The Hampton Jitney, the bus that runs hourly between Manhattan and the North and South forks, is now offering a limited-in-number membership.
Yep, you can pay for exclusivity — on a bus.
It’s billed as The Ultimate Motor Coach Membership, but it doesn’t even guarantee you a seat on sold-out trips — which is the only true need one has in the summer. It feels like little more than a cash-grab, yet people in the Hamptons will pay for it because, if nothing else, we do love our status.
The Sapphire level is $400 for the Ambassador Jitney line, which gets you wider seats, your choice of seat assignment and unlimited snacks and screw-cap wine. Only 1,000 people can buy in. The Emerald version is $200, and it’s for the standard Jitney, which is more basic with smaller, nonreserved seats. Only 2,000 people can join.
And that doesn’t pay for your Jitney tickets — that’s just the membership fee.
Other frills for both Sapphire and Emerald include advance-booking ability 28 days out instead of the standard 21, plus free overnight parking in Southampton.
There’s also a one-time 5 percent discount on up to five books of tickets; the Jitney costs $324 for a 12-ticket book.
(Insider tip: Most of us drop a mortgage payment or two on stacks of heavily discounted tickets when they go on sale in the fall — worth it because a reserved Ambassador seat for East Hampton can cost up to $60 one way.)
Keep in mind, the Jitney is a bus line for rich people who are often extremely poorly behaved.
I get it, it’s frustrating to be only so wealthy.
We would all like to be Blade rich and take the 25-minute chopper out.
Recently, on an eastbound trip, one member of the entitled set threatened to call the police after the bus she was on broke down.
A fellow passenger kept yelling, “Who’s going to pay for my taxi now that this bus has been re-routed?”
Even a shortage of free snacks causes flip-outs; nothing is quite as cringy as watching a passenger berate a hardworking attendant because they’ve run out of Utz potato chips (which I’ve seen happen).
Rich people, apparently, love free chips.
A couple of years ago, a guy got on the bus in Southampton, heading to the JFK stop, only to realize he had his passport but had forgotten his wallet.
He was flying to Brazil. I pulled out a crumpled $20 and offered it up. The woman beside me jumped in to say that she always carries $1,000 in cash.
She handed him her wad along with her mailing address on a scrap of paper. “Send me a check when you get back,” she told him. “No rush.”
The thing is, the Jitney needs normal people. I once sat beside an inconsiderate woman breaking the three-minute phone rule. She was having a loud, 20-minute discussion, so I decided to deputize myself (I love rules, I follow rules and on the Jitney, I enforce rules) and tell her she had to hang up.
“It was an emergency,” she said.
“Really?” I said. “I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing as an interior-decorating emergency.”