Hampton Jitney turns 50: Looking back at the East End ride that 'brought the city closer to the Hamptons'

In Season 2, Episode 17 of “Sex and the City,” Samantha, Carrie and Miranda plan a trip from Manhattan to the Hamptons, where their friend Charlotte has a house for the summer. Nineties-style hilarity — along with a few tears and a great deal of alcohol consumption — ensues. But first, as they line up for their ride to Long Island, Carrie, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, looks fondly at their mode of conveyance.

“The Hampton Jitney is like the bus to summer camp,” she narrates to the audience. “Only instead of singing songs, everyone ignores each other and talks on their cell phones.”

Already a quarter-century old when that episode aired in December 1999, the Hampton Jitney — which began operating in 1974 — was even then a familiar enough sight on both the East Side of Manhattan and the East End of Long Island to merit good-natured ribbing on one of HBO’s most popular shows. It has since graced the cover of The New Yorker, which depicted the Jitney as a huge landing barge — unloading an invading army of summer residents — in 2013, and has made cameo appearances in shows including “Gossip Girl” and “Ray Donovan.”

This year celebrating its 50th anniversary, the Jitney has become one of the area’s most recognized brands. And like the Hamptons itself, it has changed — one could even say it’s grown up — from its beginnings as a small van shuttling East End residents from town to town, to a multimillion-dollar business with a total annual ridership of about 500,000.

“Everybody knows what the Hampton Jitney is,” said East Hampton Village historian Hugh King. “Even if you don’t take it.”

RESPONSE TO GAS LINES

It was a national emergency that helped prompt the very idea of the Hampton Jitney.

In the spring of 1974, America was still reeling from the Arab oil embargo that had begun the year prior. Gas supplies were limited, and lines began forming at stations. On Memorial Day that year, in what that week’s East Hampton Star newspaper called “an ominous sign,” all four gas stations on Route 27 in Montauk ran out of gas by mid-afternoon.

Even though the situation would ease later in the year, the fuel shortages were threatening the local economy. Tourists would be less likely to visit during the peak season upon which East End communities relied for livelihoods and revenue. Ideas were needed to help reduce the dependence on cars in that gas-starved summer.

Jim Davidson had a modest, but interesting, suggestion.

Davidson, an advertising man who lived in Water Mill, wanted to start a shuttle bus — in the form of an eight-person van — to get people, and their bicycles, around the East End. “It was almost like a livery service,” said Stephen Long, executive director of the East Hampton Historical Society. “It wasn’t the Jitney we know today.”

After extensive lobbying — much of it through an ad hoc citizens group that formed to support the idea — Davidson was able to obtain a charter from the Town of East Hampton to operate his shuttle.

Within a few months, however, it was apparent that the inter-Hamptons shuttle wasn’t catching on. By autumn, according to a 1985 New York Times profile of the Jitney founder, Davidson was resigned to the fact that his idea had flopped. “It was October and I had two vans and nothing else to do with them,” he recalled.

Then he had another idea. He took out two small advertisements in the local papers, offering bus transport to Manhattan at $10 a ticket. When he filled every seat for the first trip, he told The Times, “I thought, ‘I’m onto something!’ ”

The service was gradually expanded, and in 1976 the Jitney obtained an operating charter from the state Department of Transportation. Eventually, necessary operating permits would also be granted by the federal Department of Transportation, New York City, Nassau and Suffolk counties as well as the towns of Southampton and East Hampton.

LIRR PROTESTED

According to the East Hampton Star, Long Island Rail Road officials protested, claiming that the LIRR already provided “adequate” service to the East End. Davidson dismissed its objections. In a Star article about the Jitney, he compared the difference between the LIRR’s diesel trains and his vehicles to that of a “steamship and a jet plane.”

Two years later, in 1978, Davidson replaced the vans with 46-seat coaches that included amenities such as lavatories and reclining seats. “That’s when it really took off,’’ he told The Times.

The Jitney helped define the party-hearty, house-sharing Hamptons of the ‘80s and ‘90s. “It was a whole different lifestyle then,” recalled Mary Mallios, now an educator with the East Hampton Historical Society, who said she spent summer weekends in the Hamptons during that time. “Live music, parties, the beach. And then everybody got on the Jitney on Sunday and went back to the city.”

Davidson’s business pivot — from a local shuttle van to a coach bus line connecting New York City and the East End — also addressed what had already been a long-term issue for the Hamptons. “It was widely recognized that the train service was not adequate for getting people back and forth between New York,” Long said. “The Jitney’s success was also about people on the East End having reliable transportation.”

