Week of September 14 – 20, 2012
Riders this past week: 16,987
Rider miles this past week: 100,812
DOWN IN THE TUBE
Lorne Michaels was seen on the subway between Amagansett and East Hampton with a young unknown female model and they were talking about a new album coming up. Apparently, she models and sings too and we will soon hear about her.
ROMNEY TOKENS, OBAMA TOKENS
Our new marketing director Edna Ferber, hired by Commissioner Aspinall straight from the Gingrich campaign, has received the 20,000 subway tokens she’d ordered, 10,000 with the face of Romney on one side and the face of George Washington on the other and 10,000 with the face of Obama on one side and with George Washington on the other. She’s running a contest, to see who is most popular with the straphangers. Token booth operators will sell them in equal amounts, so those ordering 50 get 25 of each. Then they put them in the turnstile slots. The token collectors gather them up
at the end of the day and tally them up. So far, after six days, it’s George Washington 6,868, Romney 3,434 and Obama 3,434. Apparently the straphangers don’t care what they use since either one gets them on the subway. Oh well.
PUSHERS HAVE PARTY
The “Pushers,” those adorable teenage kids you saw all summer on the platforms in their football gear pushing people onto the subway cars finished their internships over Labor Day weekend and celebrated with a big Saturday night bash at one of the clubs out in Montauk. Sixteen of them went. Only four came back. Now THAT was a party.
WINDMILL ARMS ON THE FRONT
There seems to have been more tourists and day trippers using the subway this past summer. We don’t know why. But Ms. Ferber, our dynamic new marketing director, thinks we should do things to make the subway system into more of a tourist attraction. The Hamptons has 11 windmills. It’s absolutely unique in that regard. She suggests putting windmill arms on the front of each subway train—the wind will make them turn when the train is in motion—but Local 17 of the Subway Motorman’s Union has filed an objection to this idea, saying that in some circumstances, at a stop, a blade will come to a halt blocking the motorman’s view up the tracks and this could be a problem. Commissioner Aspinall is considering the matter.
BEACH STOPS CLOSING
September 25 will be the last day you’ll be able to take the subway down and back to either Main Beach in East Hampton or Coopers Beach in Southampton. The spurs to the beach have been a big success and this has been their second summer. Straphangers get on at the Jobs Lane stop in Southampton for Coopers, and at Newtown Lane stop in East Hampton for Main Beach. And it was a stroke of genius to dress the summer beach spur employees in sailor boy uniforms courtesy of Ralph Lauren.
COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE
We’ve heard rumors that Mayor Bloomberg in New York City has ordered all the trash containers on all the platforms of the New York City Subway System removed and all trash swept up by the maintenance people on the platforms bagged and sent out to be put in the trash containers of Hampton Subway.
If this is true, he should know we will not put up with it. If he sends his trash here, we will send our trash there. We await developments.