author: Richard Kadrey
content: "The best restaurants in any town are the ones that are open 24 hours. It\
  \ doesn't matter if the restaurant is clean or attractive, if the food is good or\
  \ even edible. What makes 24-hour places special is that whatever is going on inside\
  \ them at any moment \u2014 eating, crashing from a night high and wild, a secret\
  \ lovers' rendezvous, a drug deal, a traveler getting her bearings in a new town\
  \ \u2014 will continue to go on there until the place burns down or goes out of\
  \ business. These places sell time, not food. All 24-hour restaurants are social\
  \ neutral zones, outside the normal boundaries of time and space, which exist for\
  \ most of us in neatly packaged eight-hour segments: one for sleep, one for work\
  \ and one for life. These diners are the alien bases in our midst. Area 51 with\
  \ curly fries and a Coke."
id: d905d7bf-3a20-4bc1-83f9-f69120196f67