Pawtucket, RI
When Providence Planning Department officials were trying to get the Silver Top Diner to move to make way for a condominium development, Herbert P. Weiss saw it as an opportunity to lure the storied all-night eatery to Pawtucket.

Over the course of a month, Weiss, Pawtucket’s manager of economic and cultural affairs, showed up at the Silver Top two or three times a week, always ordering a ham, cheese and mushroom omelet and promising that Pawtucket would put out the welcome mat if the diner moved, said Patricia A. Brown, the Silver Top’s owner.

Brown eventually gave in and moved the diner to a vacant lot owned by the Pawtucket Redevelopment Agency on Middle Street.

But plans to reopen the eatery stalled. Now she and the redevelopment agency are in court, each side blaming the other for the failure of the much ballyhooed project to get off the ground.

The PRA is demanding that Brown repay the $52,000 she drew down from the $100,000 promissory note that the redevelopment agency issued to cover her startup costs and moving expenses.

Every now and again, we stumble upon links to sites that, for one reason or another, capture our imagination.

So it goes with two sites listed below. One deals with the "lost tunnels" of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The other with "lost city" of New York City.

Consider this our "great beach read" list for July!

Lost City

Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike

The Parkway Diner was originally expected to reopen in May after the diner's owner George Hatgen took it back over from the Alvanos family who had run it for a decade. However, it is now looking like it will be the middle of July at the earliest, reported Peter Hatgigiannis, Hatgen's son and a member of the corporation involved in refurbishing the historic diner.

The renovations include new storage space in the rear of the diner along with a much-needed update and overall freshening up, said Hatgigiannis. "We're trying to get it prestigious again," he said. "We love this diner and we want to make it all nice and new and clean, but it's hard to get the right stuff with historic accuracy."

Originally published online here: http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007706280350

Salem, NJ
Salem In the past year-and-a-half, the landmark Salem Oak Diner has had three owners. Christina Zervas purchased the diner last month from Robin and Bill Bell, and hopes she can solidify what has been a rocky period in the historic eatery in the City of Salem.

Open for about two weeks under the new ownership, Zervas described business as being brisk.

"We've been open for a few weeks now, and business has been good. Considering it's been closed for a while now, I'm happy with business," she said. "I've seen a lot of returning customers and regulars, so it should be good."

Zervas, a native of Cape May Court House and sole owner of the Salem Oak Diner, has been in the diner business for the past 25 years. She sold her previous diner, the extremely popular Court House Diner & Family Restaurant, last month to focus solely on her new venture here in Salem.

Zervas purchased the diner from the Bells, who owned the establishment for about a year after purchasing the diner from longtime owners Bill and Barbara McAllister.

After this weekend, the last free-standing diner in Manhattan will be a piece of history.

The Moondance Diner in SoHo will serve its final meal Sunday after 70 years in business.

The restaurant has been seen in several movies, including “Spider-Man,” and television shows like “Sex and the City” and “Friends.”

In a month, the diner will move to a museum in Pennsylvania – where it will be turned into an exhibit.

The restaurant's owner says it will be missed by its workers, its patrons, and tourists.

"A lot of people, they get married here, they find they're girlfriends here,” said Sunny Sharma, owner of the Moondance Diner. “They live in New Jersey, all over, but most the tourists here come from Europe – Belgium, France, England – they all come here to see. Not to see me, just to see the Moondance Diner, the sign of Moondance Diner.”

“It's really heartbreaking for me because I've been here for so many years,” said the owner’s son, John Sharma. “I've been here since I was six. I have so many good and bad memories."

The news of the closure was hard for patrons to swallow.

Karen Houle has always had a soft spot for drive-in movie theaters. Particularly the abandoned variety.

“I lived next to a drive-in theater in Connecticut, which was open when I was very young,” Ms. Houle recalled in an e-mail interview. “When I took walks with my family later on … we would walk through the now-abandoned theater, and I was fascinated by just how tall the trees had grown up in front of the screen.”

That fascination led her to seek out other shuttered drive-in theaters on day trips. She estimates she’s been to 50 drive-ins within a two-hour radius of her home in the northeast corner of Connecticut. Her travels are chronicled on her Web site, www.klh.org/drivein/index.html.

What'll it be, hon?

How about a new owner.

South Philadelphia's Melrose Diner, founded more than 70 years ago by a German immigrant, changed hands today.

Richard Kubach Jr., who started working for his father as a 12-year-old, turned over the keys to Michael Petrogiannis, a Greek immigrant who with his three brothers owns nine other diners.

(A 24-hour diner does have keys, incidentally. "That's the challenge - finding them on Christmas Day," Kubach said.)

"Nothing will change," said Petrogiannis, who said he had had his eye on the landmark for several years. "It's the way it is."

Rumors of a sale had been circulating for months. "It's time. I'm going to move on to the next chapter of my life," said Kubach, who will turn 60 later this summer. "Semiretiring would be the best way to describe it." He said he would help his son, T.R., open a pancake house near the Best Western hotel that his family owns in King of Prussia.

By Tony Mecia | The Charlotte Observer | June 222, 2007

With a decrease in customers, South 21 Curb Service on South Boulevard may close at the end of the month. In the '50s and '60s, South 21 was open till midnight on the weekends and drew young couples and families.

The South 21 Curb Service on South Boulevard, a Charlotte landmark that's been serving burgers and fries at its drive-up booths since 1955, has until the end of the month to find a new owner or will close.

Owner George Katsanos told the Observer on Thursday that construction related to the nearby light-rail line has hurt his business and that he wants out. He says he's been in discussions with a potential buyer to assume an option for an additional three years in the restaurant's lease, but that it's uncertain that will lead to a deal.

The other South 21 locations, on Independence Boulevard and Brookshire Boulevard, are independently owned and unaffected.

The drive-in restaurant, known for its "Super Boy" double hamburger, is the latest in a string of old-time Charlotte restaurants that have recently faced closure. In the last year, venerable restaurants including Andersons, near Presbyterian Hospital, and The Athens, near Central Piedmont Community College, have closed. The Coffee Cup is still open, but its future is uncertain.

Lockport, NY
Rick Cohen was born in Williamsville as the son of an Allstate Insurance salesman. He grew up in Western New York and he still lives here even after his brother and sister have moved on to different parts of the country. Cohen could have moved on to another part of the country as well, but there was something in him that kept him in Western New York. While Cohen’s siblings were off becoming doctors and lawyers, he stayed here to become, as he puts it, a lowly drive-in guy. As a third generation drive-in owner — he takes his job, and his Transit Drive-In movie theater, very seriously.

Cohen is unassuming and only speaks about the things he knows about. One of the things Cohen knows about is how to run a successful drive-in. Cohen has been going to the Transit drive-in his entire life.

“I grew up coming to the drive-in theater helping my dad with maintenance. When I was in high school I started to work at the drive-in theater regularly at the concession stand. When I was 16 my brother trained me on the projector,” Cohen said. “When I had graduated from high school my brother and my sister had moved away. I was the only child from the family left in the area so I assumed the role of manager. It just seemed natural.”