UES Classic Subway Inn Reopens After 8 Month Wait For Liquor License

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The Subway Inn opened its doors on the Upper East Side 86 years ago. And after an eight-month-long wait for a new liquor license, those door are finally open again.

Despite rain on Friday, the bar was already filled with regulars at 1 p.m., said manager and member of the family that owns the bar, Mario Roselli.

After applying to transfer their liquor license a mere 150 feet down the block from where the bar had stood since 2015 in July, the family got news that they can reopen last week.

"Finally," Roselli said.

"It feels great to get back behind the bar," he said, "to get back into the routine."

When Patch visited early on Saturday night, the iconic dive was operating at a steady click, with patrons, newcomers and regulars alike, chatting at the bar. Gone were the classic red booths — Roselli said that people just don't fit in them these days — replaced with hi-top tables and chairs.

"You can't keep the same look forever," he said.

A kitchen serving burgers, wings and other small bar bites is set to open in a week or two after the city's Department of Health finalizes paperwork and the bar finalizes staffing, Roselli said.

But Roselli, a veteran who also spent 13 years working for the Department of City Planning, says the experience of being in limbo for nearly a year will stick with him.

The liquor license process, he said, used to take two to four months at the most, not eight.

Licenses are not tied to the business, but to the property. So when a bar moves, even 50 feet away like in the case of the Subway Inn, they need to apply for a new license to serve their $7 pints.

"It's a joke," Roselli said.

"I couldn't start another job," he added, "because we never knew when we would reopen."

His brother Steven Salinas told Crain's last week that he wouldn't wish those stressful months on anyone.

“You know how you believe in a system, and you put all your faith in it and it fails you every single time?" Salinas told Crain's. "That’s what I felt.”

The New York State Liquor Authority told Patch that while new legislation passed last year that expands access to temporary permits, a 90-day allowance for selling alcohol that is processed much faster than a full license, Subway Inn didn't qualify because their new location at 1154 Second Ave. did not have a liquor license issued in the past two years.

New watering holes that are not eligible for the temporary permits currently face a four to six month wait for processing, the SLA said.

Additionally, the bar was subjected to what the SLA calls a "500 Foot Law," meaning that new applicants looking to serve drinks within 500 feet of three or more existing establishments must go through a community notice period. Last summer, Community Board Eight overwhelmingly supported the bar's application.

The SLA also said that the bar's application had "multiple instances of deficiencies with the application that had to be resolved by the licensee before the license could be issued,"

The Subway Inn has long been a working-class staple of the Upper East Side, with its mixture of low-prices and high-class clientele, like hot couple of the day Joe DiMaggio and Marylin Monroe, back when the bar was in its original location on East 60th Street across from Bloomingdales.

"Our regulars are workers from restaurants, Bloomingdales," Roselli said, plus contemporary celebs like Sean Penn. "Everyone gets equal treatment here. It's New York City — we're super tolerant."

His late stepfather, Arsemio "Marcello" Salinas, worked at the Subway Inn since 1973 under original owner Charlie Ackerman as a porter after immigrating from Peru. He and Ackerman became close during the over 30 years they worked together, with Salinas eventually becoming a manager.

When Ackerman died in 2007, he sold the classic spot to Salinas. In 2016, just a year after the bar was evicted from its longtime home on East 60th Street and moved to its previous location at 1140 Second Ave., Salinas passed away.

During this third move caused by the building owner's demolition plans, Roselli says the family still had to pay rent during the long wait from the State Liquor Authority. His mother, Salinas' wife Patricia, and the other owners like his brother Steven, was burning through savings keeping the bills paid. The family recently posted a long Facebook post about their tribulations during the exhausting wait.

"We didn't have that much longer before closing for good," Roselli said. "We're just a mom and pop business struggling to reopen."

On Saturday, one patron and Upper East Side resident, a chess teacher named Adam, told Patch that he was very excited to see the bar reopen.

"There's a lotta history here," Adam, who declined to give his last name, said. "I used to go to the old, old place. It's always been a working-class bar — an actual, good dive."

Adam thought it seemed unfair that the longtime spot had to face the brink of fiscal ruin during the long wait while other regulated business, like illegal pot shops, face little enforcement.

"The bar has been around since 1937 but it took almost nine months to get a license, yet weed shops are opening on the block," Adam said.

The chess teacher clarified that he didn't have any issues with the pot shops, but said that in his eyes, it epitomizes what happens to people who try to do everything right in this town.

"If you play by the rules in New York City, you're f***ed."