Shinnecocks and Chanel: Gas Station Goes High Fashion

If you’ve noticed some members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces lounging around near the Canoe Place Inn in Hampton Bays recently, there’s a reason for it.

As you know, President Donald Trump has been working diligently to put an end to the Russo-Ukrainian war in recent weeks. A cease-fire. A place for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The transfer of land to Russia. The creation of a buffer zone.

At the same time, he’s been working to solve various problems here in America, even when it comes to local matters. He’s weighed in about the school curriculum in Texas, about factory buildings in New Mexico, about safety in California and about what he says are useless wind power windmills off Long Island. With the stroke of a pen every day, things that were moving forward, even half built such as with the windmills, are sent to the dustbin.

Here in the Hamptons, he recently ordered the Tennessee State Militia to set up an encampment at the Shinnecock Canal to oversee an executive order that will, by Feb. 15, require all the traffic to go westbound on odd-numbered days while traffic will go eastbound on even-numbered days.

There is no project, big or small, that he hasn’t rejiggered to become more to his liking. And yesterday he stepped in and announced he was settling a dispute between the Shinnecock Indian Nation and the State of New York about the Nation’s attempts to build a gas station on land it owns alongside the Sunrise Highway in Hampton Bays. The state wants it stopped. But the Nation did not stop until the state ordered a possible invasion of the Nation’s property to shut it down by force. It is now the subject of several lawsuits that could go on for years with all the consequences again on the table.

“We can’t wait around for this,” Trump said last Thursday as he signed his latest decree. “I’m putting a stop to it.”

He did not explain what he meant by that. At first.

By Saturday, over a hundred Ukrainian soldiers were seen in Hampton Bays at the half-built gas station, their weapons locked and loaded. It seems that somehow, the orders Trump was giving about the gas station got mixed up with the orders he’s issuing on Ukraine. Also, somehow, it involved the embargo on oil tankers coming and going to Venezuela.

It seems that, given the speed with which the president acts, it has been only a matter of time until something like this would happen.

Trump says that his order on Thursday was that the work proceed at the gas station site, but not with the completion of the gas station. He has ordered that the commercial activity on the site at Shinnecock be completed as a large Chanel store.

“I spoke to the people who run Chanel,” he said. “They should run that operation there. They are going to be perfect for that site. People driving back and forth in the Hamptons. Lots of perfume is going to be sold. Lots and lots. Just drive off the ramp to where you think there will be a gas station. And there will be Chanel.

“I originally tried to speak with the people at Louis Vuitton about it. Good for luggage and things like that. High-end stuff. You see it. You’re going places. You’ve got a mansion in the Hamptons. You need luggage. But they kept changing the meeting time and place, until it was clear to me they didn’t want it. There are going to be consequences about that.”

Trump said that both the Shinnecocks and Chanel were skeptical about it. At least at first.

“I told the Shinnecocks I would put them on the deportation list if they didn’t agree. Send them back to Shinnecockia. Wherever that is. And they came around.

“As for Chanel, I had to overcome the language problem. The people who run it speak French. And after that, they said they wouldn’t do it because where this is located is not classy enough. But then I told them that every Republican in both the U.S. Senate and House will be buying perfume for their wives there and I would see to that. And they began to think it might be a good idea.”

A reporter asked the president why the Ukrainian soldiers were there and Trump said that was a stupid question coming from what was supposed to be a friendly reporter from Fox.

“We’ll have to make some media changes,” Trump shouted to somebody offstage. But then he said that it was some screw up with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth plugging a microphone into the wrong slot again and he’d talk to Hegseth about it.

“I don’t want to leave you with nothing,” the president then said to the reporter from Fox, having calmed down. “Well, I could tell you they were guarding it. But that wouldn’t be right.”

“So everything is all right,” a reporter from The Wall Street Journal said.   “But what about the State of New York? And the Town of Southampton?   How did you get them on board?”

“That was the easiest part,” Trump said. “I told them that the Shinnecock Canal, which is right nearby, is a federal waterway. Or if it isn’t I will make it so. I said we’d weld the locks shut at their canal if they didn’t sign on to this plan. And that was that.”

The new Chanel store should be open by Jan. 25.