Hamptons Subway Newsletter: Week of August 29 – September 5, 2014
Week of August 29 – September 5, 2014
Riders this past week: 23,612
Rider miles this past week: 117,845
DOWN IN THE TUBE
Among those riding the Hamptons Subway this week were Howard Stern, JLo, P Diddy, Louis C.K., Madonna, Mayor Epley of Southampton, Southampton Hospital Director Robert Chaloner, Paul Simon, Elle, East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell, Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel and Jason Kidd (carrying cardboard moving boxes).
OFFICIAL GREETER
There will be no official greeter on the subway system this Labor Day weekend. Last year, the company voted to hire Paulie McFadden to glad hand people as they got off the subway after arriving here for the final weekend of the summer, but as many of you know, around 4 p.m. that Friday, he vanished and has not been heard from since.
TURNING OFF THE THIRD RAIL
The Hamptons Subway operates from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. every day, seven days a week, all year around. From 2 a.m., the system shuts down for maintenance and workmen and cleaning people attend to trash pickup, platform scrubbing and so forth and so on until 6 a.m. Of course, the third rail is shut down during that time. We don’t want anybody killed. And this, the shutting off of the third rail, until now, has been done in a fourth floor office in our Hampton Bays building where at the appointed hour, two employees, each with special keys, have to stick them into slots simultaneously and twist them, to either turn the third rail off, or turn it back on. There is a green light and a red light to tell you which position it is in.
Due to the fact that last October 17 this failed to happen after a Frisbee match on the fourth floor got out of control and the employees left their posts to participate— thank God no employees were electrocuted during maintenance that night—we have been building a concrete blockhouse at our Montauk Yards next to the maintenance shed there to turn power off and on in a highly secure environment. That facility is complete. And now, just as soon as we install the 80-foot tall telephone poles along the roads to carry the heavy wires from the blockhouse in Montauk to our headquarters in Hampton Bays high up and out of the way, we will be able to make the change over. It all should be in place by Thanksgiving at which time we will have a ribbon cutting ceremony.
POET LAUREATE
Did you know the Hamptons Subway has a Poet Laureate? Here is Hamptons Subway Poet Laureate Anderson Blackwood Maine’s Ode to Labor Day Weekend, fresh off the press.
“Labor Day Weekend”
I look down the tunnel. The subway train is coming. Bearing my friends from Westhampton, on their last leg from New York City.
I can’t see it just yet.
But I know it is there. Toodling along. This will be their final weekend visiting us with their children and parents at our home here.
We love them dearly, but they are fairweather friends and will only come out in the summertime. You know how that is.
I am sad. But also joyful. Is that the horn I hear? Is that them coming just now?
COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE
Our office has recently been served papers from a band that has decided to sue us. The band is called “Third Rail” and we told them that no, we would not allow them to have their album cover photo taken down in the tunnel because it was too dangerous. And now, this is what they do.