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- [Voiceover] Boston is behind the Cheers TV show.
A bar where people could hang out
and just feel like it's their second home.
They could go there.
It wasn't really "I'm hungry" or "I need a drink".
It was "I want to feel welcome".
♫ Cause these are the best days, best days
♫ Perfect in every way
♫ I know I'll be okay, okay
♫ Forget about yesterday ♫
- [Voiceover] Boston native, born and raised
every day of my life.
Can't mess with a great hamburger and french fries.
Mother fuckers come up in here
and get their little eggs and their little bacon
and this type of weird shit,
but you know, I mean, all-American hamburger
and french fries, you know what I'm saying?
You can't, you can't fight with that.
Some of my people call me "H".
Some of my people call me "K".
Some of my people call me a lot of things,
but when I'm dealing with a hamburger from here,
you can call it hamburger, huh?
How about that?
- [Voiceover] I had never been in a diner prior to
walking into South Street Diner.
I had never been in a diner.
As close as I had come to a diner was Woolworth's
which is a five and dime.
Here in Lynn, my mother used to
walk me down in a carriage,
and I'd sit on a stool and I'd spin on a stool.
And she'd say "stop doing that!"
"The manager's going to get mad at you."
And when I bought the diner,
the first day, she came in behind me,
and I said, "see ma, now I can sit on the stool, and spin"
"all I want and the manager can't yell at me anymore."
(rock music)
- [Voiceover] We're coming to the diner today
cause we came yesterday and we liked it so much,
the boys wanted to come back for
a proper American breakfast.
The boys have had pancakes which is
what they really love which we don't
get in England, properly, at all.
- I think that there's a massive difference
between hospitality in America and
hospitality in England.
Here, everyone's friendly and everyone's nice
and everyone says "hello", asks how you are.
In England you don't get that.
The waiter walks out to you really grumpy
and says "what do you want"?
I mean, literally, it's that bad.
- My name is Sean Gross.
I work at the diner.
I'm the longest employee working here.
When you want to have a good time,
and you come here, and I'm here,
you're going to have a good time.
So, you know, you meet people,
they like you, you like them,
and you know, it's an affordable menu.
You know what I mean?
It's not like you gotta put on
your good shoes to come here.
You just stroll on down, you have the meal.
We have fun, we talk, watch Red Sox or something.
And people have a good time.
But I am happy the people like...
- Everyone here is so genuine.
I mean, they're outgoing and friendly
and you can tell that they're not putting it on.
They're just, that's the way they are.
- You don't get this service at IHOP.
- No, you do not.
- I listen to a lot of music, and
I like to guess what songs my guests will like.
Like, I had a party at table one,
and knew they would want to listen to
Robin or some Alicia Keys or some Britney Spears.
Throw some Madonna in there, we're grooving.
Um, I wanted to work here for a while.
I used to be that kid that would come here
after the club and you're wasted.
You wanted to get some food, get your grub on.
I've had a lot of jobs in my time in the city,
and I usually quit or it doesn't work out
and I get terminated, or I quit before they terminate me.
And what I like about Sol so much
is that he sees how cool I am.
He's told me that, and that's why
I feel kind of cocky saying that out loud,
but it makes me appreciate working for him
and makes me want to do a better job at that.
(serene music)
- [Voiceover] This is kind of somehow turning into
a second home for a lot of people,
not just people who live here in the neighborhood,
but other people who might work night shifts,
especially these odd hours
and feel like maybe there's no where else
for them to go and they come here
and they kind of cultivate their own
kind of little sub-culture family.
- [Voiceover] I'm a computational neuro-scientist
which means I view the mind as software,
and I just published my very first book
of science non-fiction, published by Penguin
called "A Billion Wicked Thoughts".
Because I like to do a lot of work at night
after 11 o'clock and there's just nothing
else nearby where I could possibly go
outside of my house and do work.
And so, I like to get out of my house,
and so this is a great place to come,
11 o'clock, midnight, 1 o'clock in the morning
and just sit and do a couple hours of work.
I like the place a lot.
I'm so glad it's here.
I hope it never goes away.
It's just an essential icon of the Leather district
and downtown Boston.
- This is a landmark.
I mean, it's been here for forever.
I mean, I think what, 60-65 years I think.
And yeah, it's always been known,
like the place to go to,
a reliable place to go to to have something to eat.
- When I spoke to one of the original
builders of The Blue Diner,
he told me that he had a family history
in the restaurant business.
