Week 9 in New York: Subculture in the Suburbs

Late nights in Westchester are pretty uneventful - dare I say - boring. For those of us with schedules even remotely on the cusp of being nocturnal, it's damn near impossible to find anything to do after 10:00 pm, let alone a place to eat a good meal. With NYC only 20 minutes drive, you'd think that this sleepy suburb would take a page from their book and have some semblance of a night life - but, you'd be wrong.

Out of this though, has evolved an interesting subcultural - the diner life. Where I'm from in Upstate New York, there's one diner. It's where everyone ends up, every weekend night, after a night of drinking and closing down the local bars.

In Westchester though, every town has a diner, and sometimes two. You can take a drive down Boston Post Rd and see not one or two - but three - in a 5 mile radius. It's a diner-lover's paradise. Here is where not just drunk people stumbling around and hoping to sober up before they drive home come, but where you'll find every different walk of Westchesterian life. The older married couple, out for a late night steak, the college kids gossiping about the latest scandal, the crazy woman who can't believe the waiter would have the nerve to sit her in the back room. Then, you'll find me, the late night yogi. Usually accompanied by Carlo and Carolyn, or any combination of the three, ravenous after yoga or school and too tired to think about cooking.

On this particular night - a Friday night, mind you - after eating a nice dinner out with five of our friends in honor of Carlo's birthday - at the ripe hour of 10 pm we were kicked out of the restaurant and had to find somewhere to sit down, have coffee and dessert, and continue our little celebration. Where could we possibly go? Well, that's right, the local diner.

Just a mile away - because diners are everywhere you want to be - we settled into a two hour encore conversation complete with bottomless coffees, delicious cheesecake, and real vanilla bean milkshakes.

At midnight, when Carlo's birthday actually struck - we all wished him well, went our respective ways, and said what I'd like to think, were our silent little praises for the diner capital of the world - Westchester County.

Cheers,

Breezer M.