By Dan Rattiner

DELAY ON NOYAC SPUR

Expect delays this week as on the Noyac to North Sea spur of Hampton Subway. Workmen continue to try to round up one last horse leftover from the Hampton Classic Horse Show, who got away along with six others when the doors opened unexpectedly at the Bridgehampton platform while they were being transported by subway from Westhampton to the horse show grounds. The problem may have changed the outcome of the Grand Prix event. Olympic Gold Medalist Eric Lamaze was supposed to ride Hickstead, the horse he rode in China, but instead, on a lesser steed, finished down in the middle of the pack in Bridgehampton. Hickstead was last seen galloping happily along the tracks toward the Sag Harbor stop, but then turned up toward Noyac. He's the horse still out there. Several cowboys from the ranches in Montauk have been called in.

DOWN IN THE TUBE

Aretha Franklin was seen getting off on the Hayground platform on her way to the Ross School on Friday. If you heard the sounds of "Margaritaville" echoing around the Sag Harbor platform last Saturday afternoon, it was because Jimmy Buffett of North Haven was down there performing. He arrived from Montauk and spontaneously played for a while before the guards escorted him out. Also seen using the system this week was Chevy Chase in Amagansett.

EPA SHUTS DOWN TUNNEL CONSTRUCTION TO FOXWOODS

The Environmental Protection Agency has shut down the tunnel being dug under Long Island Sound to connect the Sag Harbor platform of the Hampton Subway to the Foxwoods gambling resort in Connecticut. The reason is an oil spill of unknown origin, which has begun to blanket the surface of Long Island Sound directly above the dig.

"This is just a temporary matter," an official from the EPA said. "We just don't want the workmen to get injured down in the tunnel. When the oil is cleaned up, we will allow the dig to continue."

BLACK STICKY GOO TO BE EXAMINED AT A LABORATORY IN NEW JERSEY

Beer bottles filled with a thick black liquid are on their way to the Princeton Analysis Lab in Secaucus, New Jersey for analysis. This is the second time this has been done. The first time, the lab they were taken to burned down.

The liquid smells like oil and was first brought up by workmen digging the tunnel under Long Island Sound two weeks ago. The leak continues, although now management pumps it out onto into the ocean through a black pipe while work continues.

REPUBLICAN FUNDRAISER IN WATER MILL

Plans are underway to have a fundraiser on the Water Mill platform for Bristol Palin, who is five months pregnant. Bristol will be on hand, and so will her mother, Sarah. The event is September 9 at 6 p.m., and the menu will include buffalo burgers and yak burgers in honor of Palin mere and jeune fille's desire for harmony between east and west.

COMMISSIONER ASPINALL'S WEEKLY MESSAGE

Employees of the Hampton Subway caught a bunch of thieves in the tunnels last Wednesday. They were stealing services from the subway, specifically by running a nightclub and hotel in a former storage warehouse down in an underground tunnel between the Noyac and Sag Harbor platforms. This warehouse, long abandoned, apparently served these enterprising but nefarious entrepreneurs' purposes for much of this summer. They redecorated this warehouse, transforming into a den - literally, a den - of iniquity. In this former warehouse, which they called UnderHampton, for some reason, there were go-go dancers, torch singers, tap dancers and a loud band. Behind it and down a corridor leading to another former warehouse was sleeping for about 26 people in the UnderHampton Hotel, which was decorated as a French Riviera four-star hotel. The owners of this establishment are now in police custody. And a good thing, too.

The discovery of this operation came about when token clerks on both the Sag Harbor and Noyac platforms became suspicious of people entering the platform sober, and then late at night, returning to the same platform drunk. An investigation was begun, but it moved slowly. Then, a break in the case occurred. Cowboys, who had followed a horse that had gotten loose down there, followed him into what was supposed to be this abandoned warehouse. There, the cowboys caught the perps red-handed, raking in the dough. They were quickly lassoed and hogtied, and the jig was up.

The horse, however, got away again during the melee.

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