Inspired by a conversation with a friend about how specific moments in your life come to be associated with certain songs, and viceversa. Call it the Soundtrack Syndrome. Here's a story of one of those moments.

Song: "Lodi" by Creedence Clearwater Revival
Scene: a living room in Oceanside, California
Year: 1989

Introduction/Background

Chuck liked to drink. My girlfriend, Carmen, called him "El Borracho". She was twenty-one, several months older than I was, and working as a live-in nanny to Chuck, his two little boys, and his petite and mousy wife who was about 7 months pregnant with their third child. Carmen was from Tijuana and had no legal papers to work on this side of the border, so under-the-table nanny work was a good way to go. She had her own room in their small 3-bedroom house in a faded 60s-era housing tract in Oceanside, California. It was late spring of 1989.

Their street as it looks today (via Google street view)

While it's true that Chuck was something of a drunk, he was a happy drunk and a nice enough guy. He was tall, in his early-to-mid thirties and had collar-length brown hair. For employment, he did some minor construction and set-up for events or conventions or something. He said it was good money and he used to talk about maybe getting me a job with him. I'd just quit Wendy's after working there for longer than I care to admit and I'd found a new job working for a small family business making sandals in a garage down in Leucadia near where I shared an apartment with a buddy from high school. I was making less than $5 an hour and I could have used a little boost in income but I really didn't want anything to do with Chuck other than to drive up to his house once a week to steal Carmen away on her day off.

A Long Day of Twists and Turns

One weekend, Chuck got us all to go along on a trip up to the mountains. His brother "had a place" near Julian that we could use for the day. I'd assumed that because it was his idea, he'd do the driving or that at least we'd be taking separate cars. Instead, I ended up driving all six or us -four adults and two little kids- in my '74 AMC Javelin two-door that got about 12 miles to the gallon.

My '74 AMC Javelin/AMX. Taken in 1991, just before I sold it for $700

After 60 miles on Highway 78 (the final stretch of it on twisty mountain roads), we arrived at Chuck's brother's house to find we had no way to get in. Keys were supposed to have been left somewhere and they weren't there. Despite a subsequent pissed-off call to his brother from a pay phone, we never did get in. But the house had a big deck overlooking miles of rolling, piney hills and we spent a little while there before going into town for something else to do and where Chuck could get some beer.

For the long drive back down the mountain we took our time, stopping to eat in Ramona where Chuck had more beer. I had little interest in alcohol back then and it was now pretty clear why I was doing the driving that day. True to character, Chuck stayed fairly upbeat as he grew more intoxicated. Still, the disappointment of the house, the length of the day and the chaotic conditions in the car presented a challenge to keeping up the mood. Aside from a flash of annoyance from me when one of the boys kicked the car out of gear while he was being passed between Carmen in the front seat and his parents in the back, we managed to get back to Oceanside without incident.

Arriving Back Home (Here's Where "Lodi" Comes In)

It was early evening when we walked in through the door of their little house. A couple lights were switched on and the fridge door swung open for more beer. Chuck lumbered into the living room where the lights were still off and he flipped on the stereo. It was dialed in to KLOS, the classic rock station out of LA, and he cranked it up. A familiar song filled the room with an insistent chug-a-chug rhythm under twangy guitars before the singer came in and reminded me of exactly what song we were listening to;

Just about a year ago
I set out on the road
Seekin´ my fame and fortune
Lookin´ for a pot of gold
Things got bad and things got worse
I guess you know the tune
Oh Lord, Stuck in ol' Lodi again

It was Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Lodi." I knew the song from a CCR album I had at home, but I'd never really felt the song until just then. This time, the ache in John Fogerty's vocal and the desolation in the lyrics were palpable. The song went on, telling a tale of unfulfilled promise. There were lines about losing connections, plans falling through, running out of money and finally, in the last verse, a desperate wish to just go home and be done with it all:

If I only had a dollar
For every song I´ve sung
And every time I had to play
While people sat there drunk
You know, I´d catch the next train
Back to where I live
Oh Lord, I´m stuck in ol' Lodi again

The sadness in Fogerty's voice as it contrasted with the buoyant and assertive sound of the rhythm section fit the weary mood in the house. Still the life of the party, Chuck grabbed his pregnant little wife and cozied up to her as if on a dance floor. She smiled shyly under his affections as he put his hand on her basketball belly and declared loudly;

"Honey, I can't wait till you're skinny again!"

I was in a local 99-cent store the other day when this familiar kernal of wisdom descended from somewhere in the ceiling:

"Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact, it's cold as hell. And there's no one there to raise them...if you did."

