STILL LIFE AT THE 11th STREET DINER
At the 1950’s style, chromium-sheathed 11th Street Diner, on the corner of Washington Avenue in downtown Miami Beach, the short-order cook looks like Samuel L. Jackson would look, if he were playing a short-order cook in a 1950’s style, chromium-sheathed diner in downtown Miami Beach. Except the white’s of this cook’s eyes are permanently bloodshot and inflamed, from the long hours spent working in the hot fat and steam-filled atmosphere of the diner’s kitchen.
The 11th Street Diner is just around the corner from the Wolfsonian Foundation, the home of Miami Beach’s biggest collection of Art Deco. On a slack Saturday lunchtime in April, there are still more people in the diner than there are in the museum. Perhaps the people here prefer to live out their heritage in realtime, rather than view it through the toughened glass of museum exhibit cases.
As I eat, I hear the short-order cook speaking into his mobile phone, he is interceding on behalf of one of his customers, remonstrating with her boyfriend that he is not paying the mother of his child the respect she deserves. On the diner’s sound system American Woman by The Guess Who is playing.