Lewiston, ME
Frank Armijo, short order cook, stood in front of the restaurant stove at the Farmington Diner Monday morning whipping up a breakfast special - scrambled eggs, crispy home fries, bacon and toast. With the flick of his wrist, the food was on the plate, and Armijo was on to the next order.

With rumors that it might be shut down - a developer or developers have signed purchase and sale agreements with property owners along the strip, including the restaurant, town officials say - life is going on pretty much as usual at the diner.

On any given morning, Armijo bangs out breakfast specials, griddlecakes, and the odd fried clam with seemingly superhuman speed, occasionally joking with a customer through the kitchen window while he works.

Trish Stevens, a waitress at the diner for the past 11 years, simultaneously takes orders, payments, and compliments from diners, all the while delivering meals to tables, pouring coffee and chatting with almost everyone who walks through the door.

Regular customers, war veterans, mothers with their children, University of Maine at Farmington students and professors, and people passing through will be there, too, sitting quietly or laughing loudly, ordering anything from pork chops to plain black coffee.

But they're worried - everyone from the cook, to the waitresses, to the regulars who mark their days with visits to the restaurant. Rumors are swirling within the staff and clientele.

El Vado Motel's fate is still up in the air, but two thing are sure: A final decision could be months away, and the meetings leading up to that decision are likely to be contentious.

A hearing on the Route 66 motel Wednesday lasted an unusually long three and a half hours before the Landmarks and Urban Conservation Commission called it quits and put off the remaining witnesses and closing arguments until Jan. 10.

El Vado owner Richard Gonzales wants to tear down the motel - which the City Council declared an official landmark in February - and redevelop the property.

The reason for the marathon meeting? Attorney John Kelly, who represents Gonzales, said he had an obligation to put a thorough argument on the record so the points could be rehashed on appeal to the City Council and the courts, if needed.

Kingston, NY
In some ways the new Olympic Diner and Restaurant feels like your average diner - maroon chairs swivel at the counter, the alluring smell of French toast and bacon saunters from the kitchen at midnight.

But a second glance, and some conversation with it's new owner, helps set it apart: the cheesecakes are made on site, three course meals are available and wine is offered with dinner.

"We sell fish, steaks, everything. It's not just a diner with hamburgers and eggs," said owner Lambros "Lou" Ptritsis, who likes the prime rib best.

The town of Ulster building used to house the Old Gateway Diner and the Artemis Diner before Ptritsis renovated the place and opened up shop on Sept. 2. The diner/restaurant is open 24-hours a day - a nice pit-stop for truck drivers and late-night travelers on nearby Interstate Route 87.

Ptritsis isn't new to the business. He's owned diners in New York City, and his reputation from running the Barclay Heights Diner on U.S. Route 9W in Saugerties a few years back has brought loyal customers to new tabletops.

By Toby Zinman | For The Philadelphia Inquirer | December 14, 2006

August Wilson died last year after completing his cycle of 10 plays, each representing a decade in the 20th-century African American experience. Signature Theatre, whose mission is to focus each season on one playwright's work, is celebrating Wilson by presenting three of the less-frequently seen plays in the cycle. This new production of Two Trains Running, already extended twice, is solid and satisfying.

It's 1969. In a diner in the same Pittsburgh neighborhood where most of Wilson's plays take place, the same people meet and drink coffee and talk every day. Over the course of 3¼ hours we get to know their habits and their preoccupations almost as well as they do; the measured pace of Lou Bellamy's direction establishes a profound level of realism that requires the kind of ensemble acting that this superb cast provides.

The trained bears that played basketball are long gone. Ditto for the dancing stallions, FDR's wheelchair, Bonnie and Clyde's car and the tarantula races.

Over the last 30 years, Buena Park has become a veritable graveyard for roadside attractions and amusement parks. The ghosts include Japanese Village and Deer Park, Movieworld Cars of the Stars, the California Alligator Farm and Wild Bill's Wild West Dinner Extravaganza.

