Dan's Papers - May 30, 2008 - The Hampton Subway Newsletter

Event entrepreneur Ron Delsener was spotted eating an ice cream cone on the platform at the Bridgehampton Station on Friday. Rock star Paul McCartney rode the subway between Amagansett and Montauk with one of his kids on Saturday but wouldn't say where they were going. Actress Mercedes Ruehl, who just landed a lead role in a big upcoming Broadway show, was seen reading a Dan's Papers on the Three Mile Harbor platform on Sunday. Advertising genius Jerry Della Femina was for some reason spotted in handcuffs on the Noyac platform. Vice President Cheney was seen arguing with somebody on the escalator at the Westhampton Beach station on Tuesday.

A record number of people rode the Hampton Subway over Memorial Day weekend, causing great stresses on the system and numerous delays. The cause, of course, was the high price of gasoline. People took to the subway in droves.

Long delays took place at our largest and busiest platforms - Southampton, East Hampton and Westhampton Beach - where trains were held up for five or ten minutes as security people helped riders back up onto the platforms after they were accidentally pushed down onto the tracks. Shorter delays took place at each of the other stations.

I still don't understand why the there are flags from the newly created Kingdom of Basinoba on all the trains and platforms. What is all this purple, green and puce about?

It's a long story, and if you want to know it in detail you should go to danshamptons.com and read some of the Hampton Subway newsletters from April and May. But in short, the Kingdom of Basinoba has purchased 1.2 billion Hampton Subway tokens to become the official currency of that new country. For legal reasons, during the next eleven months the Hampton Subway system, underground, is officially part of that newly formed African nation, just as embassies in foreign countries are officially on soil of the embassy's country during the time they are in operation there.

During the next 11 months, Basinoba will pass legislation, making this transfer official. In the meantime, when you are on the subway, you are using these tokens as the official currency of the Subway and therefore you are in Basinoba. You have surely noticed that when you buy the morning paper on the platform newsstands you pay for them with tokens.

Don't fret. When you come up the escalator to breathe the clean air of the Hamptons, you are back in America.

Because of the huge crowds using the Hampton Subway System over the Memorial Day Weekend, Commissioner Aspinall has ordered that we take on two dozen new employees as "People Pushers" beginning on the Fourth of July weekend to work all summer. Successful applicants will wear helmets, boxing gloves and padded vests and work during the rush hours down on all the station platforms, pushing the crowds on and off the trains.

Selections for these positions will be announced on June 8, after which successful applicants will go through a one-week training session on the Hampton Bays platform whether the riders like it or not. The pushing program will be in effect from June 15 through Labor Day.

As a result of protests by environmentalists, historians and neighbors of our Hampton Subway headquarters, I am pleased to announce that a new approach will be taken to get the 1.2 billion subway tokens that are located in a vault underneath the Hampton Bays building out from under there to be packed up for shipment to Basinoba. We don't know what the new way is quite yet, but this great building of ours, built in 1938 by our founder from photographs taken of a waterworks building in Berlin by Nazi architect Albrecht Speer, will not be torn down, even if our intention was simply to get the tokens out of there and then rebuild the place.

A secondary reason for this decision was that we found it would take more than two years for us to get the proper permits from the Southampton Town Planning Board, the Suffolk County Health Department, the New York State Department of Historic Places (just this past week the building was placed on that list for some reason), the Southampton Town Zoning Variance Board, the Southampton Building Department, the Hampton Bays Downtown District Building Proportions Committee and the Federal Preservation Board for the Protection of Endangered Piping Plovers and Underground Slugs.

On another note, I want to make it clear that in no way are we just hiring burly young men to be "pushers" on our platforms. Members of the fairer sex are free to try out for these jobs just as much as anybody else. So don't be timid, you ladies. And some of you retirees should get up and out of your wheelchairs, too.