nytimes.com
One rainy weekend months later, I convince a friend to join me for dinner at the Chinese restaurant attached to one of the malls on Aryeh’s tour. I’ve been dying to go there ever since we walked by its dusty green awnings—it seems like the kind of place that would either give you food poisoning or a dish so good you undergo some kind of spiritual... See more
Diners, as a rule, are time machines; whether through the formica sheen of the nineteen-forties, the chromium optimism of the fifties, or the pastel geometries of the eighties, a diner traffics in nostalgia for past decades and past selves. The only era a diner should never reference is now.
Helen Rosner • The Best Diners Are Still Just Diners | The New Yorker
The freedoms associated with liminal spaces – club nights, abandoned buildings, forgotten shopping malls – often have a lot to do with the fact that these places, and the marks people left of themselves within them, will eventually disappear. There’s also something inherently egalitarian about them; a place that nobody owns or stakes an exclusive... See more