“A large part of the Subway tradition is our easy-going ’60s business style, and the biggest part of our style is my relaxed, unconventional, anti-corporate approach to just about everything”. Fat Dog (1)

I met Fatty, proprietor of Subway Guitars, in the 1960s, when I was hanging out on the edges of the music scene, and he was working at Prune Music, a hippie alternative music store on what was then Grove Street, now MLK Jr. Blvd. I wanted to buy a guitar that he’d put together and that I couldn’t afford: a light brown Silvertone single cut-away body with a Hagstrom neck and a Telecaster cutaway shape on top. Fatty said he’d sell it to me at a good discount if I could get his 1949 Chevy Fastback running.  Two weeks later, he had his car and I had my guitar, which he called a Pfuntomatic and I now call my Cruisomatic.

Fat Dog, the name he goes by that’s a nickname his mother gave him, came to Berkeley from the East Coast in the early 1960s to study medicine, but his intention to be a physician morphed into buying, fixing, and selling guitars. About those times he said, “The cultural revolution was in such full bloom, and music was the weapon…[it] was like being a gunsmith at the height of the Revolutionary War.”

Subway Guitars has been in existence since 1968. The shop is located at the corner of Cedar and Grant streets, in a building painted from roof to sidewalk with a blue-and-white sky-and-cloud motif. Parked outside, you’re likely to see a vintage car from the 1930s, painted to match the building and owned by Fatty (also known as Fat Dog).

Subway is obviously more than a guitar shop. It’s an atmosphere. You can call it an eccentric, successful hippie enterprise or whatever you want, but it’s likely you’ve never seen a place quite like this. Its customer list is a stunning roster of local, regional, and world-famous musicians. Some days there can be a tour bus parked outside, and a featured act inside, conversing, joking, and playing instruments, or just hanging out. It’s the premier shop to find the unique and the unexpected. You might find a guitar for less than $65, or an early 1950s Fender with a tag well into the six digits. During Subway’s 50 years, Fat Dog has been committed to making guitars affordable to everyone, as well as selling and constructing quality instruments.