Hamptons Subway Newsletter: Week of August 24–30, 2018

By Dan Rattiner

5 minute 08/27/2018

Mariachi — Photo: ANTONIO BALAGUER SOLER/123RF

Week of August 24–30, 2018
Riders this past week: 39,812
Rider miles this past week: 204,712

DOWN IN THE TUBE
Actress Lori Singer was spotted riding the subway from Amagansett to East Hampton on Saturday morning carrying a baseball bat, mitt and ball. The security agents who monitor the conveyor belt everybody has to put their stuff on before being allowed to board eyed the baseball bat, looked at Lori, and then waved her through. Sunday afternoon, Joy Behar and former Congressman Steve Israel were on a subway heading from Southampton to Shinnecock, each reading the other’s new book.

MARIACHIS
Five Mexican mariachi musicians in sombreros, cowboy boots and tasseled vests playing music in a westbound subway car between Quiogue and Quogue were arrested by the Subway police for performing without a permit, and then deported to Mexico on the next plane out of Gabreski Airport when it was found that they did not have a permit to be in America.

The mariachi musicians sang their way through this ordeal in good humor—they were only performing for fun, not for dollars—and were later videoed singing their way down the aircraft’s exit stairs to the tarmac in Guatemala City where they landed, instead of Mexico City due to an air traffic controller’s rain diversion detour. Then, in Guatemala, still singing, they were re-arrested by police for having no permit to be in Guatemala. The video went viral.

HEAVY RAINS
Huge thunder, lightning and downpour brought gloom and dripping ceilings to the straphangers waiting on our platforms last Saturday. It was a good opportunity for us to sell $5 umbrellas for $50 and we took full advantage of it.

OVERSHOT DELAY
In a momentary lapse, a motorman on an eastbound train bent down to pick up his fallen cell phone as he slowed into the Bridgehampton station, causing the train to hurtle through the station to finally squeal to a stop far down the tracks in the tunnel leading to Sagaponack.

When a failure to stop happens—and it last happened in 1998—an alarm immediately sounds everywhere in the subway system and continues on indefinitely unless the motorman at fault turns off the alarm within 30 seconds after it begins. With it still on, ambulances, fire trucks, SWAT teams and police scrambled into action and headed down to the “overshot” situation to tend to the injured and killed.

It was a big melee while the passengers, none of whom were injured or killed, were put on stretchers and gurneys for safety’s sake and wheeled out of the subway and onto the tunnel escape path to an exit to freedom.

But after getting everybody out, the emergency squad realized there was no motorman among the survivors, and so they returned to the scene of the crime to find this motorman unconscious in his little motorman’s booth with a bump on his head from, as he said when awakened during CPR, his forehead hit the steering column as he reached for the alarm turn-off button.

He was taken to Southampton Hospital for further evaluation. We regret the four-hour delay until a substitute motorman was rousted from his bed to come to work during this emergency. Hopefully it will be another 20 years before this happens again.

COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE
The National Subway Commission’s investigation of our finances is a witch-hunt. They’ll never find where I put the stolen money. And grilling my personal lawyer John Ketchum will do no good. John is no squealer and would never spill the beans as John Dean did to reveal President Nixon’s crimes back in the day. And I have nothing to hide.