On the south side of Los Angeles, near USC, is a new student housing complex called the Tuscany. Never mind that it's about 8,000 miles from Tuscany.

Much of the ground floor is devoted to retail. The businesses are: the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Cold Stone Creamery, Quiznos, Robeks and Chipotle.

Throw in a Radio Shack, Victoria's Secret and two Starbucks, and you get the feeling that's what every single block in all of Los Angeles will look like one day: a bethonged populace stumbling from franchised burrito to lattes and back.

Turning our attention to the north, another example of the franchise-ization of Los Angeles is underway. The venerable Wiener Factory in Sherman Oaks has lost its lease. The single-outlet hot-dog stand that has been a fixture on Ventura Boulevard for the last 36 years is going to . . .

Be replaced by what?

Pinkberry, the chain purveyors of fancy frozen yogurt or, in the views of some, a yogurt-like substance.

Psssst. Want to buy a slice of Americana?

The former Sunrise Diner, a landmark business in downtown Jim Thorpe that catered to tourists and county employees for 53 years, has to make way for an expansion of an adjacent restaurant.

It's a kitschy, classic 1950s diner, replete with a stainless steel exterior, a counter and booths, though the jukeboxes patrons once used to entertain themselves are gone.

And it's in need of a new home after its new owners were rebuffed when they tried to give it away to a local school.

So restaurateurs Noel and Bernadette Behan have turned to an 11-year-old nonprofit organization called the American Diner Museum to help them find a new home for the diner.

''It's a group of people that have come together and incorporated as a nonprofit to promote diners and diner culture,'' said Daniel Zilka, acting director of the Rhode Island-based organization.

The Behans bought the diner on Hazard Square on July 3, about two weeks after owners Sheila Piergrossi and Jim Holleran closed it.

The Behans wanted only the 30-by-100-foot property on which the diner sat -- and paid $250,000 for it -- so they can expand their restaurant, JT's All American Steak and Ale House, adjacent to the diner.

The Behans say they have yet to decide how they'll expand JT's, among three restaurants they own in downtown Jim Thorpe. But before they do any construction, they have to move the diner.

''We're looking for a new home for it,'' Noel Behan said.

Dearborn, MI
Movies flickering under the stars, tykes in pajamas on a car roof, a speaker dangling through the window as Rover leaps around the back seat.

Wait a minute, what time of year is it?

Fall leaves and winter snowfalls are no problem at the Ford-Wyoming Drive-In, which bills itself as the largest drive-in theater in the world. The Dearborn venue, with 3,000 parking spots, is one of those rarest of rarities, a drive-in that stays open year-round.

Outlasting most of its peers, the Ford-Wyoming in Dearborn continues to have solid business in Metro Detroit. Up to 2,000 vehicles visit the nine screens on a busy weekend night, owner Charles Shafer said. Five of the nine screens show films year-round.

"We can stay open in the winter. We've only closed three times in 26 years," Shafer said.

And they stay open in the winter because people come. Plug-in heaters keep cars warm during cold weather, and Shafer maintains the old-fashioned speakers as well as offering radio sound for the movies.

"I enjoy the business," he said. That's what keeps Shafer, 87, up at 3 a.m., counting grosses and paying bills. His father was general manager for Fox Theatre in Detroit. And Shafer himself started as an usher before he began opening his own theaters and drive-ins throughout the state.

A Worcester man has been selected as the new owner of the Edgemere Diner, pending the awarding of the lease by selectmen next month.

Town Manager Daniel J. Morgado yesterday said David Kupstas, an Auburn native who lives off Lake Avenue in Worcester, is eager to get the vacant diner up and running again.

“I’m pleased to see that we have a proprietor who seems to be well-suited for the project. He’s very enthusiastic and has financial backing. It will be great to see that property back in productive use,” Mr. Morgado said.

Mr. Morgado said his bid was one of three received for the diner. Mr. Kupstas has agreed to purchase the diner for $5,000 and rent the Route 20 property on which it is located for 20 years. The monthly rent will be $1,500 and will escalate annually with the consumer price index. Mr. Morgado said Mr. Kupstas is scheduled to appear before the Board of Selectmen on Nov. 19 to request a common victualler’s license and for the awarding of the lease.

“I’m very excited. I think it’s going to be very interesting,” Mr. Kupstas said in a telephone interview last night.

A landmark restaurant in Dayton has been sold after 50 years in business.

Ann Manita, owner of the popular Italian restaurant Dominic's, says she signed the final papers Friday. The building has been sold to Miami Valley Hospital and the future use for the property is not known.

