Minor Diners

San Francisco is a curious American city- that sports a long-standing queer comfort zone (now sitting up at the recent referendum banning gay marriage), old left-bastion-cafes, uphill-n-downhill-ever-twirling roads. Comfortably temperate, this city has a culture of diners to articulate the San Francisco mood. These are little spaces (some big ones) around the bustling part of town, that serve chitter-chattering old maids and their boyfriends. Hash browns and pancakes and maple syrup. And french toast, mushroom-n-cheese omelette, cranberry juice. The food settles in slowly. Making way for more coffee chatter. They are abuzz with pancake-hungry children and Uncle Bobs in the morning. At twelve in the night, they are still talking Obama to Mrs. Mayfair. The odd gold-chained hispanic couple drop by for butter on their pancakes. The lone bespectacled out-of-town woman in a corner digs into an omelette and mulls over hermeneutics of subjectivity. Hip balding journalists discuss credit crises.

The diner looks like an informal club. Of hats and scarves and chitter and chatter. Bacon eggs and pancake batter.One of them had a rather stern lady chef feverishly tossing out quiche and omelette, to pen down her impatience with our giggly indecision.