Thank you, Sir Elton. Thank you.

It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and the look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

This is the opening paragraph of Raymond Chandler’s first novel, The Big Sleep (1939). This is the kind of writing that can make you forget you’re reading pulp fiction.

Raymond Chandler was essentially the guy who invented the hard-boiled, world-weary, first-person narrative style that came to define the pulp fiction detective novel genre. Chandler’s protagonist is Detective Philip Marlowe. He’s the kind of character that Garrison Keillor parodies with his Guy Noir: Private Eye radio sketches. (If you want to know more you can go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Chandler)

The colorful -and sometimes puzzling- similes jump out at you. It’s a hallmark of his style. Here are three I found just flipping back through The Little Sister (1949), the Chandler book I read most recently and the one that’s fresh in my mind.

- Her voice was as cool as boarding-house soup -

- The smell of old dust hung in the air as flat and stale as a football interview -

- She looked almost as hard to get as a haircut -

A few longer passages from the book struck me as exceptionally fine writing…again, considering that it’s pulp fiction.

Marlowe knocks on a door in a Hollywood apartment complex. A woman opens and is considering whether or not to let the detective in:

“Your name?” Her voice froze on the second word, like a feather taking off in a sudden draft. Then it cooed and hovered and soared and eddied and the silent invitation of a smile picked delicately at the corners of her lips, very slowly, like a child trying to pick up a snowflake.

cover art by Boyle

His stories are all set in Los Angeles and places within driving distance of it. At the beginning of Chapter 13, Detective Philip Marlowe is in a foul mood and he’s going for a long evening drive to try to clear his head:

Fast boys in stripped-down Fords shot in and out of the traffic streams, missing fenders by a sixteenth of an inch, but somehow always missing them. Tired men in dusty coupés and sedans winced and tightened their grip on the wheel and ploughed on north and west towards home and dinner, an evening with the sports page, the blatting of the radio, the whining of their spoiled children and the gabble of their silly wives. I drove past the gaudy neons and the false fronts behind them, the sleazy hamburger joints that look like palaces under the colors, the circular drive-ins as gay as circuses with the chipper hard-eyed carhops, the brilliant counters, and the sweaty greasy kitchens that would have poisoned a toad. Great double trucks rumbled down over Sepulveda from Wilmington and San Pedro and crossed towards the Ridge Route, starting up in low-low from the traffic lights with a growl of loins in the zoo. 

Decades later, these same drive-in restaurants and neon façades that Chandler depicts as cheap and showy (and that were probably fairly new at the time) would come to be seen as the last remnants of a classic era in Los Angeles history; the 1940s–50s. This is the period that transformed Los Angeles from a city with an extensive streetcar system into the city of the personal automobile. People today fight to save these old places and they mourn their loss when efforts to save fail. During the years I lived in L.A. (2004-2011), the Googie-style diners with their stone & glass fronts and jutting, peaked rooflines gave character to the city. The 50s-era roadside motels with neon signage were a treat to the eye at night.

Examples of Googie style architecture abound on the internet, but to use a more self-serving link, here's the video I made for "Silver Moon Motel" for which I drove around and shot some of these places:

(click photo to watch the video)

Two more scenes from The Little Sister. Both take place when Detective Marlowe is alone in his office. One is darkly amusing and the other gives a heavy impression of isolation verging on depression:

On the first page of the novel:

I had been stalking the bluebottle fly for five minutes, waiting for him to sit down. He didn't want to sit down. He just wanted to do wing-overs and sing the prologue to Pagliacci. I had the fly swatter poised in midair and I was all set. There was a patch of bright sunlight on the corner of the desk and I knew that sooner or later that was where he was going to light. But when he did, I didn't even see him at first. The buzzing stopped and there he was. And the phone rang.

I reached for it inch by inch with a slow and patient left hand. I lifted the phone slowly and spoke into it softly: "Hold the line a moment, please."

I laid the phone down gently on the brown blotter. He was still there, shining and blue-green and full of sin. I took a deep breath and swung. What was left of him sailed across the room and dropped to the carpet. I went over and picked him up by his good wing and dropped him into the wastebasket.

"Thanks for waiting," I said into the phone.

Much later in the story, things are going badly for the detective. His renegade methods have crossed local law enforcement and he may be looking at time behind bars if he doesn’t figure a way out for himself:

The office was empty again. No leggy brunettes, no little girls with slanted glasses, no neat dark men with gangster's eyes.

