A day in the life of Chicago's Golden Apple
Golden Apple
Originally uploaded by Matt Hamilton
In its 174th episode, This American Life spends 24 hours at The Golden Apple, an all-night diner in Chicago's north side. This is more about the diner's patrons than the diner themselves making The Golden Apple a perfect setting for a show about Chicagoans.
They daytime crowd, older and more sober, are more interesting (and lucid) than the late night drunks. And then there's the bird's eye scene:
"No one's talking much but it's a comfortable silence. When you're up this early it's hard not to feel some sense of community with everyone else who's awake, but you don't necessarily want to talk to them."
Diners after my own heart.
The best stories are told by the old folks who've witnessed the changing faces of the neighborhood over years - the former youngest butcher in Illinois, a harmonica player, the lady who grew to love "the gays", but still admits that race is a problem.
Just as good are the accents, which are enough to make any far flung Chicagoan a little homesick. It makes me want to visit The Golden Apple on a different day, full of different people. Everybody's got a story to tell.