His parents ran a restaurant in Boston
called The Blue Kitchen, and then he
and his brother went off to World War II,
and when they came back,
they were looking for something to do.
And so they decided that they would open a diner,
and they found a spot at the corner
of South and Kneeland,
and they somehow came up with a set of plans
to put it together and they and
together with contractors built on site
what is now the South Street Diner
and was originally The Blue Diner
from the 40s all the way through the early 90s.
- Years ago when The Blue Diner,
we'd come here after theater or whatever, you know.
That was kind of iconic.
That was kind of a landmark.
I remember the old leather district,
and I'm 79 so I go back a long way, you know.
But this place has changed radically over the years.
- This is actually my first time here.
My grandfather owned a paper supply store,
and they used to service all the menus
and the place mats and all those things
for many years.
- Blue Diner, 1955 when I started coming to Boston working,
I'd be here almost every morning,
and there was two brothers named Joe and Nick,
and Nick's wife worked here.
They took a little from the mother and father before them.
- The two of them ran it as brothers
and family and when it had a fire in the late 70s,
they decided to just sell and move on,
and they sold the diner to a real estate developer
who held it and was looking for
someone to reopen the diner and renovate it back.
- I, along with Maggie and Susan,
raised some money to open,
reopen The Blue Diner in 1986.
And we did that, I think, in the summer of 86.
- It was an interesting area.
There were a lot of lofts
that were lived in by artists.
There was a lot of empty space.
This used to be a manufacturing neighborhood
that had long since gone south.
It was a seedy, it was just the fringe
of a seedy neighborhood
that needed, you know, some rejuvination
and people considered us crazy,
that we would imagine folks would
walk around this area evenings and weekends.
- The neighborhood itself
was the combat zone.
South Street was predominately gay prostitutes.
The track from South Station
to the New England Medical was
an area that women would walk in
lingerie and high heels and trenchcoats
looking to pick up johns.
The diner had a payphone and they would
come in and call their, their supervisors
to come and pick them up.
And on Sunday nights, their supervisors
would show up in purple suits and feather hats
and canes and full dress regalia.
And it would be the players ball on Sunday nights.
So, finally I realized the easiest way to stop most of this
was to get rid of the payphone.
And then the neighborhood changed
and became more of a, went vacant
and started slowly becoming residential.
And now, we're almost, we started with 50
residents in the neighborhood,
and we have 900 residents in the neighborhood.
- [Voiceover] We know most of the
customers that are going to come in tonight, you know,
and that's a pretty cool thing to have that
that relationship with people.
Like whether you know them personally or not,
like you know them on like,
a customer level, I guess, or like
a business level, but it's like,
it's so nice to see familiar faces
and I think it's important to Boston
since it's such a small city too.
- [Voiceover] I think it's like a landmark,
like it's like, people that have never been here.
You know, like people like "where you work"?
I be like diner on South Street,
and they're like "where is that"?
I'm like, you know, the little hole in the wall
with the teacup up top.
They're like, "yeah!"
So, I think it's just more like a landmark.
- A lot of people think that anybody can open a restaurant,
but it takes an enormous sum of working capital
to carry you through the good times and the bad times.
It's not going to be all good times.
- We was very successful the second, first, second year
and then Harold Realm had this property nextdoor
and he wanted to build another restaurant for us.
And Maggie and Susan who were my
junior partners at the time
really didn't want to expand.
They thought we should leave that alone.
So, I took that opportunity to say,
well, if you're not interested in buying into it now,
then we should part ways.
And we did.
It wasn't happy, but it worked out.
- It was devastating.
- It was heart wrenching.
It was tough.
That was our, kind of our first love.
And so it, it was something that we had to
do a lot of hard work to kind of
leave behind.
- As the early 90s took it's toll,
a lot of people got in trouble.
And as they got in trouble,
they ate more at home, less restaurants.
A lot of restaurants opened between 86 and 92.
And so Dom ended up having to file for
bankruptcy protection,
and eventually the lease went to another operator.
- I made $220 a week for my personal pocket
for 9 years.
And at the end of that, I found out
that I was a half a million dollars in debt.
And even though I personally didn't do it,
I had managers and bookkeepers and everybody else
that were supposed to pay the bills.
I was stuck, I was depressed.
I was stuck because I considered the
management my friends, family.
I felt that they were
and I had no choice because
I couldn't sell it.
I couldn't close it down.
I couldn't walk away.
I had no choice but to fight.
December 5 of 2005, I wiped out all management.
We made it through because it was
that we were broke.
