Hamptons Subway Considers 80K Marathon

SCENE ON THE SUBWAY

Eric Fischl was seen on the subway heading from Southampton to Hampton Bays, carrying a very large painting that barely fit through the door. Also seen on the subway in East Hampton was Tina Fey talking to Paul McCartney heading east toward Montauk.

THANKSGIVING DAY

The 10-minute Thanksgiving Day train stoppage went well. It occurred as planned, at exactly 11 a.m. on Thursday of Thanksgiving Day. All the trains came to a halt wherever they were in the system, and an announcement was made over the loudspeakers in all the cars by Gladys Gooding that everybody should stand and remove their hats for one minute in honor of our soldiers overseas, and everybody did. With that, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was played over the loudspeaker system. The motormen waited five seconds after it ended and then the trains started up. Most everyone was still standing at that point, and a few people got jostled but nothing serious. “What would have made this even better is if where I was on one train it could have been possible for me to see everyone doing the same thing on every other train,” one woman said when it was over.

It also turned out that the short little tribute to our soldiers overseas was celebrated this way last Memorial Day. The program should have been about the friendship between the settlers and the Indians when they shared a Thanksgiving dinner together in the fall. Sorry about the mix-up.

LITTLE DOG FRIGHTENED

The same little toy poodle that ran off onto the platform from that woman sitting in a subway car in Southampton last week was this week given a little fright trying to do it again. We had explained to the woman, a personage of note who lives on Gin Lane, that dogs were not permitted on the subway except in a carrier. But Foofie, for that is her name (the dog’s name), jumped out of the woman’s canvas bag once again at the same location and headed to the platform, but this time she didn’t make it. Foofie was hit on both sides by the closing doors, let out a yelp, and jumped back into the subway car and back to the canvas bag the woman was carrying.

Although the closing doors gave Foofie a little squeeze before recoiling the opening, we were subsequently urged by the woman’s husband, who is a very important person, to do something about the doors and so we are. We are experimenting in the Montauk Yards with new, more sensitive doors that reopen immediately after giving just the slightest touch to a dog or anybody else. To test them, the men in the yard blindfolded one of the German shepherd watchdogs there so he wouldn’t know he was being tapped by the doors, but the dog just leaped back when touched and had to be brought under control by handlers. Two employees were bitten.

THOSE WONDERFUL PUSHERS

Every summer, beginning with the Memorial Day weekend, we dress 16 interns in football helmets, boxing gloves and chest protectors to work pushing the crowds from the subway platform into the cars as they come in. A group picture was taken of them all together on the Hampton Bays platform last summer, and after a long wait at the framers, is now on the wall in our trophy alcove on the Southampton platform. We hope many of those who were in this picture this past summer will volunteer to be pushers again this coming summer and so can see this photo we’ve hung.

IGNORE THE ADS ON THOSE TWO SUBWAY CARS

We’ve had complaints from people who say that the Hamptons is no place for advertisements on the walls for pawnshops, Preparation H, injury lawyers and loan consolidation companies, especially when all these services are offered in Toronto, Canada.

As we explained last week, several subway cars from that city are leased by Hamptons Subway to expand our service during the busy holiday season. Sorry for what you see up there, but these advertisers pay for those spaces, so the ads have to be there.

THE HAMPTON SUBWAY 80K?

Some enthusiastic runners, out from New York and preparing to compete in one of the many runs for charity out here, came by our offices yesterday to ask if we’d be interested in holding a super 80K marathon. The idea is that some of the most well-conditioned runners in the world would compete late at night on New Year’s Eve, running the subway tunnels between 2 a.m. when we close for nightly maintenance until 6 a.m. when we reopen. We would be interested in this, if the charity were right and there were something left over for us. It would also give the maintenance people the night off, so they could party too to welcome the new year instead of having to do work, work, work.

COMMISSIONER BILL ASPINALL’S MESSAGE

I am proud of our pushers. I spoke to them when we took the 2025 photograph. I told them to not get too rough since they are unpaid interns, and if they were injured doing this work as happened two years ago when one pusher thumbed another in the eye, we just let the offender go.