I sat down at the desk and watched the light fade. The going-home sounds had died away. Outside the neon signs began to glare at one another across the boulevard. There was something to be done, but I didn't know what. Whatever it was it would be useless. I tidied up my desk, listening to the scrape of a bucket on the tiling of the corridor. I put my papers away in the drawer, straightened the pen stand, got out a duster and wiped off the glass and then the telephone. It was dark and sleek in the fading light. It wouldn't ring tonight. Nobody would call me again. Not now, not this time. Perhaps not ever.

I put the duster away folded with the dust in it, leaned back and just sat, not smoking, not even thinking. I was a blank man. I had no face, no meaning, no personality, hardly a name. I didn't want to eat. I didn't even want a drink. I was the page from yesterday's calendar crumpled at the bottom of the waste basket.

Things can only get better from there, right?

It’s Saturday afternoon in front of Van Gogh’s Starry Night at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. A rotating throng of about 20 people, interchangeable in their giddy & chatty demeanor, swarm around the painting. Most of them are holding up their phone cameras to the work. People take turns posing next to the painting. It’s constant photography.

Is this Starry Night or the baby Panda? Is this a world-class art museum or a zoo? How can I focus on the painting itself when every 5-10 seconds somebody’s head pops up next to the frame grinning back in my direction? (“Oh, pardon me, am I blocking your shot?”)

A visit to an art museum is an opportunity to be inspired, humbled, moved or fascinated by the works of art themselves. The way this works is to get a few quiet moments alone with, say, a painting and to let something in its essence commune with something of your own essence. (Here’s where I fall into various clumsy, clichéd or highfalutin-sounding phrases about letting the art ‘speak to you’, blah, blah. Like all things having to do with spiritual enrichment or soulfulness, it’s better done intuitively than written about analytically.)

In years past, anyway, I was able to make my museum visits early in the day on weekdays when the crowds were way down and there were no distractions, no noises, no heads in the way. It was on days like these that I was able to have my little “moments” with the works of Degas, Monet and Renoir (and even some other greats who’s names don’t end with a silent consonant). While I’ve always known that this ability to focus would be impossible at a major tourist draw on a Saturday afternoon, the spectacle I observed in front of Starry Night was a new low for me in my experiences as an occasional museum-goer.

First, I always thought there was a no-photography rule at art museums. I missed the day that went out the window. Maybe in the age of the cell phone camera they found it was impossible to stem the rising tide. Or maybe there’s something about digital photography that’s fundamentally different from film, I don’t know. Once cameras are involved, though, it’s all over. Contemplation, stillness, reverence… wait, forget reverence. Just simple respect is defeated and we’re reduced to a bunch of yahoos taking souvenir shots of our own faces next to some-famous-thing-like-any-other-famous-thing.

Secondly, I have to wonder what drives this universal compulsion. Is it a sense of personal grandiosity…like, ”my face rightfully belongs in the same frame with Starry Night, dammit!”, or is it the opposite? Is it an attempt to defeat that nagging sense of personal insignificance we might feel when confronted with something that’s significant, whether it’s Starry Night or the Grand Canyon?

I’m probably thinking too hard about it.

Most likely it’s much more casual and utilitarian than that. It’s a routine souvenir photo to be displayed briefly to friends and family and then discarded, like the memory of the visit itself. I shudder to imagine how many Facebook pages must have been updated last night (and every night) with that same photo of [insert-my-face-here] next to Van Gogh’s masterwork.

(Light bulb illuminates, fingers snap)

Come to think of it, that would make for a fascinating art exhibit in itself. Imagine a photo collection of hundreds of different faces, belonging to people from all over the world, just standing there grinning, smirking, beaming back at you from Starry Night.

Now, I’d pay to see that.

On Tuesday morning, I think it was, or maybe Monday...just before the news broke that Levon Helm was in his final hours, I got home from work and picked The Last Waltz off of the DVD shelf. It was about the half-dozenth time or so that I've watched this great Scorcese-directed concert film of The Band's farewell concert in 1976.

Levon Helm in 1976 (still from The Last Waltz)

Most of the guys in The Band are charismatic in this film. There's a palpable sense of their being in their prime in spite of the fact that this was their official swan song. Robbie Robertson (guitarist); Good-looking and self-consciously cool...the storyteller and muted-note soloist. Rick Danko (bassist/singer); floppy and boyish, singing with convincing yearning on "It Makes No Difference." Garth Hudson (organist); The musical mad scientist who barely speaks in the film and when he does it's with a stiff, under-the-breath muttering that somehow comes off as humble and dignified. Richard Manuel (multi-instrumentalist/singer); A little weird. Something sneaky and odd about his demeanor, but he provides comic relief nonetheless.

