Hamptons Subway Newsletter: Week of July 18–24, 2014
Week of July 18–24, 2014
Riders this past week: 19,913
Rider miles this past week: 171,811
DOWN IN THE TUBE
Permanent Press co-publisher Martin Shepard was seen Wednesday morning heading down the escalator at the Sag Harbor station carrying a copy of a book written by Jon Stewart. Our spotter was unable to see where he was going because she lost him in the crowds. Double Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Caro was seen Thursday afternoon on the Bridgehampton platform heading for Sagaponack with his wife Ina. Katie Lee was seen with Kim Kardashian with umbrellas, blankets and beach chairs on the subway spur that connects downtown East Hampton with Main Beach.
Our spotters saw Ken Lipper with a group of other Wall Street types sitting in a subway car reading Wall Street Journals on the way from Wainscott to Georgica on Friday afternoon.
DEATH ON THE SUBWAY
As we learned when it was all over, two party entrepreneurs had set up nightclubs over Memorial Day weekend in two warehouse rooms across from each other down in the tunnel between Water Mill and Bridgehampton. You’d enter the nightclubs by walking 200 yards down the tunnel walkway from the Bridgehampton station and then knocking on either of the two warehouse doors there so security could decide whether to let you in. Hamptons Subway had known nothing about this.
The death occurred when one of the merrimakers, in a party hat, tried to walk across the tracks from one nightspot to the other and stepped on the third rail late on the night of July 4. Someone saw the body there along the side of the tracks and on their cell phone called 911.
Both nightspots have been shut down. We had this problem once before, in 2003. But nobody died then. There are many warehouses lining both sides of the subway tunnels. We can’t keep track of all of them, unfortunately. But when this sort of thing happens, we take action.
FLATLINING
One thing we have turned a blind eye to until now has been something the teenagers here call “flatlining.” They climb up on the subway cars when they stop at the station and lie flat on the roof until the subway train makes a full circuit of the system. So far we’ve allowed this because the kids seem to like it and it was kind of a macho thing to do. But with this guy on the third rail, so far unidentified and the body unclaimed, we’ve decided to take action to prevent flatlining. Barbed wire has been placed on the top of each subway car so this can’t continue to happen.
TOPEKA, KANSAS
The new marketing and public relations director of Hamptons Subway Warren Harding had his first successful promotion. He sold all the interior walls of the Hamptons Bays Station to the City of Topeka, Kansas. For 14 days, walls were plastered with posters of the Kansas State Capital building and the Charles Curtis State Office Building facing it, of Washburn University, and of Cyrus K. Holliday and his first railroad engine for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad he founded in Topeka in 1859. Many subway riders became confused by this and believed they were in Topeka rather than Hampton Bays, but other than that, it was a great success and the Hamptons Subway management considered it a plus.
COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE
With summer underway, I would like to welcome all our summer visitors with the special salute that all subway employees greet one another with: “Watch out for the closing doors.”