WJLA-TV | May 20, 2009

It's not a sight you see every day: a 1940s-era diner rolling down Bladensburg Road.

The piece of Americana rolled into town from upstate New York -- Avoca, to be specific -- on its ten-hour journey to its new home in the Trinidad section of Northeast Washington.

"There's no place around here that's like that," remarked Terry Jackson.

The former Silk City Diner was purchased on E-Bay in March for $20,000. The outside needs a little TLC, but inside it's in top shape and even came with plates, silverware and salt and pepper shakers.

The owners say they wanted to create something special in a neighborhood that has had more than its share of crime problems, even prompting police to set up checkpoints in Trinidad last summer.

As owner Patrick Clay puts it, "We're working to have a little neighborhood place where people can eat like family, get to know each other and have a cup of coffee before they go to work."

You'd think Mrs. K's Carry Out across the street wouldn't like new competition on the block, but owner Antoine Johnson welcomes it.

"I think it's a great thing to have an eatery that can make a difference in the community," Johnson said. "Something different, something unique, something to be able to serve the people."

Neighbors watched as the massive chrome wrapped structure waited to be moved onto its foundation. Some seeing the new business as an opportunity for employment.

"Do you need any waitresses?" asked one woman.

Others are thrilled for new life in a community few consider investing in.

"We need these sort of energetic activities," said Margaret Holwill, who lives in the area. "We don't want staid restaurants and staid activities -- and people LOVE diners!!!!"

The greasy spoon will be re-christened the Capital City Diner. Clay hopes to have it up and running by the end of July or early August at the latest.

The landmark Edinboro eatery reopened May 1, after closing in late November for financial reasons and to do some much-needed renovation work, said owner Jim Sims.

Located at the southwest corner of Routes 6N and 99, the diner first opened in 1929. It was originally a trolley station.

Even with the improvements, customers will still recognize the diner, Sims said.

"It's just like it never closed. We even brought back the pies," said Sims, referring to the diner's famous homemade desserts.

The diner is open seven days a week and will be open early Sunday to serve a Mother's Day breakfast.

A demolition permit issued for the Milford Diner downtown is getting mixed reviews.

The prefabricated, stainless steel building and its wooden annex have been vacant for more than five years, and several attempts to develop it have fallen through. Now it looks as if the iconic 1948 building will be giving way to badly needed parking, officials said.

"Obviously whoever owns it has the right to do whatever he wants with it," said Robert Gregory, the city's economic development director. "I think there is more sentimental value than actual value in it, and the different ideas for it haven't happened. That's where we're at."

The land at 13-21 New Haven Ave., which has the diner, Vincent Jewelers and the SBC Restaurant on it, is owned by Paul Dumraese, of Milford, and is assessed for $893,000, 70 percent of the market value.

Dumraese said Tuesday that while his family has owned the site since the 1920s, several businesses have leased the land and owned the buildings on it. "We don't own the diner, but a lot of people think that we do."

Developer Robert Smith, who with his partner owned the diner building and the fieldstone structure that houses SBC, said that his company sold the diner to the SBC Restaurant Group.

Squished into a back corner of the bustling, fluorescent-lit kitchen at Mustache Bill's Diner, Bill Smith looked liked one of the crew. The 58-year-old -- glasses perched at the end of his nose -- was busy fashioning 1/3 pound burger patties from the 20-pound mountain of ground beef in front of him.

"You can fall into this complacent belief, 'Oh, it's just a hamburger,'" Smith said above the kitchen din. "But it's somebody's hamburger. It's somebody's meal. You've got to get into this head trip; each burger's important. That's where you get your consistency."

That consistency has earned Smith, owner of the classic 1950s diner in Barnegat Light, a spot in food industry legend. Mustache Bill's, which opened as Joe's Barnegat Light Diner 50 years ago, is one of five restaurants nationwide this year to receive an "America's Classics" award from the James Beard Foundation.

The foundation's annual awards, in a variety of categories, are regarded as the Oscars of the food industry. The foundation is named after the late chef and cookbook author who was known as "The Father of American Gastronomy."

The 90-seat diner, with its terrazzo floor and pale green Naugahyde booths, is also the first diner to receive an America's Classics award in the 12 years they have been presented. That comes as good news to diner lovers in New Jersey -- with nearly 600 diners, the diner capital of the world -- and to historian Richard J.S. Gutman, who says diners get a bad rap in culinary circles.

"The award is a big deal," said Gutman, director and curator of the Culinary Arts Museum at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I., and author of "American Diner Then and Now."

"It's unfortunate that the diner doesn't get the respect it deserves," Gutman added. "They're all things to all people."

Smith, who said he is "flabbergasted" by the honor, will accept it at a black-tie ceremony co-hosted by Emeril Lagasse at Lincoln Center Monday night. It will be the second time Smith will wear a tuxedo in his life.

Barry Levinson is going back to Baltimore.

The prolific writer-director will return to his birthplace and cinematic stomping ground with "Sixty-Six," a story about a group of characters coming of age in 1966 Baltimore on the eve of significant historical events such as the counterculture movement and the war in Vietnam.

Levinson will write and direct from his own novel.

The protagonist in "Sixty-Six" is a staffer at a local television station, whom some have noted is a stand-in for Levinson and his professional and personal life. Like one of the director's most famous works, "Sixty-Six" also will feature a diner as the center of social activity.