Then there's Levon Helm (drummer/singer). He stands out by virtue of being the only American in a band of Canadians. Not just an American but an American Southerner, who's presence in The Band authenticates all the Smithsonian-like Americana in their lyrics.

The Band was not a star-driven band like the Stones or the Beatles. They had no John Lennon or Keith Richards or Mick Jagger. They were very much a sum-of-their-parts outfit. Their music was workmanlike and drew it's strength from sepia-toned folklore and just good, competent playing.

Drummers who sing are especially endearing. When the guy on stage with the most physically demanding job goes the extra mile to use up even more precious lung power to tell us something, then there's a sense that this guy must really have something to say. (How else do we explain the success of Night Ranger's "Sister Christian"?).

Levon gave an impression of real commitment in the way he performed. His twisted, shoulder-to-the-grindstone body position and his eyes-shut-tight grimace is captivating. In The Last Waltz there's a nice interview scene shot outdoors at night with crickets chirping in which he talks about his early musical experiences back in Arkansas. He looks and sounds more like an old-school NASCAR driver than a rock star. (And ironically the new-school NASCAR drivers of today come off more as rock stars than a lot of rock stars).

So I watched this film and went to sleep. Later that night when I read that Levon Helm was at death's door, it affected me more than I would have expected and over the last couple of days I keep hearing that voice in my head and I keep seeing that gleam in his eye. I feel funny writing this stuff because it's not like I knew him personally and it's not like I'm even a great fan of The Band. I respect them and I respected him.

I saw his daughter Amy perform with her band, Ollabelle, at the Living Room a few times back around 2000/01 and she struck me as having that same quality of humble earnestness. I didn't know at the time that she was Levon Helm's daughter.

(Rick Diamond/Getty Images)

Somehow Levon Helm represents the everyman musician. In particular the everyman musician of his generation, which is also my parents' generation. Mick Jagger represents the flamboyant frontman and when he dies he'll take that with him. Keith Richards represents the prototype rock guitarist that so many have emulated. When he dies, he'll take that with him. Bob Dylan represents the original idiosyncratic rock poet and when he dies he'll take that with him.

I have this feeling that Levon took a bigger chunk with him by virtue of representing all of us somehow.

T.S. Eliot

I have trouble with poetry. It's the foundation of what I do as a lyricist, yet so often when I try to read poetry, whether classic or contemporary, I just can't connect with it. The language often comes accross to me as ethereal, pretentious and removed from daily experience. Maybe it's my problem, I don't know. But I'm always happy to find a poem that I can connect with on first reading.

So, on the occassion of a freakish cold snap that started out yesterday morning as rain and ended up as a late-October snowstorm that lasted all day, as if Fall has been cancelled this year, I share with you a poem by T.S. Eliot that I stumbled upon in a book this morning.

It may be set in Boston where he went to school or it may be set in London where he was living at the time this piece was published. No matter, it feels like a city anywhere I suppose.

Preludes I

The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o'clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney pots,
And at a corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

And then the lighting of the lamps.

T.S. Eliot
(1917)

I've posted 5 new songs for free download. They're free because they're the first new songs I've written since 2007 and I want to just go ahead and complete the cycle of write-record-release without having to get wrapped up in a new album project right now.

The recordings are straight-ahead solo acoustic performances, just guitar & vocal with no overdubs. It's a quieter approach this time and I've found that these songs work best late at night or very early in the morning, or maybe on cloudy & rainy days. These are the conditions under which the songs were written, after all. Don't take 'em to the gym or to the park on a sunny day...it won't work!

Each song title is also is a link to a lyric sheet that includes a little blurb about each song.

Songs are here. I hope you enjoy!

I’m moving back to New York this week after 7 years in L.A. When I get settled on the other coast I’ll finish mixing those 5 new songs I promised some months ago and I’ll post them here for download.

I was in a certain mega-bookstore chain this morning (doesn’t matter which chain…there are only 2 left in the world and they’re both the same) when I heard a song playing on the in-store sound system that convinced me that the end of Western civilization is indeed at hand.

It was one of those cut-and-paste, let’s-take-a-very-famous-oldie-hit-and-put-fresh-“beatz”-under-the-original-vocal-track-of-the-rock/jazz/soul-icon-and-call-it-Art (and make lotsa $$$) sorta things. Kinda like what Kenny G did to Louis Armstrong and what some other low-lifes did to Billie Holiday…but only worse.

