Richard Swerdlow reminisces about San Francisco\u2019s diner culture.<\/p>\n
Can I top off your cup of coffee?<\/p>\n
Sorry, refill by radio is not possible. But if you\u2019ve lived in the bay area long enough, it is possible you remember a vanishing breed of restaurants \u2013 the diner serving up bottomless cups of dishwater coffee, huge breakfasts, milkshakes, slices of pie, pancakes. In the \u201840s and \u201850s, these not-so-fine dining establishments were in every San Francisco neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Growing up, I liked our city\u2019s diners. I like the familiarity \u2013 whatever neighborhood, diners had the same formica counters with stools and artificial leather booths. <\/p>\n
More than blue plate specials, I appreciate how diners are uniquely American. France has cafes, England has pubs, we have diners. It\u2019s a statement about the impact of the diner on American culture that diners are settings for numerous TV shows, plays, movies, even paintings, such as Edward Hopper\u2019s \u201cNighthawks.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Richard Swerdlow reminisces about San Francisco\u2019s diner culture. Can I top off your cup of coffee? Sorry, refill…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-390228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}