Only shitty weather. Only old Polish lady junkstores, second-hand city attitudes, and bone diner signs. I don't know about you, but broken diner signs make me believe in some kind of near-sighted, yellow-toothed, tobacco-smelling God, even when I don't want to. Those signs that are bigger than the restaurant is, and shaped like a grease-dripping spoon if you bent it with your mind like the velvet and sequined telekinetic you are; drunk in tri-color neon halfway burned emerald "RESTA", violet "OFFE".

My favorite signs say "fountain'". FOUNTAIN. Think of that. Behind the torn vinyl booths with lumpy sugar and the ketchup going black, there's a liquid curtain of sparkling Coca-Cola that falls over dirty knives and cream pitchers and cracked ashtrays. The spray is sweet on your lips, sticky to the touch; caramel mist.

Beyond the carbonated fountain, neon gleams entire words in archaic colors. A pianos plays paper-roll ragtime. It's Second-Hand City Diner, babe. It never closes. NEVER CLOSES. The all-night caffeine; the city where we all live.

The friends you never wrote to and never called until you lost that address book and started going by your middle name are all going to be there, even if someone last saw her in Central Iowa trailing the rainbow people and bagging groceries at the A&P. She's going to be there. Talking your old private talk and wearing those skirts, and still shop-lifting and never getting caught. She's saving you the back booth.

And there won't be any government there. We'll sit around and gossip about how the suburbs have been squatted by homeless schizophrenics now and "ain't it a shame?"

Some of the people you see will already be dead. But it's ok. It's not like here where the dead won't stop dying. More like-- won't stop having been doing the things that made you so crazy and angry will never listen like they didn't to me say why don't stop drinking go back to school stop wasting your life at that crummy job love only me.

No, second-hand city diner (never closes) will have cooperative-type dead people. They will be in charge of forgiving sins, re-filling creamers, and handing you a soda to wipe off the soda-pop.

And your ex-lover is in charge of getting the coffee, which is only fair considering all you did for him.

And you - you are in charge of booking the bands.

Second-hand city diner, kid. NEVER closes. Never CLOSES. Come on in. Have an omelet that tastes like rubber chickens laid the eggs. More coffee, honey?

Linger. Ask for a job. Maybe they will give you an apron, take you in back, show you the fountain. Maybe you will step through.

Second-hand city diner, babe. Never closes.

Never. Closes.