This was Elvis Presley’s original vocal track for his version of “Blue Suede Shoes” put to, yes, a crazy new beat but also to some real cheese-smokin’, hot harmonica licks and –I kid you not- scratching. You know, like you used to hear on Run-DMC records 25 years ago?

I only just heard this abomination today but I realize, especially when I consider the scratch-scratch overdubs, that it’s quite possible that this thing was released years -if not decades- ago and that I’d simply managed, through the grace of a kind and merciful God in heaven, to escape the mind-numbing pointlessness of this particular exercise in cultural destruction through bad taste and lack of originality.

There’s something deeply ironic about the fact that a dead singer’s stern warning not to step on his blue suede shoes somehow inspires the guilty party to go one step further and to actually s#!t on his blue suede shoes…and for all to hear! The only bright spot here is that Carl Perkins, the guy who wrote “Blue Suede Shoes,” is spared the indignity of having his own fine version sullied.

At this point I should say two things:

1) I realize that a simple Google search will reveal exactly who committed this atrocity and when, but I’m deliberately delaying that discovery so as to allow myself the freedom to express without prejudice what I feel is the appropriate amount of derision.

It’s possible that I’d discover any number of mitigating factors which could make me less angry and convince me not to write this post. I might find that the artist, producer or artist/producer behind this has met with a tragic and untimely death and I would then see that he was merely a flawed human being like myself doing his best to get along in the world. I might also find that it’s part of a benefit album and that sales go to help stop something horrific like breast cancer, starvation, torture, genocide or American Idol. Or I might find that it’s a famous and well-loved artist/producer in which case I’d be asking for nasty comments.

But I doubt it. There’s just something very self-serving and desperate about taking the Mona Lisa, adding your own little brush strokes to it and then presenting it as yours. That’s a fair comparison, I think. (Wow. Come to think of it, that’s actually been done…a lot!)

2) I  realize that I’m breaking the unwritten rule that an artist, especially an “unknown” artist, should never publicly criticize another artist’s work lest he should appear either snobbish, envious, judgmental or bitter...not to mention the bad karma that certainly comes to the artist who does anything other than pretend that he thinks all other artists “rock.” It’s that thing about how people who live in glass houses (and I do) shouldn’t throw stones.

My answer is that this unwritten rule doesn’t apply when the artist in question makes no attempt at originality and goes so far as to use someone else’s legendary voice as a Trojan horse to get people to listen to his own “voice”…which in this case appears to be the above-mentioned cheese-smokin’ harmonica licks. Also, I can indeed be snobbish, envious, judgmental or bitter at times and I might as well cop to it.

Why is any of this important? Because at a time when it seems like everything’s been done and when Western Civilization is evidently out of ideas, stuff like this is just salt on the wounds. It pains me to think that some kids out there will come to think that this is Elvis Presley singing “Blue Suede Shoes” and they won’t know (or care about) the difference.

Before leaving the store I decided I’d go over to the music section and, with a quizzical look on my face and my finger pointed up toward the source of the sound, ask the salesperson something like, “Who’s making Elvis turn in his grave?” or “Who is this…so I know who to blame”? But when I got there I saw that it was a young gal…maybe 30 at the most and I just didn’t want to be that jerk after all. So I walked out of the store in defeat.

I’ll find the answer to the question of who stepped on his blue suede shoes and I’ll add it below as an update. Hopefully it won’t make me regret posting this!

UPDATE: Wow, I didn't see this coming. The culprit is Cirque du Soleil and the track is part of some Elvis tribute extravaganza called Viva Elvis that's currently playing at a resort hotel in Vegas. And there are actually 11 tracks more of this rehash on the soundtrack album! Out of new ideas indeed.

A few months ago I got caught up in the mystery of the diner that inspired the iconic Edward Hopper painting Nighthawks. Did it exist? If so, where exactly was it? Was the building demolished or was it still standing?

Nighthawks by Edward Hopper (1942)

There were some long-held assertions and assumptions out there about the location that didn’t stand up to scrutiny. The only real evidence to go on was that Hopper said in an interview that the diner was on Greenwich Avenue in New York City. He also claimed that he took liberties by simplifying the scene and by painting the diner as larger than it was in real life…which means that it wouldn’t even look the same if someone were to find it! But Greenwich Avenue is only about 9 short blocks long, so you’d think it would be easy to find the little joint that inspired the painting, right?

