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Third time’s the charm: Gordon Tindall restores and opens Spud Boy
- Category: Eat in Diners
- Published on Monday, 07 May 2012 13:23
Gordon Tindall is something of a missionary for diner restoration. A zealot, if you will. In the late 1980s, he got it in his head to buy the diner he and his father would would often visit together. Trouble was, at the time, Gordon lived in Decorah, Iowa and the diner sat in a field in New Jersey.
The restoration of the Clarksville Diner, chronicled in the pages of Roadside at the time, became something of a cause célèbre in the diner world. Few people exist with Gordon’s skill, determination, and diner dedication, which he has proven three times over. He would rescue, restore, and reintroduce into service not only the Clarksville (a Silk City), but the former Lackwawanna Trail Diner (a Tierney), and now a one-of-a-kind 1927 Goodell Hardware diner he calls the Spud Boy Lunch.
Forbes may go the way of the Bel Aire
- Category: Eat in Diners
- Published on Tuesday, 24 April 2012 12:57
And now, the Forbes Diner. An article in the New Haven Independent discusses Helmi Ali’s predicament with the Forbes Diner which he has in storage behind a diner he is actually operating, the New Star Diner.
About a month ago, a similar diner, the Bel Aire Diner in Peabody, Massachusetts was demolished after sitting in storage for more than five years. It was demolished because the owner had unreasonable expectations of its value, originally trying to sell the thing for $150,000. In March, I got a call from the owner’s wife saying that if anyone wanted it, they could have it for free. There were no takers and it was scrapped. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this scenario play out.
The Cap City closes
- Category: Eat in Diners
- Published on Saturday, 28 January 2012 03:07
Several news outlets reported today that your last chance to get a meal at the Capital City Diner comes this Sunday. With the opening of a new Denny’s a stone’s throw away coupled with the diner’s ongoing struggles in a marginal neighborhood, co-owner Matt Ashburn finally rests the spatula.
As many already know, Matt and former partner Patrick Carl bought the Avoca, New York Silk City diner on eBay at an inflated price of $20,000, and immediately stumbled into and through repeated hurdles establishing their business in a dicey part of town.
Is Charles Milte a moron?
- Category: Eat in Diners
- Published on Friday, 29 July 2011 00:10
As the diner world now knows, the iconic and historic Empire Diner in Manhattan closed and became the Highliner. We held out some hope that the new owners might be sensitive to the diner’s role in our heritage and leave well enough alone. But no. Several New York City media outlets have come out with stories about the diner of late, which of course means that the owners have ramped up their publicity campaign.
We certainly hope that the diner does well in its location — no small feat for a small restaurant in such a high value location — but descriptions of what new owner Charles Milte have done to the diner’s admittedly not-quite-original interior lead us to question his aesthetic sensibilities. In short, if what the papers printed about him is true, we can only conclude that this guy’s an idiot.
Does any of this make any sense?
To achieve that timeless effect, Milite gutted the venue, which was built in 1946 by the New Jersey-based Fodero Diner Co. Anything that was vintage (i.e., stainless steel) was temporarily put into storage, and he scoured old diner books and eBay for period details, such as conical aluminum light fixtures. Still, he did make some subtle tweaks. “All that linoleum and Formica is classic, but we wanted to warm it up,” he says, noting that the addition of mahogany is meant to evoke a train car on the Orient Express.
Read more here.
Do it for the diners
- Category: Eat in Diners
- Published on Saturday, 25 September 2010 19:46
Listen to the podcast.
When I began Roadside in 1990, I did so with a singular purpose: To get more people into more diners. To me, that meant telling everyone that would listen why I loved them and why I thought they not only held a special place in our culture, but why they deserved your business. I said repeatedly that it makes little sense to aggrandize the diner if we don’t patronize the diner.
After twenty years years on this pulpit, it continues to amaze me how clueless most the population remains about why we should love diners, but also about where they can find one. A real one, one owned and staffed by people who take the concept of food service and community seriously, and who don’t see their restaurant as a great big schlock museum.
It took me about ten years to finally locate and document probably about 95% of every diner out there. I could do this only with the help of hundreds of readers pointing me the way, sending photos and their informal reports of their visits.
I can now say with some confidence that the Diner Finder now documents the locations and physical particulars of at least 98% of every diner on the landscape— just about 2000 or so. I continue to do this because I never want people to ever again ask me, “Where’s the nearest diner?”