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When I lived in Boston, there were not many places to go out to after 1AM. Many a rowdy night my friends and I wanted to take our parties to the streets, even just to get a bite to eat, but rarely were there any options; except the South Street Diner. It is still opened twenty four hours because of the tradition (diners were often located near 24 hour factories, serving around the clock), and because of the nearby twenty four hour work at the Big Dig. South Street is also located downtown, near South Station, where trains and buses converge from all over New England. But it wasn’t so easy for us to get there, so we usually had to convince someone with a car to drive us. Then we would make our way to the diner, long after the T, Boston’s subway, had stopped running. The diner was always busy, even at 4AM, because others had the same idea to extend their revelry. Construction workers, graveyard shifters, young things and commuters rubbed elbows from dawn to dusk and everything in between.

 South Street Diner, Boston

Diners, luncheonettes, greasy spoons - these have all served as the holding lots for whatever we define as our cuisine. Hamburgers, omelets and hash browns all day, coffee and pie. Diners have always been affordable, and are associated with all the euphoric positivity of the 1950s, when every date took place at a diner, and where kids would meet up after school and have a milkshake.

They got their start in the 1870s in the form of the lunch wagon, selling sandwiches and coffee. The word diner originated around 1925, when these restaurants were built to be used as eating cars on trains. After they went out of service, they became stationary and served as cheap restaurants, often near train stations. They maintained their train car shape and pre-fabrication - the chrome that fit in with the art deco aesthetic of the time, the line of stools at a long counter, facing the preparation and cooking area. More spacious diners also feature booths, and over time they began to be built as restaurants, and kept certain elements: the chrome, neon signs; and left out others: the emphasis on the counter, and the smallness. But they still remain quintessentially American.

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