Dan's Papers -January 9, 2009 - Hampton Subway Newsletter

Week of January 9 to 15, 2009
Riders this week: 6,482
Rider miles this week: 61,010
"Happy New Year" - the staff

We regret the one hour delay that occurred last Wednesday on the Southampton to Westhampton B line when a man dressed as Santa Claus got his bicycle jammed in the closing doors at Hampton Bays. Bicycles are not allowed anywhere on the subway.

Nobody of any renown was seen riding any of our subway trains this week, unless you want to consider that Suffolk County Commissioner Steve Levy would qualify. He was on the D train between Sag Harbor and Noyac last week, apparently meeting a town supervisor or somebody in Noyac. We couldn't quite make out who that was. He mumbles sometimes. But I guess we all do.

Our free ride home program for those too drunk to drive after midnight on New Year's Eve was a sort of mixed success. We kept the subway open until 4 a.m. instead of the usual 3 a.m., and we had "helpers," wearing little elf hats in each car to help guide the revelers to where they wanted to go. Actually the "helpers" were token booth operators. We closed the booths at midnight so they could do this, which was made possible because of the Commissioner's decision to just open the turnstiles to all riders after that hour.

Although everybody got home just fine during the night, there were some people who were too confused by it all who just went around and around the system trying to figure it all out. Others simply fell asleep aboard the subways on the seats all night, which was okay with us, while others got off at certain stops, realized they were wrong and then got out tokens for the turnstiles to get back on and were befuddled when the turnstiles didn't work when they put the money in. Almost nobody asked any of the "helpers" for directions home. And two days later, there were still people on the subway still riding around and around. As I said, it was a mixed bag. Maybe next year, it will go better.

Frank Houseknecht, the young entrepreneur who last month offered to take the 3.1 billion barrels of oil that had seeped into the new construction tunnel intended to connect North Haven to Foxwoods, has apparently reneged on his offer.

His original offer was almost too good to be true. He offered to remove all the oil so we could start up construction again for free. Now, he says, with the value of the oil plummeting, he says he will require that we pay $40 a barrel for him to do this.

We had a signed contract with this man. Obviously, we will not pay him a dime after he's offered to take it off our hands for nothing. We await further developments.

Some say that when the subway slows while rounding the horseshoe curve along the north side of Trout Pond in Noyac, you can almost see above ground. For those interested, we are going to have the D train come to a complete stop for five seconds as it makes this turn so people can enjoy this.

The three middle aged men who were arrested for selling counterfeit subway tokens on the Southampton platform three weeks ago have been returned to their native Andorra, that little country between Spain and France, after it was found that they spoke no English at all and whatever language they did speak could not be identified by anyone.

Hampton Subway has not used tokens since last July, when it converted to swipe cards. Nevertheless, these tokens are very beautiful, handmade things. We think they make great souvenirs or even necklaces if you string them together. We are offering them on eBay at a BUY IT NOW price of 99 cents each. Get them as long as supplies last. See our offering as item #34812114155264B36kj333as410-332.

We learned to send the men back to Andorra after they pointed to that country on a map.