4 Reasons It's Sad Diners Are Closing

Diners have been in a decline in New York over the last few years. One reason is the pandemic, another is rising rents, another is younger people aren’t going into the diner business. Why WORK at a diner when you can start a YouTube channel where you REVIEW diners and make a million a year from views alone and be sponsored by ManScaped? There’s no one working at a diner sponsored by nothing.

‘You guys ready to order? And before you tell me let me tell YOU about BetterHelp. BetterHelp allows you to get therapy from the comfortable of your own bed, toilet, or cold plunge. Why see a therapist in person when you’re too full of anxiety to even take a phone call? Try BetterHelp today with promo code ‘Your Server’ and get 20% off. BetterHelp. Get that thing about your dad off your chest by texting a bot from the tub…’

‘… Can I get sweet potato fries?’

Diners have things that others restaurants just don’t, and if they keep closing, for condos or tech start ups or yet another smoke shop/ping pong place/parking lot, these things are going to disappear. Here are four of these things.

1. HUGE MENUS

   Diners have it all. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, brunch, after hours breakfast lunch dinner lunch. Cereal. Cake. Steak. Mozza sticks. Cinnamon toast. Perogies and chicken parm and onion on a burger in a burger . Every diner should just be called ‘We got it!’, because they have everything you could even possibly want in there. It’s like being in Richie Rich’s pantry. Sixty two page menu with any type of thing you could think of. And, if for some reason, you scan through this biblically sized thing and DON’T find something you want? A diner will make it for you.

   ‘Look I’m having a weird day. Possible to get fruit loops in my Monte Cristo sandwich with a bowl of soup?’

   ‘… Wife leave you for your kids pan flute teacher?’

   ‘Yeah! How’d you know?’

   ‘Worked here a long time, man. I’ve seen it all. How would you like your Fruit Loops cooked?’

2. OPEN 24/7

   Can you go to Chili’s at 2am? Is Applebees serving their ‘Bottomless Wing Shrimp Cocktail With Cheese’ at 3:58am? No. Everyone working there has been in a dive bar doing coke for hours at this point. A diner? Buddy. She’s open. Doesn’t matter when you’d like extra crispy bacon with your rice pudding. Diners open and diners got it. Pull in here whenever you want. Lunch at 8am. Dinner at 9am. Waffle made entirely of whipped cream at 1:26am. Who cares. She's open and she’s got it.

3. EVERY WALK OF LIFE WELCOME

   Can you see a guy who’s lived in a van for the last six years sitting at a table next to a table of businessmen at a steakhouse? Will you see a group of drunk college students in a booth beside two women who are on the run from their husbands and met Brad Pitt and will ultimately drive off a cliff at that new seafood restaurant? No. This type of intermingling only happens at a diner. The young. The elderly. The sick. The tired. The construction worker. The lawyer. The newly unemployed and the just had an interview. The people living above ground and the cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers. All walks of life come through these doors.

4. ALL TYPES OF CONVERSATIONS

   Due to the fact that every walk of life comes through here, every type of conversation is being had in here. At all levels as well. Some people are talking about that thing the doctor found on their bag at a VERY loud level, while someone who holds the keys to the universe is whispering them to their friend. You can hear a woman talking to a hitman about killing her ‘lumpy, crumpled dick, absolute loser’ husband, and a guy talking about how he’s going to propose to his ‘unlumpy, non dicked, pretty cool’ girlfriend on your way to the bathroom. Cop talking about the weight of the belt he has to wear, teacher talking about the kid that bit her when she took his Nintendo Switch, the Nintendo Switch sitting alone trying to decide between Key Lime Pie or the BBQ Buster Burger, it’s all here. And it might not be at some point soonish. So get into a diner, at any time, for anything, to talk about everything, today.

Colder than '21.

This isn't anything people don't already know. It has been crazy cold the last little while. The kind of cold where it doesn't make any sense to go do anything outside. The kind of cold where people stop fighting, there were eleven straight days of no murders in NY, serious. That happened. People in some small towns have had forty years straight of no murders, but NY went 11 days, and it was a story.

"Woa. Did you know that nobody has killed anybody else in the last couple hundred hours?"

"JESUS. It's gotta be cold out there."

Type of cold that every dog under ten pounds just hates your guts for showing them this trash. 

"This?! We're out in this?! Do you think I'm a snow leopard?! I'm a damn terrier! A TERRIER! You take me out and leave the cat in? I see how this trash works."

It's cold enough that they've started telling us that it's the coldest it's been in eighty years, or a hundred years, or a thousand years. Cold enough that it's breaking records from times when this kind of cold must have just MURDERED people. 

"Alright, well, we need wood for a fire, or we're all gonna die. But to get wood, we have to go outside, where we will all die."

"... So, do we die in here together, or die one by one out there trying to get wood?"

"Good question. I was thinking that some of us could stay here and die, and the rest of us could probably die trying to get wood?"

"Hey, if you guys go out, can you get some peppermint?"

"Gary! This is serious!"

It's interesting to me that when it does get this cold, or when it's so hot it's breaking records, people will say that it's because of global warming. 

"This is happening because we are burning too many fossil fuels! We're destroying the earth with our garbage! It hasn't been this bad since the '20's."

What in the hell was going on in the '20's? What terrible villain was burning oil and driving cars at the rate we are today?

"Muah hahhahahah! I know how I'll take over the planet! I'll all of the four hundred cars at the same time!"

"Mr. Villain, no!"

"That's MISTER Mr. Villain to you! Just try to stop me! I'm driving this one around and starting all the others I see! It'll take a couple of weeks because this thing is not that fast and can't corner well bu... NONE of that matter! Get ready for extreme heat and cold!"

It's cold enough that you bundle up. That's it. just do it. But there are some among us who seem to be immune to this cold. Who seem to not be affected by the frigid temperatures and offensive winds. They seem to be immune because while the rest of us are hunched over, breathing directly into the ground while wearing everything we own, this animals are walking around with their jackets wide open. 

"You guys are cold? Crazy. I was gonna hit the beach. Anybody in?"

This is not the time for vanity. This is not the time to just wear a scarf and act as if you are not cold. You KNOW you are cold. You know it! Even if you are from some frozen tundra where EVERY single day is a thousand degrees below, and you grew up under water that was constantly having ice poured into it, you KNOW you are cold.

"Oh this? This is nothing. It used to get colder than this in my ice bed at the bottom of 'Snow Death' mountain."

No. You are cold. Just stop it and zip your coat up. I saw a guy the other night walking in a t-shirt. I've never wanted to fight someone more. Just crack this dude in the head. Get a jacket! There's no excuse for this. Get some gloves! Or put socks on your hands! Get a boot! Where socks for god sake! Get serious. There isn't too much more of this left, but for this short amount of time, JESUS, put a sweater on. 

Twitter @nathanmacintosh