STAR POWER

Davidson was also savvy enough to know that he needed some star power to go along with his horsepower. He managed to get Lauren Bacall as a spokeswoman; the sultry star of Hollywood’s Golden Age, who lived in Amagansett, did voiceovers for Jitney radio and TV commercials. The celebrity journalist and author George Plimpton also voiced some of their commercials, and, according to The New York Times, claimed that he had written one-and-a-half books while riding the Jitney (a cheeky reference to what even then was seen as the heavy traffic to the Hamptons). According to a 1997 Times appreciation of the Jitney, Bacall, Plimpton, gossip columnist Liz Smith, and notable actors and writers — like Rod Steiger, Tom Wolfe (wearing sweats instead of his trademark white suit), Edward Albee, Julie Andrews and Roy Scheider — were among that era’s celebrities spotted on the bus.

The Jitney also bore the imprimatur of the Hamptons’ celebrated artistic community. One night at a cocktail party, Davidson is said to have asked his friend, pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, to design a new logo for the Jitney. According to a catalog entry on the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation website, the artist sketched out an idea on a cocktail napkin. His design — an image of long, wavy white lines on a green background — was used for the Jitney’s 1985 “Riding the Wave” ad campaign, and also adorned the sides of its vehicles.

While he saw his new business succeed and achieve a certain glitzy cache in the process, Davidson did not live to see it become the expansive service and iconic brand it is now. He died of complications from AIDS in January 1989. Months earlier, in April 1988, he had sold the company, Hampton Jitney Inc., to J. Brent and Missy Lynch, a local couple with extensive experience in the transportation industry. Their eldest son, Geoffrey, is now the president.

MORE DESTINATIONS

The Jitney’s original “Main Line” route ferried visitors from Manhattan to Southampton, East Hampton and Montauk. But today, at any one of the six Jitney stops dotting Lexington Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, one can also board a South Fork line to Hampton Bays and a North Fork line to Orient Point. You can ride the Jitney to the Queens airports and to Long Island MacArthur Airport. And in the winter, you can ride it to regional ski resorts and other attractions, organized in weekend tour packages by Hampton Jitney Inc.

And, in a departure from Carrie Bradshaw’s snarky comment 25 years ago, today’s cell phone policy opts for decorum and consideration: Except for emergencies, cell phone conversations are prohibited on the Jitney.

Lifelong Manhattan residents Deanna Greenwood, 69 and Raleigh Mayer, 64, recently found themselves choosing the Jitney for a trip out to Southampton to visit a friend.

They said they had thought of taking the LIRR, but there were far fewer choices. The Jitney makes round trips from Manhattan to its various North Fork and South Fork destinations an average of 30 times a day; the LIRR, about one-third that number. A one-way trip from Manhattan to Montauk typically costs less than $50 on the Jitney.

‘EFFICIENT AND CONVENIENT’

“It’s a very efficient and convenient way to get there,” Mayer said after her trip. “It was a little cramped on the way out, but, to be fair, it was the week before Labor Day.”

On the trip home, she and Greenwood paid $30 extra for seats on the Jitney’s Ambassador class service — with 30 as opposed to 54 seats, it’s the Jitney’s deluxe ride.

“The Ambassador service was spectacular,” said Mayer.

Greenwood agreed. “It was lovely, just lovely. The host was really accommodating. I got coffee on the ride, and it was good. And the snacks . . . Raleigh was very excited about the snacks.” (Passengers can choose from granola bars, pretzels, cookies and — this being the Hamptons — a container of designer water. Riders on the Ambassador are also offered a glass of locally sourced wine.)

It could be argued that one of the greatest legacies Davidson left the Hampton Jitney was its name: “Jitney,” according to Merriam-Webster, appears to come from a slang word — possibly of Cajun origination — for a nickel. That was the cost to ride these often-unlicensed cab and small bus services, many of which flourished in the early 20th century in Black and other underserved communities.

In fact, “Jitney” was the title of a play, first performed in 1982, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson — part of Wilson’s 10-play cycle “Pittsburgh,” about growing up in the city’s Black section.

Whether or not Davidson was aware of the American derivation of the name, one thing is certain. “He hated the word ‘bus,’ ” said Geoffrey Lynch. “He wanted to use something other than ‘bus’ to describe his service.”

Davidson found a memorable substitute.

“It sounds speedy, folksy and convenient,” said Mayer, an executive communications consultant who has taught at New York University and Columbia University. “It’s a wonderful name. It’s even fun to say.”

Jitney.

It’s a name that for more than 50 years has become one of the most ubiquitous in the Hamptons — in part because of its fleet of buses, which serve as moving billboards for the service.

“The Jitney brought the city closer to the Hamptons,” said historian King. “For better or worse.”

Added Long, “The fact that we just call it the Jitney shows how well-known it is. When people in the city ask, ‘Are you going out to the East End? How are you getting there?’ The answer is usually just ‘the Jitney.’”