SOMETHING HAPPENED IN NEW YORK. Maybe it was the Mob. Maybe it was a spate of influence by the design community. Whatever it was, it was in very bad taste. I am eating breakfast at XYZ Diner, on Lexington at 31st Street or so. The counter top is pink and gray formica. The seats mauve vinyl. The walls gray to waist level, some faux pink and white granite plastic above that. Brilliant white chandeliers are suspended every six feet; between them beat ceiling fans. The ceiling is acoustic drop-tile. And all across the front windows are neon signs. It is aesthetically painful to sit here, except that I need the food desperately and the writing surface has made possible this musing.
WHAT HAPPENED IN NEW YORK that so much of it became gripped by bad taste? As if late modernism wasn't bad enough, as if post-modernism hadn't defaced the streetscape enough, we are stuck with hundreds, thousands, of over-lit, over-hard eateries. These are the bad diners of your nightmares, breakfast table to most New Yorkers, accepted (I assume) without question. I could not have imagined a greater tragedy.
6:15 A.M. YESTERDAY ON 23RD STREET, the sidewalk a glow of pink neon from shuttered stores. Where has it been proven that neon is conducive to good gastronomy? I wonder how this foodscape will age. What will twenty years do to the impervious materials that make up this diner and the innumerable others like it? Time cannot erase this chapter in urban history fast enough: that I know for sure. I should not expect good design to replace bad anytime soon, should not hold my breath for the re-emergence of a humane interior construct in which we may live our lives—but I can hope.