Manita says business has been tough this year after a freezer and two coolers broke during a scheduled closure for maintenance and much of her inventory was lost.

Dominic's opened in 1957.

Originally published online here: http://www.ohio.com/news/ap?articleID=162516&c=y

For the 18 years she worked at the Milford Diner, Rosemary George considered it her home.

So last week, when the former waitress, who also cooked and bused tables, returned to the newly restored and reopened restaurant on the Oval, she couldn't help but marvel at the changes.

There was the Betty Boop statue on the sidewalk outside the front door holding the daily menu board. Inside, opposite the counter and stools, was a sea of shiny chrome and Formica tabletops circa 1958 and pillow-back chairs.

There was a second room with more antique tables, a jukebox, an old washboard washer, a 1950s stove and the face of James Dean staring down from a poster on the wall near another depicting Shirley Temple.

And there was a ladies room painted the color of bubblegum and decorated with starched, cotton little girls' dresses, remnants of a bygone era.

All of this quickened George's heart.But what stole it was the ambience.

"This place is just gorgeous. I can't believe it," George exclaimed after walking through the door.

Debbie Flerra, operator of the Milford Fish Market, and her partner, Gordon Maynard, spent about a year scouring New England antiques shops for the ranch-style chrome kitchen sets that have replaced the traditional booths in the 75-plus-year-old diner.

The couple renovated the restaurant from its most recent incarnation as a sushi bar and pool hall, installing a counter and 10 stools and a black and white checkered floor, arranging the dining room with 12 Formica-topped tables and pillow-back chairs, and painting and decorating the walls to evoke the New England diners of their childhoods.

In August, a year after a fire destroyed O'Rourke's Diner, the popular Main Street staple sat lifeless with plywood-covered windows and weeds poking through the roof.

But behind the scenes, a flurry of fundraising by those devoted to the diner's comeback gathered donations for the rebuilding effort.

Today, there are visible signs of a rebirth at the fire-ravaged Main Street restaurant, as volunteers do carpentry work and pour concrete on the eve of the rebuilding committee's latest fundraiser.

Larry Marino, co-chairman of the committee, said Thursday that patrons could be eating at the diner at the beginning of next year.

"We'd love to get there by Christmas," Marino said. "By year's end, we should be pretty close."

The Aug. 3, 2006, fire at O'Rourke's started when a hamburger steamer was left on overnight. The fire destroyed the inside of the glass-and-steel, dining-car-style restaurant in the city's North End, where it had served food since 1946.

Owner and chef Brian O'Rourke didn't have fire insurance, so loyal patrons and diner enthusiasts nationwide feared it would be the end of an icon. But since the fire, the diner has received a boost from people throughout the city and state, and from other parts of the nation.

Two mainstays of the Burlington-area restaurant scene reopened last week: the Parkway Diner in South Burlington after a change in management in March and Smokejacks in Burlington after an Aug. 2 fire.

The two eateries couldn't be more different in style and menu, but they both boast shiny, freshly cleaned interiors.

The historic Parkway Diner (658-1883) on Williston Road, an original 1953 Worcester diner car, has been owned by George Hatgen since 1975, but had been operated by the Alvanos family for a decade. In late March, the Alvanos's served their last diner meal and moved on to take ownership of the Pine Street Deli in Burlington when Hatgen and his son Peter Hatgigiannis decided to take back the diner's daily operations.

Adding a brand new prep kitchen and walk-in cooler to the back of the diner (along with two new restrooms) in addition to cleaning up the dining area with historic accuracy took longer than anticipated, they said. Although the counter and booths look much the same to the untrained eye, all has been scrubbed and refurbished from the original tile floor to new upholstery on the stools and booth benches.

Many items had to be ordered from New Jersey, the diner capital of the U.S., Hatgigiannis said Monday a week after he reopened the diner. "Trying to get the diner back to its beat was hard," he said.

The diner is open 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Saturday and from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday.

Schenectady, NY
Some of the salt-and-pepper shakers are still on the tables.

But everything else about the tiny art deco building on Erie Boulevard, from the water-stained pin-striped curtains to the sagging roof, shows obvious signs of wear.

The Silver Diner sits on the cusp of rubble piles generated from the demolition of the former Robinson furniture building on State Street. The city ordered an emergency demolition of Robinson last month after it was determined that the structure was unsound.

The 71-year-old diner, once comfort to the growling stomachs of countless General Electric workers, is not part of the demolition. But because the diner is so close, questions have been raised again about what to do with it.

Schenectady's economic development arm, Metroplex, announced Wednesday it will pay a Niskayuna construction firm $3,000 to determine whether the diner is salvageable.