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The Weirdest Subway Restaurant in America The franchise is based inside an FBI training center called Hogan’s Alley where the bank gets robbed at least twice a week source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-weirdest-subway-restaurant-in-america-11581350267?shareToken=std983d6e69d7c4a698f98ee53356eb3f7&mod=pckt_252f HOGAN’S ALLEY, Va.—America’s worst neighborhood is a magnet for killers, thieves and drug smugglers. At lunch, crooks and cops call a truce to line up at Subway, the only place in town to get a sandwich. The franchise is located at the Federal Bureau of Investigation academy in Quantico, Va., just off the main drag in Hogan’s Alley, a town built to train FBI agents and other law-enforcement officers. The Subway is real, serving the foot-long Italian B.M.T., Chicken & Bacon Ranch Melts, sodas and other menu offerings; its employees are bona fide “Sandwich Artists.” All the rest—the bank, post office, drugstore, hotel—are bogus. The bad guys are just acting. Hogan’s Alley is where fresh FBI recruits practice arrests and standoffs in different scenarios. Trainees from the Drug Enforcement Administration wage paint-gun firefights with counterfeit offenders. State and local law enforcement personnel also hit town to practice the latest crime-fighting techniques. Putting a real restaurant in a fake town is more practical than it sounds. “If you’re in the middle of training, it’s a long way back to the main academy building,” where the dining hall is located, said Rich Kolko, a retired FBI agent who went through the academy in 1996. Back in Mr. Kolko’s day, people ate at the “Pastime Deli,” which was run by the FBI academy’s cafeteria contractor. Times change, even in Hogan’s Alley. The old deli was taken over by the Subway franchise, which is run by a nonprofit organization that helps people with disabilities get jobs. Subway offers the best vantage point in Hogan’s Alley. “Outside the restaurant, you’ll watch the searches and the arrests and the paintballers,” Mr. Kolko said. “You have a front-row seat to whatever’s going on.” What is going on is usually no good. The FBI has called Hogan’s Alley the nation’s “baddest” town. Hogan’s Bank, around the corner from Subway, gets robbed at least twice a week, according to the bureau. On any given day, the town endures terror plots, smuggling schemes and all manner of criminality that require agents to secure crime scenes and grill suspects. A lot of the trouble goes down at the Dogwood Inn. The place doesn’t take room reservations, and its online reviews aren’t appealing. “Horrible service. Rooms were dirty. Front desk, rude. One star,” said a rating posted on a Facebook group for current and former FBI agents. The Dogwood, though, turns out to be a great place to practice extracting suspects from hotel rooms and interviewing sketchy witnesses. In addition to poor lodgings, services in Hogan’s Alley aren’t great, either. The postal service doesn’t pick up mail or make deliveries. A mailbox was welded shut because too many FBI employees thought it was real. The movie theater marquee never changes from “Manhattan Melodrama,” the 1934 film that was playing at Chicago’s Biograph Theater on the night gangster John Dillinger was killed by FBI gunfire. Visitors to Hogan’s Alley are welcomed by a large caution sign: “Law Enforcement Training exercises in progress. Display of weapons firing blank ammunition and arrest may occur. If challenged please follow instructions.” Despite the warning, FBI academy employees and other people out to get a sandwich or find their car have, on rare occasion, been caught in the action. “You’ll get some new guy with close-shaved hair yelling at you, ‘Freeze don’t move!’ ” said Michael Harrigan, who spent more than two decades in the FBI including five years at Quantico. Usually, academy instructors steer passersby out of the way, he said. The gangsters, mobsters, terrorists and other out-of-town troublemakers are often played by actors such as Rory Rhodes, who got paid roles for a few months in the late 1990s. She heard about the gig when her husband was stationed at U.S. Marine Corps Quantico Base, where the FBI campus is located. In one scene, Ms. Rhodes said, she was pulled from a car and ended up facedown in the mud during an arrest by an overenthusiastic FBI trainee. She was suspected of ferrying contraband in the trunk. Other times, Ms. Rhodes played the girlfriend of a bank robber, a prostitute and someone involved in a militia plot to blow up the Washington Monument. In those days, she said, she split her time between FBI role-playing and local dinner-theater performances. Her work in Hogan’s Alley often drew stares. “I had to keep coming in and out of the gates at Quantico in a variety of wild and ridiculous costumes,” said Ms. Rhodes, now a freelance writer in Roanoke, Va. The FBI has used similar training towns and buildings for decades. The current Hogan’s Alley dates to 1987. It was drawn up with ideas from Hollywood set designers to provide a realistic environment. Hogan’s Alley was named after a 19th-century comic strip that unfolds in a rough New York slum full of criminals. The FBI’s storefront version reflected an emphasis on urban crime scenes and scenarios. As America changed, along with the nature and locale of criminal activities, so has Hogan’s Alley. The FBI added single-family houses about a decade ago for trainees to practice dealing with trouble in the suburbs. Subway’s operator was advertising for a manager in Hogan’s Alley a couple of months ago. Among the usual requirements was one outlier on the help-wanted listing: “Must be able to obtain and maintain a government clearance.” Maybe the town’s reputation isn’t so bad after all. The company said it was no longer accepting applications.