die puny humans: "The best restaurants in any town are the ones that are open 24 hours. It doesn't matter if the restaurant is clean or attractive, if the food is good or even edible. What makes 24-hour places special is that whatever is going on inside them at any moment--eating, crashing from a night high and wild, a secret lovers' rendezvous, a drug deal, a traveler getting her bearings in a new town-- will continue to go on there until the place burns down or goes out of business.



These places sell time, not food. All 24-hour restaurants are social neutral zones, outside the normal boundaries of time and space, which exist for most of us in neatly packaged eight-hour segments: one for sleep, one for work and one for life. These diners are the alien bases in our midst. Area 51 with curly fries and a Coke."