Hamptons Subway Newsletter: Week of May 7–13, 2020

By Dan Rattiner

5 minute 05/18/2020

Hamptons Subway barber Giuseppi Figaro and his Chopper Cutter drone — Barber Giuseppi Figaro and his Chopper Cutter drone, Photo: 123RF

Week of May 7–13, 2020
Riders last week 86
Rider miles last week 438

DOWN IN THE TUBE
The Hamptons Subway opened for business this past week, but practically nobody used it, as the numbers above show. And certainly there were no celebrities riding anything. That they might be seen down there—and our spotters were on the trains looking to report them for the “Down in the Tube” section you are now reading—could be a bad thing. They could be shunned or publicly shamed by their otherwise adoring public for taking the subway. You never know.

Nevertheless, Commissioner Bill Aspinall has ordered the subway trains to continue to run, but, for this week, with no passengers at all. Mr. Aspinall wants to see just how much it would cost—a rock bottom cost—to run the service without paying anybody any salaries, except for the motormen to steer the trains.

So for the next week there will be no token booth operators, no flagmen, no maintenance people, no Subway Police, no administrative staff in the Hamptons Subway building on Ponquogue Avenue in Hampton Bays—the whole staff is to be furloughed until Mr. Aspinall completes his study and knows exactly how long he can keep the system going for the months ahead if he has to run the place with just this skeleton…no, that’s the wrong word…the hard-working motormen (and women) on the payroll. At that point, Mr. Aspinall says he will apply to the federal government for his own forgivable 30-year business loan to build the subway back up to the flourishing operation that it was before all of you know what happened.

A SUCCESS STORY
On the other hand, consider the entrepreneurial achievements of our longtime Hamptons Subway barber, Giuseppi Figaro, who during the last month has been charging for haircuts not up close and personal at the shop he has on the third floor of our building, but from his home in East Quogue using a Bluetoothing TV remote to operate a drone and scissors contraption to cut the hair of his clients in the safety of their own homes.

Luigi has, as many of his happy clients will tell you, become so successful with the Chopper Cutter, as he calls it, that he has gone into business making them for sale to others. The Chopper Cutter—I’m sure you’ve seen it advertised on television—has so far sold more than a million units to eager barbers around the country wishing to operate remote barber shops.

Luigi has used the same federal funding program that our Commissioner hopes to get for the subway business, but now, anticipating that social distancing might eventually end and dramatically reduce the need for Chopper Cutters, he has this past week sold the business to Elon Musk for $54.3 million in cash and retired to
Costa Rica.

We Zoomed Luigi down there, and he told us that Musk purchased the business so astronauts in outer space can cut hair remotely. As you know, Musk heads up, in addition to Tesla, the new SpaceX business, which hopes shortly to be firing a rocket to out there for an extended time with people on board, so this makes perfect sense.

This is all just to say that Hamptons Subway is now in need of a new barber.

Interested? Put your name, phone number and the word “barber” on a card, wipe it down with sanitizer and slip it under the front door of our building, and we will consider you for the job. When Governor Cuomo lifts the shutdown, we are a go.