"I spent many hours at 24-hour diners in my late teens and early twenties, drinking oceans of coffee, chain smoking and filling notebooks with pretentious poetry. At the time, they were pretty much the only places for the under-21 crowd to meet and socialize without pesky parental units leering over their shoulders.

Our circle of friends started out at Perkins, where we regularly annoyed the waitresses by acting like it was our living room and never buying anything more than a bottomless cup of joe and a large order of fries with a side of ranch dressing. When the management finally got fed up and threw us out for good, we relocated to Denny’s, where they seemed much more receptive to our chaos and where we would see a preview of our future selves; hungry post-bar drunks not quite ready to let the night come to a graceful end." More here.

When is the last time you tried to find a place to eat after 9 p.m.? Where did you end up?

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