All-night diners - they're a window into America's past, when they were as common as people complaining about breakups on Facebook. If you're like me sometimes you wake up at 2am starving, and just standing bleary-eyed at the kitchen counter, robotically stuffing Oreos into your pie-hole just doesn't really get the job done. You want an entire dinner - shrimp scampi, a steak, fish and chips... whatever. All night diners serve that function. The solitude is pretty nice, too. More than likely you won't be surrounded by screaming children, unless the particular diner you're visiting is also frequented by the type of parents who bring their kids to the midnight showing of Paranormal Activity.To be fair, while you're enjoying the solitude, you're probably unknowingly keeping that one waitress who is on the late shift company, but it's an unsaid company. You're just sitting there looking out into the darkness sipping coffee, watching the occasional headlight pass by, and she's just glad that there's someone else there with her, so that in case someone decides to rob the place, they might focus on you first, giving her the chance to sneak out the back.
If it makes you feel better, there are TONS in Jersey. We have a few down here, but they're not dives and I feel 3AM requires a real run down place where the grill hasn't been changed since the Johnson administration.
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