Late superstar guitarist Eddie Van Halen has a New York City subway stop named after him, in a temporary, guerilla-style homage to the shredder’s massive musical influence.
New York street artist Adrian Wilson takes credit on Instagram for making Brooklyn’s Van Siclen Avenue on the A/C line into “Van Halen Avenue.”
Seemingly perturbed by the lack of press, he states on the post, “I left it 4 days for someone else to head to Brooklyn and take the credit but nobody stepped up, so ok, I guess I’ve got to do it myself… you’re welcome.”
Wilson told people it was “easy” to do: “A famous person dies, look up the name of a subway stop and put a sticker over it to memorialize the person.”
In the last two years, NYC stations saw official tributes to Prince and David Bowie, done by Spotify at the Union Square and Broadway-Lafayette stations, respectively. Spotify’s Bowie tribute in April-May of 2018, was meant to promote the “David Bowie Is” exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. Bowie’s New York home was near the subway stop.
An unofficial, temporary tribute to another lost great was the Franklin Avenue station in Brooklyn becoming “Aretha Franklin Avenue.”
