By Steve Moore | The Press-Enterprise | April 17, 2008

Palm Desert, CA
It's the end of an era.

Some say the future finally caught up with the old highway motel.

For about a half-century, the Palm Desert Lodge catered to families who swam in a pool just outside their room. They had the run of a big grassy area, shuffleboard courts and an outdoor barbecue.

Bob Hope even stopped by for morning coffee.

But now the shuttered lodge awaits demolition.

A 15,785-square-foot Longs Drugs store will go up on the site.

Some mourn the passing of another roadside inn -- part of a grand tradition popularized by Route 66 -- in the days before freeways when few travelers saw bell captains and concierges.

Decades ago, highway travelers stopped as evening fell, spotting the neon sign advertising: "Vacancy." They grabbed their bags from the trunk, signed the register and headed for a room on the ground floor.

Bethany Balestieri gave elbow grease a whole new meaning last week.

One of about a dozen Dover-Sherborn High School students working on a full-size replica of a roadside diner's interior, Balestieri volunteered to put black paint on her elbows, then press them onto a giant piece of white paper. In coming weeks, students building the diner's countertop will, through the magic of graphic arts software, use her prints to create the illusion of worn Formica, as if decades of elbows had rested comfortably while chatting up a waitress, reading the paper, or drinking a mug of coffee.

Such devotion to detail is breathing life into the Arts Diner, an after-school project that has become a lesson in history, art, culture, and enterprise.

The Arts Diner is the brainchild of Darren Buck, a Dover-Sherborn art teacher who readily acknowledges his obsession with the roadside eateries. Students and faculty have labored all school year to not only build the structure, but also to imbue it with a story.

"I love that; that is wonderful," said diner expert Richard Gutman, when told about the elbow effort. "The worn-down ceramic tile or Formica, these are indestructible materials, and the fact they are worn speaks of generations of people that are partaking of the food and the atmosphere. It always disheartens me when people replace those countertops, because if only they could talk."

Gutman is director and curator of the Culinary Arts Museum at Johnson and Wales University in Providence, which includes a large diner exhibition. Buck took students there for a field trip and has invited Gutman to the unveiling of the Arts Diner on May 17.

By Rhonda Erskine | WCHS-TV | April 14, 2008

Portland, ME
A Portland landmark took a short trip Monday morning. The Miss Portland Diner has been in storage for a while, but not anymore!

The diner was moved to its new home on Marginal Way, next to the University of Southern Maine's new student housing.

The diner is now owned by Tom Manning, a Newsweek executive who grew up on Munjoy Hill. Even though it didn't have far to go, the process of moving it was a complicated one.

"The unit weighed about 50,000 pounds. It's an old unit, it was built pretty rugged back in the days, so we picked it up on our crane over there and put it onto a low bed and made a short haul over here," said Jim Keeley from Keeley Construction.

The next step was to lift the diner using a 175-ton crane and set it on its new foundation. The plan is to put on addition so there will be more seating.

The diner should be open for business in the fall.

By Jessie Salisbury | The Nashua Telegraph | April 13, 2008

Milford, NH
The Milford Drive-In Theater will be 50 years old this spring. By all reports, it's one of the last ones still operating New Hampshire, and the closest one in Massachusetts has also closed.

If the weather cooperates – and the snow is finally gone – the theater will open on Friday with a first-run movie.

"Since we don't know the opening date yet, we don't know the movie," owner Robert Scharmatt said. "We'll wait and see what shows up."

A group of local men, who prefer to remain anonymous, recently recalled the early days of the theater when they were teenagers.

Admission then, as now, was by the carload, and after putting in as many people as was legal, "We'd put a couple in the trunk," one said, noting, "I had a car with a big trunk. It would hold a couple of guys."

They also referred to "other activities in the back seat," but those reports were all "secondhand from friends."

State police have accused a Hartstown man with intentionally setting fires that destroyed Conneaut Lake Park's Dreamland Ballroom and a Harmonsburg church.

State police at Meadville said Nickolas Dean Pope, 19, of Linesville Road, is responsible for the Jan. 14 fire that destroyed the Harmonsburg Presbyterian Church on Cemetery Road in Harmonsburg, and the fire that destroyed the Dreamland Ballroom on Feb. 1.

Operation "Save the Cheyenne Diner" is underway.

Led by Michael Perlman, the man who helped rescue the historic Moondance Diner from the scrap heap last year, preservationists hope to find a new location in the city for the iconic diner at Ninth Ave. and 33rd St.

The asking price for the railroad car-style diner is $7,900, not including rigging and lot acquisition costs.

"We've already been talking to a developer in Coney Island," Perlman said.

If the preservationists can't find a suitable spot for the Cheyenne in New York, Perlman said, they will review offers from Ohio and Indiana.

"Diners are among the ultimate public institutions, which harbor countless memories and bridge the generations," Perlman said. "They are becoming an endangered species."

A neighborhood institution decorated with Native American artifacts, the Cheyenne served its last blue plate special on Sunday after losing its lease to a bigger eatery around the corner - the Skylight Diner.

Skylight owner George Papas wants to build a nine-story apartment building on the narrow site, most likely with a restaurant on the ground floor. He's willing to wait until after the Cheyenne is moved, Perlman said.

Another great culinary institution is going the way of carhops and Automats, according to the New York Times. That's right, the diner you frequent may soon no longer be Greek.

The blame may lie partially with Greeks' success in the U.S. It's hard to justify putting in 16 hours days frying potatoes when you're a Wall Street-bound M.B.A. Likewise, Greek immigrants willing to work in diners have become scarcer as the homeland prospers. Meanwhile, the old chrome-plated dinosaurs are getting bought up by Dominicans, Koreans and Bangladeshis. Instead of the standard Greek salad on every menu, you may be seeing chulitos, kimchi and shondesh.

"When Greeks get out of diners, there will be no more diners," is the sour prediction of Aristides Garganourakis, owner of the Dobbs Diner in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

Grief drove hundreds of people to Ralph’s Chadwick Square Diner on Saturday. But once there, laughter and music beat back any urges to mourn the death of Ralph Moberly with tears.

Heck, everybody cries at a funeral. And Ralph Moberly, whose passing triggered the aforementioned grief, was not the sort of person who merited a traditional or obvious memorial. He deserved — and got — a send-off as colorful and delightfully twisted as the personality he forged and freely shared with a city that will not forget him.

Just two months after the classic Dreamland Ballroom at Conneaut Lake Park in northwestern Pennsylvania burned down, the 114-year old attraction is shouldering more bad news. Rick Davis, Director of the Darkride and Funhouse Enthuiasts related the following to us;

"Some time over the weekend of April 5th, the former funhouse building at Conneaut Lake Park collapsed. The building was a bowling alley in the very early 1900's and was later the Funhouse as well as the Ultimate Trip. After that it had been used as storage for several years before becoming the Ultimate Trip for a few more seasons."

According to Davis, the "Ultimate Trip," was the combination of a Scrambler ride, loud music and lighting effects.

A photo shows the cinder block building with at least two walls nearly completely down and clearly a total loss.

Davis added, "Sadly, I was told that a trustee at Conneaut wanted to talk to me about the old funhouse to consider possibly recreating it."

Additional coverage from the Meadville, PA newspaper is here.