Dan's Papers - May 6, 2008 - The Hampton Subway Newsletter

Hi everybody. I'm Gertrude Knolls from Hampton Bays and I'm taking over the editing of the Hampton Subway Newsletter for a while because nobody else has volunteered to do it, and you really ought to know what is going on. Things are pretty fluid just now. I also will turn over part of this newsletter this week for commentary from the Chief of Police and for commentary from our State Assemblyman Fred Thiele.

Anyway, here's my part. The subway ridership numbers are now soaring as people have realized that it is back in business. We are now running at 80% capacity by volunteers. And so yes, you can get from Westhampton Beach to East Hampton underground in just a few minutes if you're willing to wait 20 minutes for a train instead of the usual ten when the Subway was last open.

Everyone is so excited. We've had cleaning companies, among them Xxxx Xxxxx and Xxxx Xxxxxxx, volunteering to keep the platforms spotless. Also teams of painters have come in and have already painted many of the subway cars a glossy green to keep with the fact that taking the subway is far more efficient than taking a car anywhere as far as carbon emissions go. And after the painters offered to detail the subway cars, we decided to name them all. We've already named cars for all the various towns, villages and hamlets. But there are 112 of them in total either in service or out in the Montauk yards. We're accepting suggestions. Email them to us at askdan@danspapers.com.

So come on down. The subway is running. And it's free, for now anyway. We've got tokens galore in buckets right next to the turnstiles, more about which you will soon learn as I turn this over, tag team fashion, to our beloved Chief of Police.

Hello everyone. As you know, the former Commissioner of the Hampton Subway, Bill Aspinall, is sitting on death row awaiting his fate for the multitude of embezzlement crimes for which he has been convicted. But now police detectives, rummaging through his files and emails, have discovered that there is far worse than what he has already been convicted of. There is evidence that Aspinall was planning to sell the vast horde of subway tokens we have found in an underground vault under the Hampton Subway offices in Hampton Bays. From our early estimates as we continue to count them, it appears there may be more than a billion subway tokens there just piled up loose to the ceiling in that vault. We continue to dig.

The sale is confirmed in correspondence that Aspinall has had with the Premiere of the new African country of Basinoba, which declared its independence and was accepted in the United Nations just one year ago. Basinoba wants to have its own currency. It currently is operating with US Dollars. And Aspinall has offered to sell 1.2 billion subway tokens that he writes are in his "private collection" in exchange for an equal number of U.S. Dollars that are in circulation in Basinoba. Paperwork is there signed by the Premier, and just waiting for Aspinall's signature. We also have found one-way plane tickets for Aspinall and his wife to Havana. He was obviously intending to flee. We have turned over these documents to the Grand Jury. Death by electric chair might not be the only penalty that Mr. Aspinall has to endure.

Meanwhile, I have to report that our police department has taken over the securing of the safety of the Hampton Subway riders and their volunteers. Paperwork we have found confirms that Aspinall never consummated the deal that announced he was the seller and the two buyers were billionaires Ali Xavier Bedoin and Harold Goldenstein, who planned to turn it into a private club.

But we cannot contact the owner of the subway system, which continues to be Mr. Aspinall, to ask what he wants done about all these thousands of deliriously happy trespassers on his property because he is on death row and cannot take calls. The security chief, hired by Aspinall, Eliot Spitzer, has fled. And so in this vacuum we have stepped in to see that the banjo music being played on the platform in East Hampton and the fruit vendors who have set up an underground market on the Southampton platform, are all operating, as they should. We are told that our new New York State Governor, David Paterson, is ordering in the National Guard to take over and that is fine, but we have not yet received any word about that since the announcement was made ten days ago. The NY National Guard's civilian head these days is Michael Brown, formerly the head of FEMA, and he has not yet returned our phone calls.

I have been following with interest and frankly, joy, as the people of the Hamptons have risen up to take back the Hampton Subway from those who had planned to make it into a private club for the ultra-rich.

But I do have to say that we have here on the agenda up in Albany a bill to authorize the use of $1.2 billion in real estate transfer tax money - an amount that will reduce to zero any money brought in by this tax and potentially used for saving farmland during the next ten years - for use in purchasing the Subway and making it a State-run public service transit system.

It appears this might not be necessary just now, but just in case we are continuing to keep this on the agenda and are planning to act on it on May 17, if the volunteers who are currently running the service appear to be petering out. That is, by the way, the same day that Aspinall is scheduled to die.