page_title: Diner
section_title: In media
hierarchical_section_title: Diner / In media
caption_attribution_description: English: John's Diner with John's Chevelle, oil on canvas, 30×48 inches.
context_page_description: A diner is a small restaurant found predominantly in the Northeastern, Southeastern, and Midwestern United States, as well as in other parts of the US, Canada, and parts of Western Europe. Diners offer a wide range of foods, mostly American cuisine, a casual atmosphere, and, characteristically, a combination of booths served by a waitstaff and a long sit-down counter with direct service, in the smallest simply by a cook. Many diners have extended hours, and some along highways and areas with significant shift work stay open for 24 hours.
  Many diners share an archetypal exterior form. Some of the earliest were converted rail cars, retaining their streamlined structure and interior fittings. From the 1920s to the 1940s, diners, by then commonly known as "lunch cars", were usually prefabricated in factories, like modern mobile homes, and delivered on site with only the utilities needing to be connected. As a result, many early diners were typically small and narrow in order to fit onto a rail car or truck. This small footprint also allowed them to be fitted into tiny and relatively inexpensive lots that otherwise were unable to support a larger enterprise.
context_section_description: Diners have figured significantly in American films and television since the form developed. In I Love Lucy, the episode titled 'The Diner' shows the perils, pitfalls, and difficulty in operating a diner, to much comedic effect. Archetypal appearances include significant scenes in classic films such as Sullivan's Travels and The Killers.  The 1982 "rites of passage" film Diner was centered on an eatery shared by the protagonists.  Waitress in 2007 was about a waitress in a diner. Television series include the Food Network show Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.  Pennsylvania Diners and Other Roadside Restaurants, is a 1993 documentary.
  The diner as an institution was iconically captured by painter Edward Hopper in his 1942 Nighthawks, a vignette mimicked by a movie lead-in aired nightly on the Turner Classic Movie Channel.  Diners are the focus of photorealist painter John Baeder who spent about 40 years painting diners across the US.
caption: John Baeder, 2007, John's Diner with John's Chevelle
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D80", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2007:11:16 15:01:02", "Image Tag 0x882A": "[-6, -6]", "Image ExifOffset": "228", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "874", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7307", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/60", "EXIF FNumber": "14", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2007:11:16 02:49:43", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2007:11:16 02:49:43", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "5906891/1000000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "761471/100000", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "19/5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "23", "EXIF SubSecTime": "80", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "80", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "80", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1651", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1024", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 2, 0, 1]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "34", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}