quasigeek said: Maybe I’m too “northern,” but my southern friend dragged me to Waffle House once and I was like… okay… it’s a diner. I love me some diners, but I didn’t get it. (man, I wanna go to a diner now.)
you are totally missing the point my friend
reasons waffle house is not just a diner:
the ambiance. i don't know how they keep it so consistent across geographic areas, etc, but every waffle house has this delightful, slightly-greasy atmosphere, a shitty jukebox (featuring the OFFICIAL WAFFLE HOUSE SONG), lots of random and delightful locals who you will inevitably either fiercely peoplewatch OR strike up strange conversations with (esp the latter if you're going to waffle house at my favorite time, The Bars Just Closed O'Clock), delightfully sardonic and/or cheeky staff, and also like zero fucks given about what you do with your life, so you can just chill in a window seat reading/writing/etc for hours and hours, unlike that fucking hipter starbucks and/or coffeeshop shit where they start looking at you like you're rude or something
some of my favorite recurring characters at waffle house: teenagers smoking cigarettes and trying desperately to look cool drinking coffee for hours in the corner, sketchy drunk dude wearing mardi gras beads for no apparent reason and holding one-person dance parties, cops at the end of their shift talking shit about the police department, probably drug dealers, definitely drug dealers, drunk bros who will happily bro with you if you exchange high-fives
also like. 24 hours. i know like nyc has 24hr shit but BOSTON TOTALLY DID NOT and let me tell you basically the most horrified i'd ever been was when someone explained to me that ihop closes between 4 and 6am. i was all "WHAT DO YOU DO IF YOU ARE HUNGRY BETWEEN FOUR AND SIX AM," and they were all "shrug, eat some chips or something" and then i was just >:O because CHIPS ARE NOT THE SAME AS SMOTHERED & COVERED HASH BROWNS WTF
(that 24 hour thing is a lie sometimes, though, i once went to a waffle house that they had to close for like an hour because someone got shot and they had to mop up the blood. but if there's not a huge puddle of human blood on the ground i assure you that waffle house is there for you. incidentally that waffle house was like def my favorite waffle house ever a+ would go again)
...rereading this now it occurs to me that these arguments are perhaps not especially persuasive.
but perhaps it explains the strange logic of its appeal a bit :P