In 1940's Los Angeles, there were only two kinds of dining. There was Chasen's and the Brown Derby, and there was everything else. Restaurants like Chasen's were the kind of places where you needed money and connections. You were expected to dress in your finest and eat steaks cooked tableside in oceans of butter.

But then an unknown actor named Harry Lewis and his plucky girlfriend (and soon wife), Marilyn, had an idea. They would open a restaurant that would serve a good hamburger but still be stylish enough that directors, writers and even agents would come to dine with hoi polloi. There would be leather booths and Lowenbrau beer and ice cream from Wil Wright (the Ciao Bella of the time).

In most beach-side neighborhoods you'd expect to find residents fighting to get rid of a rickety gas station amid their million-dollar homes.

Not in Pacific Palisades. There, homeowners managed Wednesday to persuade a Los Angeles City Council panel to preserve an 80-year-old filling station they consider a local landmark.

The council's Planning and Land-Use Management Committee approved historic-cultural monument status for the tiny, three-pump station even as a furious bidding battle among homeowners jockeying to preserve the station by buying it ended.

by Mark Sickmiller | WCPO.com | May 16, 2005

[Cincinnati] The Diner restaurant in Over-The-Rhine, which reopened earlier this year, is once again closing.

The owners of The Diner on Sycamore tell 9News financial difficulties led to the closing.

Owner Alex Patel says a lot of money went missing, saying sales dropped more than $10,000 in one week.

Employees say their pay checks have bounced.

Patel says he has spoken to most of his employees and assures they will be paid.

originally published here: http://www.wcpo.com/news/2005/local/05/16/diner.html

Bristol & Southington, CT Lake Compounce, the nation's oldest amusement park and Connecticut's largest water park, will open on Saturday, May 14 with a new water attraction, Anchor Bay, and several other exciting additions, according to General Manager Jerry Brick.

Brick added that additional park expansion is already underway and ground breaking for an exciting new thrill ride for 2006 will take place sometime in July. The park has plans to move Mount Vernon Road, which runs along the perimeter of Lake Compounce, to allow for even more water park expansion in years to come. "We are continuing to make Lake Compounce one of the major attractions in New England," Brick said.

Portland officials are tweaking a deal to sell the Miss Portland Diner to a restaurateur in the hope of swaying several city councilors who oppose it.

Councilor William Gorham is lobbying his colleagues to put the landmark Worcester Lunch Car in storage until a better proposal comes along. Public Works Director Michael Bobinsky says there's space available at several city-owned locations.

"I say we put it away until we figure out what to do with it," Gorham said Monday. "This is not the right deal for the city."

My small high school, way back when, didn't have a cafeteria. It was considered uncool to bring a lunch, so groups of us would beat a path just before noon to the Top Hat Diner in Kingston, Pa. If you were late, you ate standing up in a corner, or were one of eight trying to fit into a booth built for four. Major decisions were about grilled cheese vs. hamburger and rice pudding vs. red Jell-O (no other color was available).

Since then, I've always wanted a diner, or at least to have that feeling somehow transferred into part of my kitchen. There is something magical about them and their steadfast comfort food.

Kennywood Park REFURBISHED CAROUSEL

With a week and a day to go, something definitely was missing from the park.

Like pieces in a giant merry-go-round puzzle in reverse, the Dentzel-built carousel, which had been in its current location since 1927, painstakingly was dismantled and renumbered beginning the day after the park closed for the regular 2004 season, pending reassembly for 2005.

This week the wooden base was in place, and Kennywood employees were hard at work overhead in areas exposed for the first time since the carousel was placed at the park.

The Munson Diner just up and left Manhattan this week. No farewell blue-plate special, no second cup of joe. It waited for the light to turn green, made a left on 11th Avenue, and rumbled away from a city that had lost the taste for its meatloaf and gravy.

The diner did not take its leave until 3:30 on Thursday morning, as if to say to nighthawks everywhere, This one's for you. Passing under the stage lights of mostly deserted streets, its silvery chrome dazzled, its beveled glass winked, and echoes of diner lingo spilled imperceptibly upon the pavement.

Moving a classic Manhattan diner upstate: a quarter of a million bucks. Preserving city history and revitalizing a Catskills town: priceless.

At least that's what representatives from the American Diner Museum and Volvo were saying yesterday, as they chipped Munson's Diner out of its longtime home on 49th St. and 11th Ave. and hauled it to Liberty, N.Y., on a flatbed truck.

"It is a dream come true: Saving a piece of New York history, not only putting it under a bell jar but using it for the same thing it was made for," said Daniel Zilka, director of the American Diner Museum.