Hamptons Subway Newsletter: Week of May 1–7, 2019

By Dan Rattiner

5 minute 05/06/2019

Hamptons Subway announcer Harold Gooding on microphone in front of Hamptons Subway sign — Hamptons Subway is seeking a new announcer, and this guy ain’t it, Photo: konstantynov/123RF

Week of May 1–7, 2019
Riders this past week: 38,754
Rider miles this past week: 96,844

DOWN IN THE TUBE
Jennifer Lawrence, the actress, was seen taking the subway from Noyac to North Sea last Monday morning. Subway security confiscated her bow and quiver full of arrows. Author Roger Rosenblatt was seen traveling from Bridgehampton to Sag Harbor carrying a stack of worn hard cover books on Saturday. Singer Paul Simon sat on a blanket on the Downtown Montauk platform strumming a tune on his guitar for an hour last Wednesday afternoon with his baseball hat upside down in front of him. All money raised, he said, was going to the Animal Rescue Fund.

TRAIN TO NOWHERE
The time between train arrivals will be lengthened to nine minutes because of a situation that has left the subway system short six cars. The situation began at the Montauk subway yards last Monday when the subway system closes for maintenance for the night between 2 and 6 a.m. All the cars had come to Montauk for cleaning and the maintenance crew had gone off to scrub the tunnels. Anyway, at 2:30 a.m., a three car train in the Montauk yards rolled off to the west by itself without a motorman. It should have arrived at the Amagansett station at 2:55 a.m., but it never did. No one saw it after it left Montauk and no workers on the tracks saw it go by. So at 3:05 a.m., the foreman at the Montauk Yards sent off a second three car train to see if the same thing would happen a second time, and it did. We are now six cars short of our inventory of 44 trains. Foreman Ed Jones has been fired, not so much for the first train but for the second. If you see either train in the next few days, don’t board it. Instead, contact our office in Hampton Bays.

THE ANNIVERSARY PARTY
Everyone in the Hamptons was invited free of charge to come down to the Southampton platform last Saturday evening to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Hamptons Subway Newsletter. Leaflets were put out in store windows and posted on social media. Party started at 3 a.m. There were stacks of fast food from McDonalds and Burger King selected from the Donald Trump Cookbook. Entertainment was provided by the Manaschevitz Brothers on the trampoline. Commissioner Bill Aspinall made a speech of thanks. Everybody got a free Frisbee. The crowning of Miss Hamptons Subway and the Suffolk County High School Ping Pong Finals took place. Otto Kiev and his Dancing Bears performed. Billy Bixberg raced a horse through a ring of fire. And singer Kathee Barnabee, the new voice of Hamptons Subway’s recording system saying “Watch Out for the Closing Doors,” was thanked by well-wishers. Only eleven people attended but they had a great time, they said. As a special treat, all eleven were given a frozen turkey to take home at 5 a.m. when the party ended.

COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE
People are going to miss Harold Gooding, whose strong baritone voice saying “watch out for the closing doors” kept people safe on the subway trains for the last nine years. When the New York Yankees decided last week to cease playing the old recording “God Bless America” by Kate Smith at Yankee Stadium because of racist remarks she made in 1931, (true story), I decided to dismiss Mr. Gooding, who was accused last week by three women of having made inappropriate comments to them in 1984. We couldn’t take chances. Kathee Barnaby will put her own stamp on “Watch Out for the Closing Doors.”