Hamptons Subway Tokens Vanish from Storage

SCENE ON THE SUBWAY

Christie Brinkley, promoting her new memoir Uptown Girl, was reportedly seen on the subway headed for Southampton from Water Mill on Wednesday. We have no reports from East Hampton or Montauk this week because our trainspotter, who like the six others we employ, rides the rails all day long looking to spot celebrities, was out sick with bronchitis.

TOKENS VANISH

Ten years ago, swipe cards made subway tokens, the traditional way of paying for a subway ride, obsolete. As a result, more than 3 million worthless tokens were taken to subway headquarters in Hampton Bays and, since nobody knew what to do with them, put into storage in the basement of our headquarters building on Ponquogue Avenue. Last Thursday, on a weekly surveillance check, our employee discovered the storage room empty. If anybody knows the whereabouts of our tokens, please inform us immediately. Rumor has it that each token exactly resembles a bitcoin, currently valued at $1.6 million. This is a lot of money if true. We will report further developments as they take place.

ROCK BAND PROBLEMS

Last Monday afternoon, subway riders reported hearing music emanating from the subway tunnels between Amagansett and East Hampton and between Bridgehampton and Sag Harbor. When these reports continued on Tuesday morning, a crew was sent down there to investigate. What they found were two rock bands rehearsing in two different warehouse rooms adjacent to the tunnels, one performing heavy metal music and the other hip-hop.  (It is not clear which was which.) Flashing strobe lights and smoke machines were in evidence. The police were called and a total of nine musicians were arrested and taken respectively to the East Hampton and Southampton lockups. The rock concert paraphernalia was also seized.

These warehouse rooms were built in 1932 at the time the subway system was created and are both unheated and windowless and not healthy even for rock bands, however it was that they managed to lug their instruments out to them. Apparently, they must have walked down the tracks to these places during the time the subway system is closed in the middle of the night. This is a very unsafe business. More musical sounds were heard by patrons between Quogue and Quiogue on Saturday morning.

DOG NAMED FLUFFY LOOSE

The subway system owns seven German shepherds that patrol the barbed wired fence that is the perimeter of the Montauk Yards, where the subway cars spend every night.  The dogs and the fence are there to keep graffiti painters at bay. Somehow, last Tuesday afternoon, one of them, a 4-year-old male named Fluffy, went missing. We believe he is in the Montauk community somewhere. If you see him, a black and brown German shepherd who bares his teeth and growls when his name is called, please call our Hampton Bays office and let us know his whereabouts. Under no circumstances try to approach him or round him up yourself.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAC!

Mac McPherson, the second in command of our Homeland Security Subway Division X-ray Bomb Unit, turns 39 on Friday. He works that day so he will not be attending the birthday party for him in the cafeteria in Hampton Bays that afternoon.  You know the rules. Neither rain nor sleet nor snow or storm will delay the duties of the Homeland Security Subway Division X-ray Bomb Unit. Happy, happy, Mac, and many more.

COMMISSIONER BILL ASPINALL’S MESSAGE

The Hamptons Subway board of directors last Friday voted 3-2 to require that all employees of the subway except for me, the commissioner, absorb an 8% pay cut for the next year, regardless of whether or not they are in the union. These are unpredictable times.

As for me, it’s bonus time. I work on a profit scheme which requires that a bonus be paid to me by the percentage the price of the stock of Hamptons Subway goes up from last September to this September. Although profitability of the system has been about what it was, Hamptons Subway this past June bought back 2 million shares that were, along with the other millions and millions of shares, owned, until then, by the general public. With the completion of this buyback, there was a 10% increase in the value of the stock because there were 10% fewer shares to divide the value of the company up into. My bonus therefore was 10% of something, I am not sure how to figure all this out, but what I do know is that me and the wife will be off for the Columbus Day weekend to Abu dhabi to climb that tall building they have there. No sense hanging around here where everybody is so depressed.

On another matter, I am pleased to report that this morning, Madonna, the famous singer and actress who has a horse farm in Bridgehampton, contacted me to see if it would be possible for her to make a music video in one of the underground warehouses that sit alongside the subway tunnels. Apparently she had learned of the local rock bands performing in them. She has in mind a particular one between Amagansett and Napeague where last week 17 antique subway cars, all built in 1917 according to the name plates on them, were discovered stored on rails.

Certainly it would make a great backdrop for what she has in mind. We are very excited about this prospect and I hope, after presenting this request to my board of directors, to respond to her with an enthusiastic yes. What a feather in our cap!