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Lou Roc: Fall from the Heights

Category: Lou-Roc Award

Published Date

Written by Randy Garbin

With heavy hearts, we heave, uh, bestow the latest Lou-Roc Award to the owners of Clyde's Bistro in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. In some ways, this was just too easy. Some newbie gets his hands on two fully restored diners -- at great cost, mind you -- and just tears into them with all the sensitivity of Jack the Ripper performing an appendectomy.

On the other hand, the proprietors, listed on the Clyde's website as Vivian, Lillian, Bryan, and Clyde, make the case that they took over a project that failed on a massive scale, three times. In their defense, they have posed that oft-heard rhetorical question: "Would you rather see them torn down?" Good question. Would I rather people remember me as I looked when I was vital and healthy, or after I was ravaged by a flesh eating disease?

Above, you see the end result of the Clyde Clan after wielding their sledgehammer, but just before it was fully furnished. To us, this looks like a perfect place to wake Liberace. Below, you see what was then known as the Sweet City Diner, a Mountain View hauled in from Atlantic City and restored by Steve Harwin, pictured with his back to the camera, standing with Steve Presser. Here we only see the Mountain View just before it opened in 2002. The O'Mahony of this pair fared only slightly better.

In our own defense to those who say the Lou-Roc unfairly picks on people who have every right to do what they want to their own property, I agree with you. In this country, if you own it, you should be able to paint it purple and rivet used CDs to it if you are so inclined. Right?

That said, the Lou-Roc exists with the hope and intention of calling out dubious taste and a complete lack of respect for architectural elegance. With any luck, the Lou-Roc gives pause to anyone who considers doing the same to another national treasure. If you don't want a diner, it's simple: Don't buy one. Or in this case, two.

We absolutely recognize that previous owners made this bed. Steve Presser forged ahead with a fatally flawed idea to marry two diners in a way their designers never intended. The concept proved a disaster almost from the moment he cut the first checks to get it going, but as we would later learn, his failure had nothing to do with the diner concept, but with the crushing debt load he incurred from a wildly over-ambitious plan. Sources tell us that Presser would often gross as much as $18,000 on any given weekend, which still wasn't enough to cover the nut.

We could hardly expect subsequent operators with no experience in the diner business to do any better. One planned a Kosher diner to satisfy what she claimed was a huge demand for such as thing. She lasted less than three weeks.

Sadly, Vivian, Lillian, Bryan, and Clyde on the basis of this sorry history quickly dismissed any notion of operating the diners as diners, and quickly went to work ripping out the innards of the original Mountain View unit. What they ultimately created would make Liberace blush. Now, we're all for gaudy kitsch, but not at the expense of a rare piece of American genius and quality.

We've repeatedly made the case that left in its original form, a diner makes for a near-perfect food service facility for the purposes of dispensing short order meals in a clean, eye-pleasing atmosphere. A diner's inherent efficiency, honed from decades of experience and development, consistently makes fools out of those who dare to tinker with it.

In the case of Clyde's, Vivian, Lillian, Bryan, and Clyde have chewed up some stunningly restored interior work and belched out a Pullman parlour car nightmare. They have proclaimed to the world in large guilded letters: "We laugh at you, Cleveland Heights. You are not worthy of a point of pride. And to the skilled craftsmen who created these crown jewels of American culture more than a half century ago, you wasted your talents on the likes of us. And to Steve Harwin, we wipe our feet on your passion for detail, historical accuracy and all your hard work."

After all, what's the point in even trying when people like these still walk the earth?