Moondance Diner - Late Update!

September 2007

It never occurred to me, as I re-took my pictures for these pages last June, that I'd have to be doing an update anytime soon. So many of those old scenes had been altered beyond recognition that finding an unchanged neighborhood made me feel as if it were safe and protected, perhaps for the next few decades.

Now I wonder if instead I'll be the kiss of death, much the way the US Mint's State Quarter project seemed to be targeting its depicted icons for destruction. (Connecticut lost the Charter Oak, Maryland had the State House cupola struck by lightening, and the Old Man of the Mountain in New Hampshire fell apart, all of these happening not long after their quarters began circulating.)

But the Moondance had been on Sixth Avenue for years, it was on TV shows and in the movies, it had a steady clientele and a great big sign made out of silver spangles, with a huge revolving yellow crescent moon. They had great pancakes, and they put cinnamon in the ground coffee before brewing it. It had an obligation to be there!

Alas, land values in Manhattan being what they are, and what with the urgent, war-time need for overpriced luxury apartments, the lot was sold for residential development. Yet the diner, or at least the original railcar-style building, was sold separately to a couple who put it on a flatbed truck and drove it to LaBarge, Wyoming. Once there, they'll add kitchen and storage extensions, and open it as the only restaurant in town.

Sixth and Grand will be served with, I assume, another oddly shaped glass tower.