And I worked on that grill
18 hours a day, 7 days a week,
and finally amassed enough permanent revenue,
I paid them off April of this year.
(rock music)
- [Voiceover] My name is Nez Porter.
I do security at the South Street Diner.
Basically I work here from 12 to 5 in the morning
and I do crowd control.
(rave music)
- [Voiceover] My name is Paul Grant.
I was drafted by the Timberwolves,
Minnesota Timberwolves in 97.
Played a couple years there.
Played with the Milwaukee Bucks
and played with the Utah Jazz.
You know, I'd lived in a lot of different cities,
and it seems like the great cities have
a great, kind of historic diner and
for Boston, this is it.
So, I think it's really important for the,
kind of the history of the city.
You gotta have a good greasy spoon 24 hour diner
that's got some character to it.
And the place is kind of legendary.
There's a lot of films being made here in Boston
and on this street and they always choose
the South Street Diner.
- [Voiceover] It was a movie in the late 80s called
"Hiding Out" with Jon Cryer.
And it was prominently featured in that movie
because he was being chased by some bad people
and he's having a meal at the diner
and all of a sudden, he sees them walk in the diner
at the front door and he bolts through,
crashes through the window of the diner
and lands on the street and runs
and has to hide out.
- The diner's a bigger celebrity than any of the old men
as far as I'm concerned.
And it's bigger than me and bigger than
the biggest celebrity that comes in
because it draws, it keeps drawing people
for years upon years.
- Very democratic diner we were.
We took everybody
and you could see suits and you could see cutoffs.
- You know, whether you're rich or you're poor,
you're all treated the same.
I've served Sumner Redstone who owns MTV.
I've served a homeless guy on the corner.
So, it doesn't, you can be rich,
you can be old, you can be young,
you can be
anything in between.
It doesn't matter.
- [Voiceover] It's open 24 hours
and whether you're white or black,
you gotta eat.
- It's so random.
There's no consistency.
You get everybody here.
You get the rich, you get the poor.
You get white, black.
You get hispanic, everything.
You get every mix of everything.
- We just come here, have a good time,
hang out with some, some random folk.
- [Companion] You never know who you're going to meet.
- Yeah, we've never met them before,
but we sat at a table together
because it's yeah.
- We met outside.
They seem like two very nice people.
We wanted to share a booth with them.
- We did.
It's South Street Diner.
They bring people together with good food
and good company.
And it's just a great time.
- [Voiceover] Hey yo!
It's his birthday right here, yo.
- [Voiceover] Wait, it's my birthday!
- [Crowd] Happy birthday.
♫ Happy birthday to you ♫
- [Voiceover] My regulars are my friends.
My friends are my regulars.
It's if they continue to come for a long period of time,
some of them become business associates.
some become personal friends.
They're very special.
They're passionate.
They are very passionate.
They love the diner, they love the waitstaff.
You know, and most of the time,
they like me too.
- Everybody here knows me as Chris the Cabbie
or like half the people here just know me as Cabbie.
I'm a real regular.
I'd say three nights a week.
And now during the daytime,
though I'm working, I usually
like I have my little travel mug
while I'm driving my taxi.
So, I'm usually in here like three times a day,
just for a quick, come in get a cup of coffee
and go out.
You know, Boston doesn't have a lot
of places to go after midnight.
When you get off work at four in the morning,
this is it.
So, like I could not have survived driving
20 years on the night shift without this place.
I've lived here forever.
And I was given the official title,
not by the owner but by the cooks
which is more infinitely important
as Official Diner Transportation Director.
Where everybody knows my name.
I'm a life long non-drinker,
so I guess most people have a bar.
This is, I guess, my equivalent of like that.
Like, I don't drink, I don't go to bars.
So, it's important to have a place
where you're comfortable
where it feels like home, you know.
It's an important thing.
- My main thing is I love waffles,
and this is the only place in town
where I get my waffles.
I won't go anywhere else but here to get my waffles.
I'd say it's one of the main hearts of Boston.
Like, if this were gone, it's like a big cult following.
If it was gone, I could see a whole bunch of people,
revolting and making like petitions,
like you know, "this can't close".
They'll do anything in their power
to keep it here, you know?
- [Voiceover] There's a building across the street,
went all apartments.
It used to be all offices,
and one of the new tenants complained about noise.
So, there was actually a licensing board hearing
that like, the diner might have to close at midnight.
- This was one of the greatest moments of the diner.
It was a miracle.
On July 1st to July 7th, over July 4th weekend in Boston
when everybody goes away,
we were able to get one thousand Boston city residents
to sign a petition in the diner.
