gordonzola (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gordonzola) wrote2006-10-05 10:19 am
gordonzola) wrote2006-10-05 10:19 am
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Road trip diners I have known: Roanoke VA, 1986
Five of us, all looking tame by today’s standard but unequivocally punk/weird/homosexual by the judgements of the time, were tired. We’d just driven from upstate NY on our way to see The King. We couldn’t make it to Memphis without stopping and Roanoke was proving to be a mystery. Nothing was open, things that looked like restaurants turned out to be bars or, worse yet, churches. Finally we found a college-y part of town with an open bookstore. We figured there must be food nearby.
Punk flyers were on telephone poles. Graffiti on the walls. This was the part of town for our people, even if there probably weren’t many there. Still, food was elusive. Finally we saw a small diner a few more blocks away. Ravenous, we walked in without checking it out from the outside.
It was packed. They sat us at a table too small for five so we were elbow-to-elbow. The professor’s kid ordered a beer and showed his fake Oswego State ID card as proof. The lamination had come off and the card was in two pieces and not a great fake to begin with. The waitress called over a manager to look at it. The tension rose.
We were all politicos. We were acutely aware of trying not to be judgey about the South. But we were all starting to notice that this diner was unlike places we had previously been. While we were not all middle class, we were all college students and all from the Northeast besides me. We were all white (though 2/5 Jewish), as was everyone else in the diner, but we weren’t really blending. People at the counter had openly turned their stools to stare at us.
I think it was a Friday night and the diner was a social hub for some community we were obviously not a part of. People moved from table to table like a party. Only a few old folks sat alone and they were now openly staring at us too. One was mixing Ketchup with his Budweiser, something I haven’t seen since. A group of four punk rockers entered and I think we all took a breath of relief. It looked like the band playing down the street. After conferring, they backed out slowly. Alone again. They looked much tougher than us and they were obviously scared away.
A few minutes later a guy about our age entered. No shirt, bleeding from the nose, he announced that he had just kicked the shit out of someone in the parking lot. He was acting out the fight for the front half of the restaurant. One of the waitresses gave him a bar towel to wipe up the blood but made no other attempt to intervene. We got through the meal as quickly as possible.
Still, no one really messed with us. They stared but left us alone. Was the punk oppression all in our heads? I had been hassled more at the Novato (Marin County, California) Denny’s where I was a semi-regular and was friends with some of the waitresses. Luckily I was never been small enough to get beat up there in the bathroom like happened occasionally to the poor skinny Goth/drama kids.
Being college kids we debated the rest of the way to Memphis: Scary Neo-Klan Hangout or Social Hub for Working Class Folks to Blow Off Steam?
Punk flyers were on telephone poles. Graffiti on the walls. This was the part of town for our people, even if there probably weren’t many there. Still, food was elusive. Finally we saw a small diner a few more blocks away. Ravenous, we walked in without checking it out from the outside.
It was packed. They sat us at a table too small for five so we were elbow-to-elbow. The professor’s kid ordered a beer and showed his fake Oswego State ID card as proof. The lamination had come off and the card was in two pieces and not a great fake to begin with. The waitress called over a manager to look at it. The tension rose.
We were all politicos. We were acutely aware of trying not to be judgey about the South. But we were all starting to notice that this diner was unlike places we had previously been. While we were not all middle class, we were all college students and all from the Northeast besides me. We were all white (though 2/5 Jewish), as was everyone else in the diner, but we weren’t really blending. People at the counter had openly turned their stools to stare at us.
I think it was a Friday night and the diner was a social hub for some community we were obviously not a part of. People moved from table to table like a party. Only a few old folks sat alone and they were now openly staring at us too. One was mixing Ketchup with his Budweiser, something I haven’t seen since. A group of four punk rockers entered and I think we all took a breath of relief. It looked like the band playing down the street. After conferring, they backed out slowly. Alone again. They looked much tougher than us and they were obviously scared away.
A few minutes later a guy about our age entered. No shirt, bleeding from the nose, he announced that he had just kicked the shit out of someone in the parking lot. He was acting out the fight for the front half of the restaurant. One of the waitresses gave him a bar towel to wipe up the blood but made no other attempt to intervene. We got through the meal as quickly as possible.
Still, no one really messed with us. They stared but left us alone. Was the punk oppression all in our heads? I had been hassled more at the Novato (Marin County, California) Denny’s where I was a semi-regular and was friends with some of the waitresses. Luckily I was never been small enough to get beat up there in the bathroom like happened occasionally to the poor skinny Goth/drama kids.
Being college kids we debated the rest of the way to Memphis: Scary Neo-Klan Hangout or Social Hub for Working Class Folks to Blow Off Steam?
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was it a Jesus sighting? cause i'm pretty sure Elvis was dead by then
I like the idea of the roadside cafe memories.
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in fact, here we are. (except for the one taking the picture)
Re: in fact, here we are. (except for the one taking the picture)
Re: in fact, here we are. (except for the one taking the picture)
i too have visited graceland...a few years back on my cross country drive
it was the anniversary of his death so i had to wait hours for my tour
i passed the time eating fried pb and banana sandwiches
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I wish I was bicultural enough to decode the south to folks who didn't grow up there. The 80s were so different from today, too. You know how sometimes right before a big social change, the powers that be get a bit more rigid and a bit more violent? That was the south in the 80s. I mean, nowhere near on the scale of the civil rights movement, but that was inter-racial. The changes in (for lack of a better word) pop culture writ large in time period was largely intra-racial among white southerners. By 1993 or 94, most of the south (with the likely exception of MS, from what I've seen) saw so many of their own middle class baptist kids with pink hair and nose rings that it wasn't something that got people's backs up anymore. But in 1986, you were a threat to capitalism, baptist christianity, and for a few of them, white supremacy just for being dressed in a black leather jacket and combat boots.
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and, I think you know this, the "debate" we had in the car was that of 18 and 19 year old faux-intellectuals who'd not spent much time away from their homes. i wouldn't have the same conversation now.
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The threat of violence in your situation was pretty real. I just think it wouldn't have manifested itself at all inside the building.
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I was a teenager in Greenville SC, home of Bob Jones University, in the early 90s and we thought it was weird if we didn't get stared at menacingly. I remember once I had to pump the gas on the way to a Sonic Youth show in Atlanta b/c the male driver was wearing a skirt and eyeliner, and there was a pickup truck full of meatheads lingering in the parking lot.
I think most of the beatdowns were administered within the community rather than from outside. They did give a permit for amplified street preaching on the one downtown street with coffee shops that we would hang out in/around. Pretty awful, not just for us but also for the restaurants with outdoor seating...the last time I went back, the best coffee shop was replaced by a Blimpie and the street outside was empty. I think the kids of Greenville still have the Castle at least (the gay club which is the only place to go dancing. you have be 18 though.)
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I can't imagine what growing up in geenville must have been like.
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g-g-g-g-generation gap
That said, my vote's for Blue-Collar Hangout That Gets Shit Sometimes Because Some People Are Goddamned Idiots eg fighting in the parking lot man
Re: g-g-g-g-generation gap
(Anonymous) 2006-10-07 10:40 pm (UTC)(link)It also goes some way to explaining some of the tough-guy lyrics from earlier punk. Not all the way, mind you...
Re: g-g-g-g-generation gap