24/7

The booths at the Lakeview Diner are terrible. The black vinyl seats, cracked by age and vandalism, squeak unfavourably under the heat of your ass. Long hat racks affix themselves like shiny giraffes at the corner of the booths, harkening back to a time where you would take your fedora off before splitting a milkshake with your favourite gal. The building itself shows it's age. The stucco tiled walls are yellow under the grease and the water heaters that steam in the wintertime, the tables are eternally sticky, lacquered from the years of spilt milkshakes. The washrooms are painted with Sharpie ink and look like the sets of every movie about a rockstar junkie. The bar is comfortable, drafty right by the door and often housing a bartender that looks disinterested in making their eightieth four-dollar-mimosa for the day. Outside, it's red, neon light reading "Always Open" beckons to the outsider like a beacon in the window, connoting safety, shelter: "You are welcome, you are here."

I will walk in, greeted by a waiter that is either too friendly, too quirky or too hungover and often times they tell me "where ever I want". I'll make my way over to the far end, around the corner from the waiter's station and plop down to face the windows, getting a clear view of Dundas street through a cloudy window. They know me here, and nine times out of ten, a coffee pot and a small container of cream will make it's way over to me. I'll take my jacket off, pull out a book, take out a pen. And it's in this moment that I am home.

It's the only place in this city that I really feel like home.

This place has been around since I can remember. I remember sitting here during exam season at two in the morning pouring over notes. I remember skipping afternoon classes and sharing milkshakes here in the summertime. There's not a time in my life that I can identify where the diner isn't present. I remember being huddled in during snowstorms to warm up to apple pie and hot coffee. I remember coming here to cry after my heart was broken, or to celebrate its healing.  The eternal answer to hangouts, meet-ups, and everything in between. "So, Lakeview?"

I think I always bring people here because it's always here. It's a slow, constant reminder of the past and how it persists. The Lakeview has been around since the thirties and ran as a twenty-four-seven diner since the forties. Factory workers working the overnight shift would pop by for dinner, and it's been that way ever since. A haven for the sleepless souls that make their way across Dundas or down Ossington, looking for a cheap meal, warmth and maybe just to feel a little less alone in the world. While the general area is filled with countless trendy bars and taverns, dance clubs and boutique shops, leases ending and selling faster than I can keep up, the diner remains the same. And I can understand why.

The diner has become a hub for nostalgia. It's a place we've assigned meaning to through our collective memories and social interactions. I remember my father and I coming here after a trip to the art gallery. My father has never had an interest in art in his life. His idea of good art was eighties action movies and kung-fu movies.  We couldn't be two more different people if we tried. We aimlessly roamed the halls of the Art Gallery, stopped for lattes and drip coffee in the galleria upstairs. I never leave without seeing Monet's Vétheuil en été. We stopped on our way out for one more look. I made him walk the way from the gallery to the diner. A half-hour in balmy November air. We walked in, I lead him to a booth and we quietly danced around our differences before he simply asked me to tell him why I liked that painting so much. It was nice to know that he could still surprise me. Maybe it was the coffee, maybe it was the deep-fried mac 'n' cheese balls, but I decided to indulge him. We sat and discussed the merits of impressionism for a half-hour.

Diners always seemed to be a key setting, a representation of collaboration and connection. Much like what Le Corbusier attempted to do with his social condensing housing, diners do organically. They bring together people of all different spheres into one place. Some come for the food, the atmosphere, the nostalgia, but they all come. And they're all here. Think about pop culture: Tarantino starts Pulp Fiction with a conversation that leads to a diner being robbed, Meg Ryan has an orgasmically delicious sandwich in When Harry Met Sally, Jimmy and Henry's meeting in Goodfellas. Child Gambino picks one as his set for the "Sweatpants" video, Pop's from the Archie comics where the gang met for milkshakes and burgers. It's not just a restaurant. It's a place that the general population has collectively named an institution. It's a place where ideas and people collide. Mix in some good food, some decent music, and you've got yourself a hotbed of connections.

I meet people here to discuss sketch or poetry. I'll meet people here after comedy shows, plays. We'll discuss everything from our views on post-modern artists to the latest gossip from Hollywood. I'll come here to discuss Hemingway but to also have a cry with my sister. Milkshakes and meltdowns. Highbrow meets lowbrow in this place. Pretention meets blue-collar colloquialisms and that's what makes diner's special. As the city becomes more fragmented - into social classes, enclaves, everything - it's socially condensing spaces like the diner that becomes necessary to bond and connect.

The Lakeview, then, is more than just a place to get an infamous apple pie milkshake. It’s a place where the public can come to make memories, experience the nostalgia, live the memories and experiences of those they once loved, idolized, and perpetuate the need and growth of ideas. It becomes a catalyst for interaction within the growing isolation within the confines of the cityscapes. Great ideas, zeitgeist shifting movements begin in places like the Lakeview. And it's bathed in red neon light from the window, with a bottomless cup of coffee and my purple pen that I open my notebook and begin to conceive of ideas that might just alter the course of history.