The Hamptons Subway: The Spider Persists, and Shutdown Chaos Unfolds

Hilaria Baldwin was seen rereading a first edition of her new book Manual Not Included while heading east on a local train headed for East Hampton from Bridgehampton on Thursday afternoon.    

DETERMINED SPIDER, PART TWO

Trains continue to slow down to five miles an hour for 30 seconds at this spot in the tunnel west of Hampton Bays where this giant spider – officially a member of the axoinopenola funadrapa species – sits along the wall on the inside of the tunnel as the trains come through and then between trains builds a spider web only to have it torn down every eight minutes by the trains. Trains are being extra-specially cleaned twice a day by a special ammonia spray that removes the sticky stuff from the front, while they are stopped at the Sag Harbor platform’s east side. Riders enter on the west side so as to not smell the chemical, which otherwise quickly dissipates after use. It is just a three-minute delay.

SORRY FOR THE THREE SHUTDOWNS

Hamptons Subway was shut down four times for various periods during this last week. The first happened as a result of a call from the White House on Monday at 3 p.m. when each of our 113 employees were given the opportunity to retire on the spot and 27 did. The shutdown lasted until 7:42 p.m. when some of our other employees finished taking over the jobs of the retirees by working double shifts. Supposedly they will not be taxed on the overtime. Then on Tuesday at 11 a.m. the word came down that all personnel with Venezuela birth certificates and a gangland tattoo on their necks needed to be fired immediately and 18 were, including two who were carrying guns on the Quogue platform. U.S. Immigration and Customs enforcement (ICE) officials rounded the 18 up shortly thereafter, so those 18 jobs were also taken over by others and the subway reopened with only a 45-minute delay. You might not have even noticed. The next closing, at 2 p.m. Friday, required all subway personnel named Juan to immediately report to the Suffolk County District Courthouse in Central Islip, but this was reversed with a subsequent order two hours later, so the 86 who had left now returned, and by 4, service had resumed. The fourth and final shutdown was supposed to go into effect Thursday at 11 a.m. after phone calls from President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago demanding any man with the first name Sue be suspended pending a review, but apparently this order never went into effect because it didn’t come in writing to our Hampton Bays office. Seems that the Hampton Bays mail carriers walked off their jobs at noon when still another order prohibiting delivery of mail to anyone in the U.S. from Mongolia, Botswana, Tanzania and Patagonia and so on never went into effect, so both the Sue people and postal people resumed their work with only the very slightest hitch in either service.  The Sue letter and a second Sue letter were later delivered after the postal service started up again but never went into effect because of the earlier later letter, nor did the postal delivery from those other places happen for more than 13 minutes. However, it was also learned that if one of those orders had remained in effect, all the Sues would have been flown to Guantanamo. 

COMMISSIONER BILL ASPINALL’S MESSAGE

Feb. 23 is the 80th anniversary of the charges being dropped by a Manhattan district attorney against our beloved Ivan Kratz, the great man who founded the Hamptons Subway system.  

As I am sure you know (everybody knows this) the subway actually began operations in 2007 when the entire underground system secretly built by our beloved founder Kratz in 1929 was found during a Superfund pollution removal job in Sag Harbor as workmen dug down underneath an old metal gas ball.

And what a surprise it was! Kratz, the builder of the Lexington Avenue Line of the New York City Subway System a few years earlier, had secretly ordered double the amount of concrete, steel, light fixtures, turnstiles, token booths and wall tiles needed for his Lexington Line, then hustled the unused material initially to a series of warehouses in Staten Island where he intended, in about 10 years’ time, to quietly sell that extra material off to others and pocket the money. When an investigation by Manhattan DA Arnold Blue about the extra material was launched however, Kratz quickly had it all trucked to Montauk where the developer Carl Fisher was beginning construction of what he had hoped would turn that town into a giant summer resort called “Montauk Beach.” Kratz asked Fisher if he could build a subway system throughout Montauk and the Hamptons free of charge just for the future profits when the coast was clear and it could be used, and Fisher famously said, “Why, sure!  Anything you say, Ivan!”  Thus the subway system was built on the East End without anybody knowing.  And we have discovered it today and have shined it up and got it going. The DA, of course, after investigating Staten Island and not finding anything, dropped the charges on Feb. 22, 1931, a day on which we celebrate as “Charges Dropped Day” by eating nothing but hot dogs – Kratz’s favorite food – and with a big parade in Hampton Bays.  See you there!

On another note, the special spider working between Hampton Bays and Quogue continues his baffling work, and now we’ve had inquiries from three cable channels – National Geographic, Nature and Spike Lee, who wants to film his baffling activity in slow motion.