Fifteen hundred names were signed online.
And on a Tuesday morning in the
middle of the heart of the summer,
at ten o'clock in the morning,
a 150 people showed up in a room
that held about 30 people chanting
"Save South Street Diner!"
- The guy who filed the original complaint
didn't show up.
He wasn't even at the hearing.
One of the Boston city councilors came in
and read a proclamation from Boston City Council
saying what an institution to the city this diner was.
Like, you know, you got to be kidding me, man.
There's no place else like it.
- Each person got up in front of the committee
to explain what the diner meant to them
from a homeless gentleman to a young girl
that was 19 years old that wanted a safe place to go
to other neighborhood residents.
- It was just this big love fest.
It was really nice to see.
It was beautiful,
and it was nice to see Sol get that
kind of official recognition and
get that seal of approval from like,
the whole city came out to support him.
- And as they said things about me,
that I didn't think I was going to see here til my funeral.
You know, honest fill me in that I was
doing the right thing, that I cared about every customer,
that I cared about my food,
that I cared about the neighborhood,
that I reached out and tried to do
the best thing that I could,
that I was always available for
communication to people.
It meant a lot.
And I was in tears
of humbleness.
I guess, I don't know maybe,
is that a word? Humbleism?
So the diner's customers and regulars
saved the diner.
So, I was pretty proud of that day,
and also my father was there at that time,
and I was pretty, and he was pretty proud of me too.
And he got a chance to hear that before he passed away.
He passed away one month later.
So, that was pretty cool
that he succeeded.
- [Voiceover] There's just like an unwritten rule
that it's no man's land.
No matter who you are,
everybody has a right to a burger at
three in the morning.
I've seen like Mark Wahlberg,
and I've seen Richard Dreyfuss
and Celtics players.
And on the other hand,
like the drag queens from Jacques.
Like, a lot of places they can't go
cause people'll give them a rough time
cause they're weird and different,
but in here, they can come in,
get a burger at three in the morning,
an nobody messes with them.
There need to be certain places like that
where no matter what the surrounding
environment's like, this is a place
where anybody can be whoever they are
an nobody's going to mess with them.
And that's a beautiful thing, you know?
(upbeat music)
- One crazy moment...
I had a customer here.
He was a little crazy, but I'm like,
"alright, I'm going to leave him alone."
And I was by myself so I couldn't,
I didn't want to kick him out,
cause I was scared.
And you know, as everyone started coming in,
we're like "alright, he's starting to act"
"crazy and crazier", we're like, "he got to go."
So, right when we was about to kick him out,
he just like ran outside and stole a cab.
I'm like another customer's cab,
and like crashed it up the street.
And then he comes in the next day,
he's like, "hey can I get something?"
I'm like, "oh no" like "you got to go."
- We used to have a lot of like
drag queens come in here and
they performed at Jacques down the road,
and one night, they came in here
and it was just like, wonderful.
And actually, they're pretty like,
big names now, like in the Boston like drag scene
and they were, they put on Madonna,
and they were like singing and dancing
and like going up to all these like
street, like "yeah, dude" and like
everyone was totally like singing along.
It was really funny.
And then some of like our regular like,
detective, like police officers were here eating
and they got up and were like dancing with them
and it was just hilarious.
- I saw one chick fall on her face right there,
and a guy sitting on the stool,
got off the stool and started humping her.
Both wasted out of their minds.
- I had a table of five guys,
came in at four in the morning,
they said they had to get a plane,
so I get their food in and out,
get them out real quick,
and I go to clear the table,
and as I clear the table, I see this little
notepad, just a little doodle pad,
and I started looking through it and just,
it's little doodles of penises.
It's just dick doodles, just nothing,
and I'm just looking through like, "what?"
So, and I show all the other employees,
like "wow, that's really ridiculous."
And then, half hour later, I'm drawing in it,
I'm just like adding my own dick doodle
to the collection cause I'm bored.
It's five am.
The guy comes back and goes,
"hey, I think I left my notepad..."
And I'm like, "Oh this? Here you go."
And like, and people leave wallets.
People leave cell phones.
You can't leave behind a dick doodle book.
- There is the closing sentence to this whole thing.
And it was brought to me by Jimmy Quirk
who was my teacher in baking.
And he goes, "you know, all of this is a good story".
"But not all good stories are true."
So, "don't let the truth get in front of a good story."
That was his sentence exactly.
But, as far as I remember,
this is a true story.