Counter Intelligence: RFT stages an around-the-clock diner-thon

Edward Hopper never ate at the Courtesy Diner.

Jennifer Silverberg

Jennifer Silverberg

Rene Cavaness takes orders during the 8 a.m.-to-2 p.m. shift. She's worked at Courtesy Diner for almost six years.

Location Info

Map

Lumière Place Casino

999 N. Second St.
St. Louis, MO 63102

Category: Casino

Region: St. Louis - North Downtown

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Courtesy Drive-In

3155 S. Kingshighway
St. Louis, MO 63139

Category: Restaurant > American

Region: St. Louis - Dogtown

Menu Photos

The Buttery

3659 S. Grand Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63118

Category: Restaurant > Diner

Region: St. Louis - South Grand

Photos

Tiffany's Original Diner

7402 Manchester Road
Maplewood, MO 63143

Category: Restaurant > American

Region: Maplewood

Photos

Courtesy Diner

1121 Hampton Ave.
St. Louis, MO 63139

Category: Restaurant > American

Region: St. Louis - Dogtown

Photos

Uncle Bill's Pancake & Dinner House

3427 S. Kingshighway
St. Louis, MO 63139

Category: Restaurant > American

Region: St. Louis - South City

Photos

City Diner

3139 S. Grand Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63118

Category: Restaurant > American

Region: St. Louis - South Grand

Photos

Eat-Rite Diner

622 Chouteau Ave.
St. Louis, MO 63102

Category: Restaurant > Diner

Region: St. Louis - Downtown

Photos

Denny's

1515 Hampton Ave.
St Louis, MO 63139-3038

Category: Restaurant > American

Region: St. Louis - South City

Photos

Coffee Cartel

2 Maryland Plaza
St. Louis, MO 63108

Category: Coffeehouses

Region: St. Louis - Central West End

Photos

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More About

• Ian Froeb
• Edward Hopper
• Don Ed Hardy
• Main Dish Recipes
• Breakfast Recipes

Hopper, of course, is the American artist whose painting Nighthawks has become the iconic image of the lonely, late-night diner. Its period details — the counterman in his crisp white uniform, the male customers in suits and fedoras, the silver coffee urns — hardly matter. Its mood, somehow equally romantic and terrifying, is universal.

Right?

Thing is, in a few hours that lonely late-night diner becomes a lonely very-very-early-morning diner, and some drunk stumbles in to demand three slingers to go. And then, a few hours after that, bleary-eyed parents drag their kids into a booth for pancakes (kids) and coffee (parents). Soon enough, the romantic, terrifying diner almost looks like any other restaurant.

The key word being almost.

What's one day in the life of a 24-hour joint really like? On a recent weekend, Riverfront Times grabbed some quarters for the jukebox and fanned out across the St. Louis region to find out.

Lumière Place, 8:37 a.m. A rainy Saturday morning makes for ideal sleeping conditions. And yet there are cars in the parking lot at Lumière Place. Not a lot, but enough to suggest that the place is mildly populated.

Inside, confusion reigns. It's not the exciting, pandemonium sort of confusion. It's just the sort of confusion born of miscommunication between people who got up too early or have been awake too long. People ask: How do you pay for brunch? Where's the bacon? Do they make omelets anywhere? And their interlocutors stare back blankly: What did you say? Oh, um, go back to the beginning, I think it's over there.

On the casino floor, patrons sit in front of the penny slots, puffing meditatively on their cigarettes (except for one poor soul with a shiny handful of change who wanders the aisles asking, "Can I buy a smoke off you?"). They appear sunk deep in misery. And indeed, playing slots seems to be a good way to magnify your miseries: You lose more often than you win, but pressing the "spin" button doesn't require much effort or distraction from dark thoughts, and if you bet only a penny a spin, a dollar lasts a really long time. You could stay there forever.

One old woman gets assistance at her slot machine. "You want to press that button," a young man tells her. She turns on her stool to look at him. "Why?"

At the poker tables, groups of men slouch in their chairs, eyes glazed. The dealer at craps makes attempts at cheerfulness — "There's an eight!" — and the stickman rakes the chips with something approaching gusto. The dealers at the empty tables stare off into the distance at nothing.

Things are slightly livelier in the buffet line. For $12.06, it's all the carbo loading you can stomach, plus bacon and sausage, and, for the cowardly, pale slices of melon. Diners hunch over their plates, not speaking. If it weren't for the aggressively loud classic rock (with "Your Body Is a Wonderland" thrown in, for some reason) blasting over the loudspeakers, the place would be quieter than a library. It's brunch — no, at this hour, it's still breakfast — for the antisocial. Which defines every soul who finds him- or herself at a casino at eight o'clock on a rainy Saturday morning.
— Aimee Levitt

Courtesy Diner (Kingshighway), 9:13 a.m. The waitress stares at the jukebox, frowns. "What does everyone want to hear?"

Truth is, no one much cares about music right now. This is an hour for sweatpants and blinking eyes, sips of coffee and the savoring of first cigarettes. A few conversations burble. A toddler twists in his booster seat. Newspapers rustle, one diner studying the ads for ATVs, another, last night's box scores. Rain spitting against the windows, a couple of eggs sizzling on the flattop grill: That's all the soundtrack this morning needs.

"Play some Hendrix," the cook calls out. "Play 'If 6 Was 9.' It's album 1804, I think."

Now there's a backbeat, an insistent guitar. Diners aren't tapping their feet or forks, but the pace of business begins to pick up. Where only a couple of tickets were stuck above the grill, now there are half a dozen. Plates are lined up along the rail. A second cook arrives, and a carton's worth of eggs are being fried or scrambled or shaped into omelets.

"I just pushed a lot of buttons after that song," the waitress says as Jimi gives way to some saccharine Nashville dreck, which, mercifully, yields the floor to "Space Cowboy." But music's moot now. The diner is awake and rocking, its rhythm the chopping of vegetables, its harmony the scrape of metal on metal, whisk against grill.
— Ian Froeb

The Buttery, 10:11 a.m. The tiny shoebox of a diner is full, every booth and counter stool, with people eating in hushed mumbles. Cigarette smoke swirls silently with the steam hovering over the coffee cups, and the three waitresses at the griddle flip eggs and pancakes with only the occasional clink.

A short, stout Hispanic man walks in and sits at the counter three stools away from a group of young women. He looks like a graying toddler, with his fire-truck-red hoodie and a blue Band-Aid with spaceships wrapped around his right thumb. Without a word his coffee cup is filled. For no reason, the jukebox plays one funk song, then turns off. The man rubs the sleep out of his eyes and, although he never ordered, a waitress brings him a plate of scrambled eggs, toast and sausage. She doesn't ask if he needs anything else.