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.
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?’
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.
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.
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.
The Olympics. Most of us are never going. There are many events that you have NO chance in. You can’t just pick up throwing a javelin at 42. Going to be pretty hard to start doing high jump at 70. Hurdles? You going to pull yourself off the couch at 51 and start jumping little traffic signs? Sure, buddy. You sprained your ass stepping over the coffee table last week. Get the heating pad and sit back down. But Speed Walking? Now we’re talking. Which should be the slogan for this event.
‘Swimming?’
‘Naw, keep skimming.’
‘How ‘bout 100 metre dash?’
‘Big time pass…’
‘… Speed Walking?’
‘NOW we’re talking!’
The Olympics wants to call it Race Walking, but let’s grow up. That’s just them trying to make you believe that you can’t do it, and I’m here to say, you can. Not only can you, you’re already doing it a lot more than you think, and you can do it at one of the highest levels in the land. Here are a few ways you’re already training for one of the most accessible Olympic sports there is.
CROSSING THE STREET
You’re at the corner waiting to cross, the light turns green, you start to walk, then notice your shoe is untied. You stop to tie it, look up to see the cross walk countdown. ‘9, 8…’ You panic. Start to tie faster. ‘6, 5…’ Cars engines are revving. ‘3, 2…’ A driver yells out of his car ‘You better not even THINK about crossing in front of me!’ You finally get your shoe tied, and Speed Walk across the street, hips flying. You make it just as a Tesla hits the strings on your jacket. You’ve made it. You’ve survived. And you’ve also just trained for a very real Olympic event.
CREEPY PERSON BEHIND YOU ON THE STREET
You stumble out of that new ‘Fried Chicken And Skeet Shooting’ restaurant, full of Nashvilles Hot sauce and knowing you dominated those clay discs, and start to walk home. Out of seemingly nowhere, a creepy shows up behind you. A carabiner full of keys bouncing off their thigh. You turn around to see if it’s just a friendly janitor and notice the fangs. This isn’t a janitor at all. Maybe of the gate to hell, but not on this nice block of deep fried chicken and leisure sports. You don’t want to seem like a dork and start to fully run, also you’re jacked full of grease, but you pick it ups a bit. Arms swinging, legs going, and all of a sudden, you’re Speed Walking. Look at you. Escaped the grips of a demon AND you’re now one Speed Walk closer to a medal.
GETTING IN FRONT OF SOMEONE WITH A FULL CAR IN THE GROCERY STORE
You step into the grocery store for one avocado and a beer. Your Saturday is about to be a party. You squeeze a couple ‘cados to find a good one, squeeze a couple beers to entertain yourself, and head to the checkout. You dancing to Billy Joel’s ‘Uptown Girl’ on the loud speaker when you see it. All the registers are full except for one, and who’s ONE step ahead of you about to pull in? A woman with an entire cart full of groceries. The top, the bottom, she’s got stuff all over the place. Bag of bananas is hanging off the side. Bag of dog food AND a bag of corn puffs line the bottom. You get stuck behind her? It’s gonna be an extra 20 minutes before you’re able to enjoy you Pilsner and some good fats. So you pick it up, Uptown Girl blaring overheard. The hip action. The step action. The arm movements. You’re speed walking. Sweat flying off your brow. You get in front of her JUST at the moment that it doesn’t look like you’re a complete criminal who just tried to cut her off. In. Out. Beer. Mouth. This situation alone should get you a Silver Medal, and in four years? It just might.
Recently Presidential candidate and ‘BoFlex’ enthusiast RFK. Jr (man’s name is all letters), told a story about dumping the carcass of a bear in Central Park. Was he walking through Central Park when a bear jumped out at him and he had to put it in the Boston Crab until it’s back snapped? Did the bear owe the mob money and RFK. Jr was a hitman at the time? No. RFK was driving down a highway, a bear jumped out in front of another driver who hit it, and RFK pulled over, collected the bear so that he could skin it and take the meat (not sure if this actually happened but this is what he said he took the bear for) and then dumped the dead bear in Central Park. That’s right. Not even back on the highway from whence it came. A global landmark is where this body needed to go.
Why wouldn’t he call animal control? Why would he carry an animal corpse through Central Park shirtless while covered in baby oil? Surely there are OTHER places to dump an expired woodland creatures body after you take its fur. Well hold on, because if you think about it, what RFK. Jr has/had done here is pretty ingenious. There might be only ONE places you could throw Baloo in New York without being caught, and here are a few options that are NOT that.
TIMES SQUARE
So you’re tooling around in your Ford F-150, and out of nowhere a black bear decides to see if it really is built ‘Ford Tough’. Bam! Bears head blows right off, and now here you are, Waylon Jennings on the radio and a bear cadaver on your hood. Where do you dump it? Times Square? Seems like a good idea, you think, nobody’s gonna see this what with all the advertisements to look at… wrong. There are a LOT of people there, and they are NOT bears. Also all of the lights are on. Constantly. You’ll be caught in a second. Central Park absolutely beats dumping your new dead friend beside a guy dressed like Spider-Man. Head up town.
THE SUBWAY
Who’s going to notice a deceased brown bear on the A Train? There’s a guy selling pigeons, people putting on a dance show and a mother of three trying to figure out where the fourth one went. Nobody will notice this dead bear I accidentally killed at the Bronx zoo here! Wrong. People don’t pay attention to the ‘Showtime!’ people, the pigeon sellers, or care at all if someone lost their child, but riding beside a full dead bear? That’s going to raise some eyebrows. TAKING the A Train to Central Park to DUMP the dead bear will suprisingly NOT come off as suspicious, but just leaving it there?! No dice. Head to the park.
THE CYCLONE IN CONEY ISLAND
You’ve had a long day of following people on the highway hoping they hit a bear you can steal, and finally, someone does. You pull over, yell to the person in the other vehicle ‘stay in your car! That’s MY meat!’ as you run over and pick up this animal. Once you skin it and make a little hat, where do you put it? Well, you’ve always wanted to ride the rollercoaster in Coney Island, maybe this can be a two for one? Have a littler excitement and dump my dead friend. Nobody will suspect a thing if I leave him on the… wrong. People will notice. A LOT of people. First one? The carney working the ride. This isn’t his first rodeo when it comes to furless, meat pulled off of them dead animals. He’s been living on the land and cans of beans for years. Nothing gets passed him. Want to leave it on his ride? BAD idea, hombre. Get to Central and toss it in a bush.
So you see, RFK.Jr made the right decision. He dumped the bear in just about the ONE place where nobody would find him out for dumping it, until he one day for absolutely zero reason decided to tell people that he was the one who Jimmy Hoffa’d this Asiatic. Thank god New York keeps this parking/dead body dumping ground alive.