Nighthawks - Edward Hopper

Part of the Chicago neighborhood where I grew up.

Here's the OB Diner from my teen years.

Originally just the airstream on the right, they added that new fancy section later on. The big choice when you showed up was "you wanna eat in the old part or the new?"

When I last went to NJ a few years back, I ate a Taylor Ham sandwich there.
Poor choice.

It's still open and going strong, I should have gotten what the people next to me where having.



Today it looks like this...

Here's the lest side of their menu...


(note: photos are for suggestion only - actual platters may appear different )

We went to the Ollie Hammond's on La Cienega (Los Angeles). Steak and eggs, just the thing at three in the morning after a night of dancing at the Ambassador.

Is that the Candlelight on Western just south of Howard?

Right! That is exactly where it is.

So, some of us have hoppered.

Big Hopper fan here, chai.
Love his paintings!

I don't find Nighthawks depressing, either. I love the sense of place & how the people exist in that fleeting moment of time in that place. The moody atmosphere .....
It has an almost (film) "noirish" feel to me, like some of the great Hollywood b/w classics ... Bogart, John Garfield, Edward G Robinson, James Cagney, Orson Wells, Robert Mitchum, etc ..
(used to love watching those old movies on tv!)




What I love about Nighthawks (& many of his other paintings) is how Hopper has captured a particular moment, the stillness of it, so perfectly ...
How each person is so engrossed in that moment, often lost in their own thoughts, or what they are doing, totally oblivious to anything else. I like how his people are not "posed", or even aware of being watched. They very rarely look out, they're enveloped in their own world, totally introspective.
Like these people. (ha, a perfect opportunity to post just a few of my other favourites! )







...

A really great movie. Growing up in the Balto-Wash area we had hundreds of diners to choose from. They all had that forlorn forgotten Airstream trailer look.

The one in our neighborhood was built in the 30's in a factory in New Jersey and then transported to Lee Highway in Fairfax Virginia





...as it looks today



My favorite 4 am snack: Roast beef slices on white bread drowning in gravy.