Week of November 24 - 30, 2011
Riders this week: 11,412
Rider miles this week: 93,411
DOWN IN THE TUBE
Steven Spielberg of East Hampton was spotted on the subway between East Hampton and Sagaponack. He got on at the new Georgica stop, the only passenger that did. Practically nobody uses this stop on the subway system but we are told that those in Georgica are pleased it is there if they ever feel like using it. Spielberg spent much time looking up at the exit hatch in the ceiling of the car he was sitting in. Pondering the subway for a future action movie? We’ll know soon. This man isn’t in the habit of letting grass grow under his feet.
TURKEYS
This Wednesday, all riders using the subway system will be receiving a big 20-pound frozen turkey as they come through the turnstiles whether they like it or not. As we go to press the day before we will do this, we do not know if the riders will appreciate this or not.
The turkeys come from an enormous delivery of 100,000 frozen turkeys sent to the Hamptons Food Pantries by the federal government. The pantries don’t need this many and so all those they don’t need are being handed out at the subway platform turnstiles, not only on Wednesday but also on Friday and Saturday and Sunday. (Our volunteer turkey-giver-outers take Thanksgiving Day off.) One thing about the Hamptons is that there will be plenty of turkey going round.
The over delivery of turkeys to the Hamptons seems to have come about because of the inaccurate addition of two zeros on some government purchase order.
COUNT THE TRAINS COMPETITION
On December 1, the subway system will erect the metal bin at the top of Fort Hill in Montauk, overlooking the subway system yards down below along the shores of Fort Pond Bay, adjacent to the Long Island Rail Road track end there. Parents in the Hamptons take their children between the ages of 5 and 10 up to the top of Fort Hill during the first 15 days of December to look down and count the cars that they observe in the subway yards below to see if they can guess how many are in the subway system entirely. Since many cars are out on trains going around the circuit, it’s a matter of mathematics, specifically addition, to try to guess the correct amount, which is then written on a piece of paper (pads and pencils are attached to the outside of the bin) to be put into the slot on top of it together with the voter’s name address and phone number.
This year, for the first time, a bucket containing blindfolds will be attached to the bin for the use of the children. This is at the request of Madame La Farge of Hampton Bays, a clairvoyant, who has told us that people blindfolded can guess more accurately than people looking right at things. Please don’t take any of the blindfolds, unless you and your child specifically decide to use one, then you MUST take the mask you used, since you have done that, this from the Suffolk County Board of Health.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY GLEN WILLIAMSON
Glen Williamson, who is a mid-level screen viewer in the subway security surveillance system monitoring program in our Hampton Bays office, turns 29 on Friday. A party will be given for him at 4 p.m. in the company cafeteria. As has been done in the past, all monitor screens in the building will show Williamson during the 10 seconds it takes to blow out the candles. Should be no harm done. This brief break from surveillance has not missed anything in the past.
COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S REPORT
I have been meeting with the curator of the New York City Subway Track Junk Museum and we have reached an agreement to allow anything of interest that is not valuable to us amidst the trash we find on the tracks, which is picked up every night by our subway maintenance division, to be donated to this new museum, scheduled to be opened next month on the city’s Museum Row on Fifth Avenue, directly next door to the Guggenheim Museum. Hampton Subway will have a special section in the museum behind a velvet rope, so our junk is not mixed up with the City subway junk.