a plan.

All the Hamptons is abuzz over the di Fabricatti plan released on the Hamptons Subway website yesterday. It features rose-covered trellises at the entrances and exits to each subway stop, palm trees alongside all the escalators, beach grass and rhododendrons on the platforms, and seas of tulips and poppies and lilacs intertwined on all the tunnels connecting the stations. There is a safety feature as well. At the edge of every platform, instead of just the scary drop down to the third rail, there will be an entire platform-long hedgerow with a little opening in it for boarding and disembarking.

There are only three downsides to this plan. One is the problem with people with allergies (we intend to provide pollen masks at the turnstiles for those afflicted,) the slowing down of the subway trains in order to allow for pruning, watering and lawnmowing, and some objections to the use of little piping plover birds to be rounded up and placed in nests on the tops of the trellises. Environmental groups are furious at this idea, which does, unfortunately, involve the most coddled of all endangered species in the Hamptons. But we shall press on.

DEMONSTRATION ON HAMPTON BAYS PLATFORM

Members of a radical right-wing splinter of the political group the Tea Party will be holding protests and carrying signs on the Southampton Hamptons Subway platform next Sunday afternoon. Called the “All-or-Nothing Tea Party,” members will be demonstrating in favor of taking over Hamptons Subway and firing all employees in order to let the straphangers run it themselves.

“This is a complete waste of taxpayers’ money,” their flier says. “If the Proud Boys can volunteer to work to get the Mexican border closed, there is no reason why the straphangers cannot volunteer to man the token booths, run the trains and do the maintenance. This will completely free up the American taxpayers from spending even one thin dime for the Hamptons Subway.” The flier shows a picture of our esteemed Commissioner Bill Aspinall wearing a Hitler mustache and his eyebrows painted in a scowl. “The astronomic annual pay package this man gets is a scandal,” the flier continues. “No one should be paid more than $2 million a year to run a subway system.”

COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S WEEKLY MESSAGE

The demonstration to be held this Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. by the right wing of the Tea Party is taking place with the full approval of the Hamptons Subway management. We believe in freedom of speech and American democracy. This is what makes America great. Please be aware that we have approved an application for 335 demonstrators. It would be wise to make alternate plans rather than use the subway that afternoon.

We did get a message about this from my friend Pete Buttigieg, who is the transportation secretary in the Biden administration. “Golly, I don’t know about no employees,” he wrote. “Maybe at least one subway motorman should be continued to be employed. He could teach volunteers how to drive the subway. Otherwise, how would the volunteers know how to do that?”

He says he will attend the demonstration if his schedule permits.

On another note, these demonstrators should be made aware that Hamptons Subway is privately owned. No government money is involved. I don’t know if that changes anything.

And, on still another note, the plan for the new Hampton Bays Down Home Cafeteria Restaurant in our headquarters building is a wonderful idea, no matter what the building department says. I wish I’d thought of that myself. Cheers from Cancun.