Fakery
I'm embarrassed
I got my hair cut this morning, and since I had free time afterward, decided to get some lunch. I love getting lunch alone, and I was right near a place I had starred on my maps, S&P.
From a brief glance at the Google listing, I understood it was an old diner. Seemed charming, and it was. Busy, but I was able to get a seat at the counter where I sat to the left of an older man, also solo. I ordered eggs with rye toast and corned beef hash from the grill. I reveled in the authentic spirit of the place and thought of all the friends I want to come back with, then paid in cash and went on my merry way.
While riding the train home, I thought about other old-timey establishments that evoke a similar sense of coziness. The Apple Pan in LA fits this category, and so does a very small and scruffy roadside cafe where Thomas and I ate lobster rolls a few summers ago in Maine called The Eagles Nest. At 14th St, a group of three elderly dandies entered the train car, all wearing tipped newsboy caps. They sang Lovely Day in harmony while waddling from one end to the other, collecting tips along the way. I, under the spell of vintage charm, didn’t hesitate to give them a dollar.
I thought this strain of nostalgia might make a fun topic for a post. I considered art within the theme and vintage children’s books came to mind, probably inspired by the fact that I spent the morning reading books with sweet Eden. Mary just got him a new book from 1950 called The Quiet Noisy Book by Margaret Wise Brown, which is graphically and conceptually strange and sweet.
Some Ed Ruscha stuff itches this scratch for me, especially the work that depicts historic modern architecture of LA. I feel tender imagining my parents growing up in that LA, before the Erewhon types came to dominate. Ruscha’s Annie works also appeal to me for obvious reasons.
When I returned home, I went online to read about the history of S&P, and found their website, which looked far too hip for a crusty old diner. This lead me to their Instagram, where I was pained to find out that S&P is “a new place at a very old lunch counter, open for business” and affiliated somehow with Court Street Grocers, according to their bio. I felt like such a fool. While I was in the diner, I thought about how this type of place is a magnet for young urban people and how our nostalgia for a time we weren’t even around for is kind of embarrassing. We are all so desperately horny for authentic diners and under-dog food establishments. Myself included, obviously. So while I enjoyed my weird hash breakfast, I did feel some self-consciousness about this observation, and wondered if it reveals something unbearably depressing about cultural loss.
I feel so deceived by S&P. I wonder if the “Banana & Sour Cream” menu item was an authentic fare or if it was thought up by a 30-something who is too online and precisely aware of what women like me will eat up.
On the other hand, thank god these people saved the place. The second page of their menu gives a brief history of the diner which is worth a read. My impression is that the current owners are putting in care and effort to adhere as closely as they can to the intrinsic spirit and history of the restaurant. All while knowing that there’s a big market for “historic” establishments of course. The coolest restaurants are both the new hard-to-get-into places and the old-New York hidden gems. To know about them is like social and cultural capital. This makes me think of Le Veau d'Or, which has a similar story to S&P, and checks both the new and old boxes (I want to go.)
Through writing this—and if you’re still with me, wow, thank you?— I realize that the embarrassing thing about whatever I’m referring to isn’t the “inauthenticity” but the self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is what I want to escape from. It’s corrosive and contagious and I suspect it wasn’t as culturally pervasive in 1928 when the original S&P first opened as it feels today.
As a parting gift, here’s a bit of authentic-earnest-trickery-fakery from me to you. I downloaded a Youtube video of someone reading the Margaret Wise Brown book mentioned above, but replaced the audio with my own reading. Sort of embarrassing?? Or comforting? Tender? ? Desperate for a vibe that’s gone forever? Salvaging what I can?? I let you decide.