The film completes an informal series of sorts in which Levinson examines the social dynamics in Baltimore at various periods throughout the 20th century. He kicked that off with 1983's "Diner" set in a very different city of 1959, and covered related ground in "Avalon" (1990), "Tin Men" (1987) and "Liberty Heights" (1999).

"It's really the last of the diner stories," Levinson said of "Sixty-Six." "It's about a world that's on he cusp of a big change and a group of people who are on the cusp of adulthood."

The director said he plans on financing the movie independently and is set to go out to cast shortly.

Levinson most recently completed "Polliwood," which is premiering this week at the Tribeca Film Festival. The documentary generally looks at the intersection of Hollywood and politics and the effect that TV has had on the electoral process in particular.

"Like all great inventions, tele¬vision has brought some great changes but I also think it's brought some hugely negative consequences," he said. "And unlike, for example, the automobile, these negative consequences have been far more subtle."

In looking at the interaction of politics and celebrity, the movie explores another passion of Levinson's, which he examined in such satires as "Wag the Dog" and "Man of the Year."

"I've been fooling around with media for a while," he said. "What I wanted to do with this movie was look at the subject as a whole."

The Poughkeepsie Journal | April 29, 2009

The Eveready Diner will open a second location Thursday in Brewster.

The restaurant transformed the former Sonoma California Café into an old-fashioned diner and bakery though a six-month redesign and renovation project, according to a press release.

The diner will use the classic menu from its original location in Hyde Park.

The Eveready Diner is a 1950s Art Deco-style restaurant.

The Brewster location will be open 24 hours a day, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner and will also offer a full bakery of dessert items. Situated off exit 19 of Interstate 84, at 90 independent Way, it will offer a private dining area for up to 60 people and employ around 50 people.

By Elaine Thompson | Worcester Telegram & Gazette | April 15, 2009

Northboro, MA
Tom Marino remembers the time when a man came into the American Legion and asked Mark Fidrych if he would autograph his American League Rookie of the Year baseball card for the man’s son, who was having an operation the next day.

“Mark looked at the card and said, ‘No.’ We were all shocked because Mark does everything for anybody,” recalled Marino, the bar manager at the Legion post. “Then Mark said, ‘But I’ll be there at 10 o’clock in the morning, and I’ll bring it.’ And he showed up in uniform and visited the kid two hours before he had his operation. That’s the kind of guy Mark was.”

People throughout Northboro who knew Fidrych were in somber moods yesterday after their hometown major league baseball celebrity died Monday in an apparent accident at his 107-acre West Street farm. A family friend found Fidrych’s body underneath his 10-wheel dump truck that he had apparently been working on at the time of the accident.

Scott Forbes, 70, of Shrewsbury, who knew Fidrych for 30 years and taught him how to shift the gears on his Mack truck, took half a day off from work yesterday to remember his friend. He said when he met his wife, Peggy, at the American Legion Monday night, he found everybody there in tears.

“He was different,” Forbes recalled. “Anything you wanted, he would give to you. He was just a super guy who always had a smile, always had kind words. He was the salt of the earth.”

Kathy A. Lowe, who with her husband, Tom, owns Lowe’s Market, and others recalled Fidrych as humble, unpretentious, polite, fun and always willing to help.

She said Fidrych recently gave free baseball clinics to youths in town. He and his wife, Ann Pantazis, co-owner of Chet’s Diner, also got special foods for Hailey, the Lowes’ diabetic 8-year-old daughter, for her visits to the diner. In October, Fidrych not only donated money to the diabetes walkathon, but gave copies of a coloring book about his baseball career to all the walkers.

By Scott J. Croteau | Telegram & Gazette | April 8, 2009

Worcester, MA
For the half-dozen times a month Bob Hebb heads into Worcester from his hometown of Ayer, he makes sure to head over to Shrewsbury Street.

His destination is Mac’s Diner, where a large kettle of soup usually beckons and the stools are filled with patrons he knows by name.

But today, Mr. Hebb arrived at his favorite restaurant only to learn that an overnight fire had damaged and closed the business.

The owners of the restaurant — which dates to 1931 — are unsure when they’ll reopen.

“You have never eaten in here? They have a kettle of soup that is about this high,” Mr. Hebb said, holding his hands a couple of feet apart. “I don’t know where I’m going to eat.”

As Mr. Hebb was left wondering where he’d get his usual soup and sausage sandwich — made on the diner’s homemade bread — a crew of city Department of Public Works and Parks workers headed to the entrance at 185 Shrewsbury St.

Mr. Hebb soon informed them of the situation: “It’s closed. There was a fire.”

About noon today, owner Chris McMahon of Holden walked around inside the diner and assessed the damage. Mac’s is said to be the oldest diner in the city. He doesn’t know when it will reopen.

Photo courtesy Brian Butko

If you drive around the Pittsburgh area, you'll find it hard to avoid seeing a bright yellow "arrow sign" pointing you to Kennywood, the venerable amusement park in West Mifflin which was founded as a "trolley park" back in 1898.

You can also see Kennywood nationwide starting today, with the release of "Adventureland," a "coming of age" film from Writer/Director Greg Mottola. The film was shot after the park closed for the season in the Fall of 2007. Interesting note; Mottola said that Kennywood was a great location because it lacked the pervasive corporate branding of most big modern parks. Ah, the good old days.

Reviews:
USA Today
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
New York Times.