Nighthawks

I am a little obsessed with the painting “Nighthawks” by Edward Hopper. Perhaps you know it: three patrons sit at a lonely diner late at night, drinking their coffee while the server/cook waits on them patiently. Simple enough. But why has it conjured emotions for so many art lovers? If historians are correct Hopper painted it right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. If so, then Maugham was right that patriotism leads people to undertake noble things. Or perhaps Hopper wanted to capture the bleakness of feeling that resonated with the times. Either way, I look at it now and I wish I could jump into the painting. Playing the guy sitting by the girl, I want to turn to her and say something like, “Dame, why did you have to go and say something dumb?” If I were the girl I would say something to the effect of “Bark at me again and I’ll make you wish you were with your mother. Dead and buried at Hilltop Cemetery.” The guy near the window by himself? He’s not saying anything. But he’s thinking this: “a guy named Ray is going to walk in any second…and he’s getting two lead caps in the head before he even gets the chance to place his newspaper on the counter.” Yes, that sounds about right. And the server? He’s telling anyone who would listen that he’s got one more year at this diner before he calls it quits and moves back to the farm in Illinois. “This city is too violent,” he muses, “too violent and crowded.” So where is the diner in question located at? I often think of LA’s own Apple Pan. Like “Nighthawks,” the Apple Pan has, from what I remember, only a counter and it sits right smack in the middle of the mean streets of LA. In sweeps all the troubled denizens of the city ready to eat the famous burgers and tuna salad sandwiches and recount the nightmare from which they walked from. Now if you look carefully, that counter in the painting is awfully close to that window, so close you could hardly believe a person could fit through to find his seat. In that respect, the painting reminds me a little of Pasadena’s Pie n Burger: no space, mostly all counter and window, burgers, coffee, pies, period. But Pie n Burger has little of the noir atmosphere that the Apple Pan does. Cindy’s in Eagle Rock has that spirit of a mysterious diner feel, more so than its neighbor Pat and Lorraine’s. The trouble with Cindy’s is the food stinks while Pat and Lorraine’s food is excellent. If you want great diner food in a part of the city that even Raymond Chandler would appreciate, you couldn’t do better than the Nickel. You could eat some great fish and pulled pork and homemade Hostess cupcakes and pop tarts and…okay, so it isn’t exactly Nighthawks but they do have an awesome bacon doughnut. Yes, I said bacon doughnut. And while you’re there order a cup of coffee and tell the dame sitting next to you at the counter that she has the look of trouble all over her face. And you aim to wipe it off in a hurry.