The food was miserable, the atmosphere fantastic. Every Saturday evening we inevitably ended up in the “Good Stuff Diner”, initially long after midnight when the clubs were emptying, and then earlier and later. How it is when you get older.
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Our typically New York clique (weird to quirky) changed over the decades, but the “good stuff” always stayed the same. The “steak” was rock hard, even if it was “rare”. Almost every dish choked under the same sauce slag, whether the mozzarella sticks or the fried chicken with a slice of orange as a side dish.
In a glaring retro setting, we celebrated young love, mourned death and gnawed on tough Thanksgiving turkey. The audience was a wild mix of homeboys, gays, disco corpses, white-haired widows and half-dry alcoholics who turned the placemats around so they didn’t have to see the printed cocktail list. Basketball was playing on the televisions above the counter, and from the tables by the window you could see the row of houses opposite, where a mysterious neon sign flashed for years: “ANUS”.
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Also threatened with the end: the “Kellogg’s Diner” in Brooklyn
Photo: Victor J. Blue / AFP
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The “Good Stuff” was in Manhattan on West 14th Street, and one of the last “diner” in New York City that was open around the clock. One night someone was shot at the back table, the waiters mopped up the blood, and the kitchen was boiling again for brunch. It went on without a break, even when a woman was strangled unconscious or a guest got a fork in the eye. The menu could have a criminal aftertaste, but was served non-stop.
It was only the pandemic that killed it. Now there is a note on the door: “We have done everything to stay open. Unfortunately, we have no better news.” Bad news for the “good stuff”. In July they had tried to hold out with tables on the sidewalk.
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Almost two-thirds of all New York restaurants will be open by the end of the year have to shut up. Even iconic shops like the “Boathouse” in Central Park have already been hit. With them the memories of a city that will no longer exist – and of their own history in this city that will no longer exist. Presumably this is not only the case in New York, but all over the world.
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Before the cut: The old World Trade Center
Photo: Al Bello / Getty Images
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I’ve spent almost half of my life in New York, and the city is starting to feel like a museum of my years. Every street, every park, every subway station: Everywhere there are key stimuli to the ups and downs as New Yorkers of choice. A walk down memory lanesay the Americans and don’t just mean it metaphorically. A walk through the past that makes you feel increasingly strange.
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Not just since the corona crisis, New York has been losing many guides to everyday life and with it its institutional memory – and I have lost the visible, tangible memories of the moments that made me myself.
In the roof vault with the “cats” dancer
The Winter Garden Theater: A long time ago I sat in the vaulted roof with a “Cats” dancer whom I portrayed for our student newspaper, today the building will be closed until Christmas 2021, if it opens again at all. “Rainbows & Triangles”: Above the greeting card shop in Chelsea, which also sold erotica, my ex and I lived directly on the first floor, today this relationship is long gone, as is the house, replaced by a glass case. The “Roxy” dance hall: Here I stepped on Madonna’s feet, now there is also a luxury building, including an eleven million dollar penthouse, on the site of the former factory hall. One World Trade Center: The soulless tower will never erase the memory of the Twin Towers, where it stands today, and of 9/11, which tied me to New York like nothing since then.
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Wave of Change: Protest Against Gentrification (2019)
Photo: Kathy Willens / AP
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