But one deceased venue is staging a comeback — sort of. Movieland Wax Museum, which closed last year, is being reincarnated as a Best Buy electronics store and food court called Movieland Plaza.

Wax statues from the old museum will be displayed in glass cases built into the outside corners of the plaza's shops and restaurants, said Steve Thorp, vice president of Burnham USA Equities, the developer behind the project.

Superman, Austin Powers, Liz Taylor, Rudolph Valentino, Shirley Temple and Gen. George Patton are expected to return to the limelight late next year.

Arnie Yarber would have a hard time counting all the students he's felt like a dad to over the half-century he's served barbecue in downtown Champaign.

But he's counting on all his customers to understand the time has come to close the doors of his longtime restaurant, Po' Boys Bar-B-Que, at 58 E. Columbia Ave.

"I'm just tired," he said. "The old man has gotten tired."

Po' Boys, which first opened in 1953, has been open only on weekend nights for the past 15 years or so. Its loyal customers will have one final weekend to dine on the ribs, Polish sausage and beef and pork sandwiches they love.

Yarber plans to be open two evenings, Friday and Saturday, from 5:30 to 11 p.m., and then he'll close for good, he said.

"I'm sad," said longtime customer Mike McDaniel of Champaign, who has been coming to Po' Boys for 45 years at least once a week, sometimes twice a week.

Peeling pastel blue and peach paint hangs over a cracked, uneven floor that shows no hints the Fontana Theater once held hundreds of moviegoers eager to watch Humphrey Bogart or Cary Grant in their latest pictures.

But like a crucial plot twist in a classic film, the 69-year-old theater -- now called Center Stage -- may come back to life after having been shuttered for more than two years.

Last week the City Council unanimously approved a $5.15 million contract to renovate the aging film house on Sierra Avenue for community use.

"That was a showcase for Fontana at one time, and I'm adamant about recreating that," Councilwoman Acquanetta Warren said.

"It's a draw," Councilman Frank Scialdone said. "It's one of those things that will improve, we think, our downtown area, and become a cultural addition to our community. It will be a destination point for our residents and those of other cities."

Conneaut, OH
Peel away a few layers from an unwanted Conneaut diner and a hidden treasure is revealed.

Ed Wharton, who knows a few things about local artifacts as president of the Conneaut Area Historical Society, is working to polish and preserve the gem that lurks beneath the shell of the long-closed Johnson Drive-in at Broad and State streets.

Years before the little restaurant served up food, it was home to a service station. It's the tiny building's legacy as a fuel stop and taxi stand that piqued the interest of Wharton and fellow members of the Ashtabula County Antique Engine Club.

The club recently acquired the property, and the service station portion of the structure is being disassembled and shipped to property members own in Williamsfield. "There was no place around Conneaut to put it," Wharton said.

Eventually, it will be restored to it's former glory - - complete with gas pumps and accessories - - and open for display.

by Charlotte Ferrell Smith | Charleston Daily Mail | Nov, 29, 2006

Welch, WV
Cars lined up in a rainy drizzle and flashed their lights for service at the Sterling Drive-In on Stewart Street here, where loyal customers have provided a brisk business for more than six decades. While some preferred to eat inside their cars, others walked inside to grab a seat at a booth or table in a relaxed atmosphere sporting pictures on the wall from the 1940s. An old menu offers coffee for a nickel or a steak dinner for 85 cents.

The prices have changed a bit, but a lot of other things remain the same, from food offerings to the familiar face of George Mitros, a Greek immigrant who bought the restaurant on a payment plan.

The Sterling was first opened in 1932 at another location by co-owners Jess Stack and Nick Soter. They moved the drive-in to its current site in 1945, when they bought a building from John Smiley. In 1962 they offered to sell to Mitros.

"I say ‘Nick, I not got no money,' " Mitros recalled. But they worked out a deal where Mitros made payments until the place was all his. He paid $1,200 a month for 15 years. In 1990, he put a new building on the same site.