Dan's Papers - May 15, 2009 -

E. L. Doctorow, Kathleen Turner, Jerry Seinfeld and Pia Lindstrom were all seen taking subway rides this week.

As the result of a recall, 14 subway cars, built by the Honoree Subway Coach Company of Osaka, Japan will be taken out of service next week to have a bolt in their suspension replaced by the manufacturer. The bolt is a size too small and could pop out if the subway ran over anything large on the tracks, for example, a raccoon. Due to the recall, our fleet of subway cars will be reduced by 10% for one week. During that week, which is the upcoming week, Hampton Subway will be operating at a slightly reduced capacity. Rather than increase the time between trains, however, we are going to double the time between every tenth train. So nine trains in a row will arrive at each station every 14 minutes, but then the tenth train will arrive 24 minutes after that. To find out if the next train at a station is that tenth train, talk to the straphangers there to see if they are annoyed.

Our first annual "Mothers Ride Free on Mother's Day" program ended in disaster when police had to be called in to eight of our 12 platforms to break up angry groups of passengers arguing about the promotion. In East Hampton, a mother showed up with seven children and was very upset when told that the seven kids could not ride free too, just her. "I wouldn't have brought them if I didn't think they could ride free," she said.

Protesters from a Men's Power Group called the Granite Club were briefly detained when they began harassing women who they claimed had never been mothers and were trying to cheat the system. In Westhampton Beach, a pregnant woman argued that she was about to be a mother and should ride free and the police had to be called. And in Montauk, a group of 10 grandmothers were turned away when the token clerk, Harold James, erroneously told them it was for mothers not grandmothers, and the group got the police to come escort them through. James was transferred to our maintenance division later that day.

I wanted to begin this message this week by congratulating all the mothers in the Hamptons on Mother's Day, but what the hell happened with our promotion? Is everybody all upset or something?

It had been my hope to give a gift of a free meal at Le Somielle, the French restaurant that has a lease to provide dining car service on all the subway trains, to all our wonderful mothers. Such a meal would have cost us $120. Le Somielle did not get four stars on Michelin for nothing. But our board voted this down 5 to 4 and instead voted to give every mother a free ride on Mother's Day. And even that ended in disaster.

Don't forget that we will be interviewing for the summer job of "pusher" on our subway platforms this week. The lucky people offered one of these jobs will be assigned a particular platform - we are going to try to coordinate the sites to be near where the jobholders live - to shove passengers into the trains during rush hour. The job begins Memorial Day and goes through Labor Day. It is a great job for students who are otherwise occupied the rest of the year. But anyone can apply.

Our souvenir book One Year on the Hampton Subway is now out. It chronicles the riots, escalators gone berserk, explosions, boxing matches, subway car races and the 90 pound raccoon that ate an environmentalist during the attempt to remove her from the subway air vent in Hampton Bays. We all remember that. It is on sale in all four Bookhampton Book Stores (Amagansett, East Hampton, Sag Harbor and Southampton.) It can also be bought either online at danshamptons.com, over the counter at Dan's Papers or by calling 631-537-0500. The cost is $18.48 plus tax, grand total $20.