Wrong.

At the time, I linked to Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York because he’d taken the lead in doing some additional legwork and research after some back-and-forth between he, myself and another blogger named Teri Tynes. Jeremiah posted a week-long series that managed to capture the obsessive/addictive aspects of the Nighthawks hunt. While beautifully written and informative, it ultimately failed to reach a conclusion about the location of the diner. The problem was not so much that there weren’t enough possibilities…there were too many. Between old photos of now-demolished buildings and the buildings that are still standing today, you could picture that diner in about a dozen different spots.

Oh well, that was fun. Time to let that one go, I thought. But then another possible location popped up when I wasn’t even looking for it.

Just a couple weeks ago, my wife and I were watching a great old film called Blast of Silence. It’s a stark, black & white, noir sort of thing about a hit man in New York City. It was filmed in 1959, almost 20 years after Hopper painted Nighthawks. In one scene, the hit man is trailing someone around the streets of Greenwich Village after leaving the Village Gate nightclub on Bleecker. Suddenly, the camera pans past a tiny corner diner that looks a helluva lot like Nighthawks. Check out these screenshots from the film:

screenshots from Blast of Silence (actors Larry Tucker and Allen Baron) 

Big windows that allow a through-the-corner view? Check. Round stools with no backs? Check. Rounded counter? Check. No tables or booths? Check. Staff dressed in white with little pointy hats? Check. Men in fedoras looking pensive? Check.

No redhead in a red dress, though.

Keep in mind that Blast of Silence was a low-budget film and that these are not extras in the background and the diner is not a set. This is how this particular corner on this particular New York City street looked on that night in 1959 when they shot the scene.

Because I have some kind of history-geek disorder, evidently, that compels me to pursue these kinds of things, I decided I would find out where that corner diner was and whether it could have been the Nighthawks diner. I followed some clues in the film (reflections in the windows, numbers on storefronts, and business names) and discovered that, lo and behold, this the Southeast corner of W. 8^th Street & 6^th Avenue…right where Greenwich Avenue begins just on the opposite side of the intersection.

But so what? The painting was made 20 years earlier. What are the chances that it looked the same in 1941? The answer to that question came from New York Public Library’s online photo collection. I found a 1939 photo of that corner that shows it to be a Nedick’s, which was/is evidently a hot dog chain.

1939 shot of Nedick’s at SE corner of 6^th Ave & W. 8^th St., NYC

This is what was there in Hopper’s day and the building was only a few years old when this shot was taken. (The previous building had been demolished for the burial of the 6^th Avenue subway sometime in the mid-30s). The annoying difference between the 1939 Nedick’s storefront and the 1959 diner in the film is the lack of that distinctive 45-degree angle entrance from the corner. Hopper’s painting shows no entrance there (in fact it shows no entrance at all), so Nedick’s could work. That alteration to the building must have been made sometime after Nedick’s but before the film. Either that or the building on that site was demolished yet again after standing for less than 20 years…which is entirely possible in New York City.

Incidentally, this little diner/hot dog stand is now part of the Barnes & Noble store that currently stands on that corner. A second story was added sometime in the 70s or 80s (someone out there probably knows) and several different storefronts were combined to become what is now Barnes & Noble. (One of those storefronts, as seen in the film, is Marboro Books, a chain which was bought by Barnes & Noble at some point in their history).

Current SE Corner of 6^th Ave & W. 8^th St. as seen in Google Maps street view

Ultimately this is all just another “what if” to join the other what ifs in the Nighthawks mystery, but if I ever walk into that B&N again it'll be fun (and weird) to picture those old men in fedoras sitting at the rounded counter in the little restaurant that I now know was once there.

UPDATE (1/9/11): A reader has pointed out in his comment below that photographs (at www.robertotter.com) show a Nedick's on that corner as late as 1962/1964...meaning that the "diner" in the film is indeed Nedick's. This leads me to believe that what we see in the film (screenshots above) is most likely what Edward Hopper saw when he walked past that corner (as he must have many, many times...as his studio was only a few blocks away) twenty years earlier. In my own mind, I'm satisfied that this is very likely the place that inspired the Nighthawks painting.

Though that could very well be wrong (!) and there's almost no way to prove it at this point.

(I can't provide a direct link to the specific Robert Otter photos of Nedick's because the website is very right-protected. There's one on the first "gallery" page of the site. Another is on the 9th page)

Update II (5/24/13): A methodical and detailed search by Bob Egan is here. Very well done and much more reasoned than my own post above.