By Griffin Frerichs, Staff Writer
In a conversation a while ago, my mom was telling me what it was like before cell phones. If your friends weren’t at home, you just couldn’t communicate with them. They could be dead—they ARE dead. What the frick? What can you even do? Are you just shit out of luck? No. She told me that you would have to go to all the places that you guys usually hang. High school me would have had to check the elementary school playground, “hippie cliffs,” the park, “the garage,” the other elementary school playground, and, as a last resort, spark a blunt and let the smoke act as a beacon. Like how Cheers, Seinfeld, and Friends have the bar, the diner, and the café respectively, I imagine the lack of communication resulted in a singular, reliable “spot.”
Does your friend group have a go-to place to hang? Actually, let me reframe that. Does your friend group have a third space you consistently meet at that isn’t Azzie’s, Wilder, or a Woodlands room? Ah shit, I gotta spell it out, huh. Do you have a place to chill that isn’t under the reign of Oberlin College and ConservatoryTM? I know I’m not the only one depressed by this.
I know we’ve got a public library, Slow Train, and The Local, among other places, but none of these quite scratch my itch. I want to go somewhere where they treat me like family. Gimme a big ol’ stack o’ flapjacks and a mug of acidic, black coffee that I’ll never see the bottom of. Gimme an indulgent milkshake fresh after I stuff a chicken-fried steak or biscuits n’ gravy down my gullet. I wanna feel taken care of. I wanna feel like I’m at home. I wanna have a third place in this godforsaken town that opposes these empty, bleak nights. What I’m telling you is that I want a late-night diner.
Think about it. You’ve got a paper due tomorrow and you’re sick of your dorm room. Mudd is the obligatory spot, but damn, that place really sucks the life out of you. You want to go somewhere that lets you forget about the grand social experiment that is college. You want to go beyond campus and feel like you’re in the real world. Imagine sliding into a booth and a middle-aged server, who is ever so slightly sick of life—perhaps a Sheryl or a Thomas—greets you and asks if you want the regular. Yes, yes, I do. They send the order off to the kitchen and step outside to suck down a cigarette.
The food doesn’t even need to be good. In fact, it shouldn’t be good—just above passing. Maybe a father and son that fucking hate each other are running the kitchen. Oh, and I think there should be a grumpy old man—always in the same booth—who has seemingly been reading the newspaper forever. He’s also really homophobic, but it’s endearing.
The server is half a pack down when the food is finally ready. That took five-ever. They plant a platter of pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, and hash browns down in front of you. “Anything else for you, hon’? Ketchup, syrup, hot sauce?” No thanks, I like it how God intended.
You’re with me, right? I even have the perfect location in mind. Tomorrow we’re all gonna pull up behind the Jazz building and hoot and holler until that fucker Lorenzo comes crawling out on his hands and knees. We’re gonna kick his ass to the curb, so that some ma’ and pa’ can move in and flip some patties. The absence of late-night third spaces throws me spiraling through the five stages of grief on a weekly basis. This town sure is cute, but what else does it have? You know what, maybe I should start this diner. No, even better, we can start a diner co-op. Because brown sugar lentil tofu pancakes make my mouth salivate to a perverted extent.
This is my last cry—my last plea to the beings above—for some sweet soul to open up a late-night diner within walking distance of campus. Imagine the memories that would be made there. Fargo, Pulp Fiction, American Graffiti, and—help, I need a less film bro example—Riverdale all have integral scenes that take place in a diner. This vacant slot in the Oberlin culinary experience is literally stealing core memories from right beneath our noses. So please please w a cherry on top gimme gimme diner plzzzzz tanks bye.
