After the decades-old Subway Inn shut down, the new tenant took down its sign. The Subway Inn’s former operator said he had no right to do so.
After the decades-old Subway Inn shut down, the new tenant took down its sign. The Subway Inn’s former operator said he had no right to do so.
After the decades-old Subway Inn shut down, the new tenant took down its sign. The Subway Inn’s former operator said he had no right to do so.
Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll look at a fight over a once familiar neon sign on the Upper East Side. We’ll also get details on a federal investigation involving Shen Yun Performing Arts, the touring dance group run by the Falun Gong religious movement.
This is about a bar fight, but not one that involves drunk customers throwing boilermakers — or haymakers — at each other. At issue is a distinctive neon signthat used to frame a dive bar on the Upper East Side, a place where the playwright Wendy Wasserstein said “it makes a lot of sense not to order wine.”
The sign spelled the name of the Subway Inn in red letters — and followed the bar, as it moved from one storefront to another, and another. Then, last month, the sign disappeared — taken, by all accounts, by the new tenant in the storefront that the Subway Inn vacated in December.
The new tenant said that the sign belonged to him because the Subway Inn had not removed it. Steve Salinas, whose family operated the Subway Inn for more than 15 years, disputed that claim and went to the police.
The Subway Inn was one of those places that drew everyone from doormen and construction workers to businesspeople and tired shoppers needing pick-me-ups. At 143 East 60th Street, the home of the Subway Inn for 70 years, one entrance to the 59th Street subway station was steps from the door, and Bloomingdale’s was right across the street. When the bar opened in the 1930s, the Third Avenue El clattered at the other end of the block.