I want to open a REAL 24 hour diner in Tulsa. Like real cities have. A place where stoned teenagers can hang out and laugh until curfew, a place where drunks can eat after last call, where cops and paramedics can read a paper and get free coffee and bagels, where brow-beaten men can seek shelter after a fight with the old lady after the bars are closed.
A place where the waitresses have up-dos and bad teeth and weathered faces with too much makeup but their figure acented by an apron string and their demeanor still excite you on some deep, carnal level you can't quite understand but you know you like it.
A place that looks like it's from another time, but no pictures of Elvis or Marilyn or chrome everything or red vinyl booths to be found. It'll look like a place a mill worker in the rust belt would have eaten 45 years ago.
A place to celebrate good nights, to pass bad ones, to be alone - to make new friends.
It wil be dingy, but not gross. Just enough to keep most of the yuppie crowd away.
It will be near midtown and downtown so we get the bar crowd, but near 44 or 244 so we get some travelers. By god, if we have room, it'll have truck parking.
If you say "egg whites only" "lox" "veggie" or ask for anything fancier than half and half for your coffee, we'll kick your ass out.
I HAVE A DREAM that one day my children will eat at such a place.
Will you allow Muslims?