Hamptons Subway Newsletter: Week of September 18–24, 2019

By Dan Rattiner

5 minute 09/23/2019

The Hamptons Turnstile Leap has gone viral nationwide, Photo: Rangsiya Yanvarat, ostill/123RF

Week of September 18–24, 2019
Riders this past week: 41,325
Rider miles this past week: 143,032

DOWN IN THE TUBE
Socialite Jamie Gregory was seen traveling from Sag Harbor to Bridgehampton last Saturday around noontime—apparently headed for the The Bridge Classic Car Show in Bridgehampton. Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Goldberger took the subway from Southampton to Water Mill on Wednesday morning. Cookbook author and TV personality Ina Garten was seen traveling from Amagansett to Montauk on Friday afternoon with Carissa, owner of two fabulous bakeries in East Hampton that bear her name.

TURNSTILE JUMPING
Regular readers of this newsletter will recall that two months ago, Hamptons Subway, under the leadership of Commissioner Bill Aspinall, held a turnstile jumping competition—called Hamptons Turnstile Leap—with a trophy awarded to a young teenager who could jump the most turnstiles in a minute. Carl Rosenberg, a junior at Quogue High School was the winner.

Now the whole thing has gone viral. The Roulette Turnstile Company out of Las Vegas, partnering with the sports channel ESPN, has announced a nationwide four day competition in January to be held inside Red Wing Stadium in Detroit (where the hockey team plans) to see who is the best turnstile jumper in America. Called Turnstile Leap America, all 25 subway systems around the country will hold regional tournaments to select their three best entries for the trip to Detroit. The “Leap,” with ten hopeful jumpers leaping over ten turnstiles at the same time, will be broadcast live as the entrants compete. Grand prize will be $500,000.

Hamptons Subway will be holding our preliminaries in October—stay tuned for upcoming announcements. But Carl Rosenberg won’t be among the entries. He is still recovering from the injuries he suffered winning the Hamptons Turnstile Leap in July, when he cleared the final turnstile but then face-planted the concrete. Those people in Detroit even stole the name “Leap” which the Commissioner used here in the Hamptons.

ENVIRONMENTALISTS
Seven experts from the Endangered Species Institute in Boston will be here with butterfly nets next week for four days, chasing and rescuing any endangered species they find in our tunnels. The following week is the annual tunnel fumigation spraying and the folks at the ESIB piped up and asked if they could do a “rescue” before that. We do want to save the planet and so said yes. All next week, the subway system will close at 1 a.m. instead of 2 a.m. to allow for the ESIB folks to do their job during the night.

ANNUAL CHANGE FROM COLD TO HOT
Last Sunday evening, our maintenance people re-set all the thermostats in all the subway cars from cool to heat as they do every fall when colder weather arrives. Unfortunately, this year for the first time, things did not go well. The thermostats have to be changed individually on each car, by manually turning a dial on the wall below the end seat in each car—and according to passengers who contacted subway management to subsequently complain, some cars are freezing while others are broiling. We are trying to fix the problem, but the trains are on the move and it might take a few days of riding shotgun and leaping from car to car. We apologize to all, especially Mildred Catterwall, hospitalized last Thursday afternoon after suffering the chills. She is recovering nicely, we are told. She’s in Room 214. Send Get Well cards.

COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE
I write today from Detroit, where I am working with some TV people on a new show I can’t tell you about yet. So I have nothing to say about any problem in the Hamptons. Back soon.