Ask any photographer and they’ll tell you, in a series of bad photographs a picture of a sign is an egregious sin.
But still, I had to show you this, just to prove it. (Pay no attention to the four clashing fonts.)
That’s a New Jersey diner named after a Missouri literary character. Only in America — one hopes.
The important concept here is that there aren’t a lot of true diners in our part of the world. The Yankee, being a Yankee, misses them. We saw this one while out running errands today and decided to stop in.
Not like any diner I know, but a nice joint. Here’s their site which has that tortured, flash template feel. This is the website equivalent of over-produced pop music. In the photo gallery I found some faces we saw in the diner today, not all of them even of the staff.
The place gets decent reviews, 3.5 stars from Yelp and is well respected by whomever writes Trip Advisor, where they call it the best diner in the area and one of the best in the state. They say it was destroyed by fire and recently rebuilt, which explains the new feel of a family-owned business dating to 1974.
It does not explain why everyone was wearing ties. Or how her tie got in our waitress’ way of returning to the table.
The uptown feel and the carefully designed staff uniforms don’t scream diner to me, but everyone has images in their head. Mine is not very good. I started describing what I pictured as a diner: white, chrome and bright, but not necessarily clean. Narrow and long.
As I was describing this I realized I was talking about the old Tiger Time. And then I grew a bit sad. The place was removed and replaced by an unsuccessful string of uninspired things that have failed one after the other. At this point I’m not even sure what is even in that location.
So we just left it with the world needs more diners, no matter where their names come from.
Oh. This morning my father-in-law told his daughter: I watched television on my iPad! He’d downloaded his cable system’s app and was streaming the Today show. He’s a natural.
Until two years ago he’d vigorously defended against ever even owning a cell phone. Look at him now.
