There are certain things you should really only say to your best friend.
This is probably one of them.
Tom and Scott are in an all night diner around midnight.
Scott has disheveled and tired, has been working all night as a bartender at a Chinese restaurant, serving lots of free drinks on the slide to Tom.
And Tom, in response, seems astonishingly ungrateful.
Here is the kind of sass that Tom keeps throwing Scott's way.
Just to that moment, a man on a Hawaiian print shirt and khaki pants walks by their table, he hears the word employer mistakes it for the word lawyer.
And then terms to Tom. Are you a lawyer?
No. You want to be? Who brought up a lawyer to start with?
You just came working in?
No, I didn't. Not at all.
He didn't say, Lord. You thought that you heard something and then you let your mind take over and then it got you in a put your lawyer.
I have a put your... I have a put your...
So that's probably why I might have thought that.
But you know what? I'm trained in the art of listening.
And because Swornie said you wanted to be a lawyer.
I definitely wouldn't hire you because you heard completely wrong.
Really? Yeah. There are some conversations that you overhear and it's hard not to want to keep listening or to butt in, even though everybody knows that it is not the right thing to do.
Once a day morning while back, I was sitting in one of the booths in this very diner, the Golden Apple in Chicago, on Lincoln Avenue, and looked around the restaurant.
The table next to me, a family was taking their teenage daughter out to an awkward last breakfast, where she shipped out with the military.
They were dressed up people who'd come in from the church across the street and young couples who'd stumbled in with the paper and were working on the crossword together.
And I thought, if only somebody could interview every person at every table in this restaurant.
That would be amazing. You get such a wide variety of different kinds of stories from different kinds of people.
So we decided to try it. One Friday night, a big group of us took shifts starting at 5 a.m.
and going to 5 a.m. The next morning, during quiet hours it was just one of us on duty, recording and interviewing people.
During the busiest hours, which means late night, three or four of us worked the tables.
The first broadcast today's program all the way back in 2000, and we'll be running it again today.
From WB Easy Chicago, today's show, 24 hours at the Golden Apple, to Samaritan Life, I'm Ira Glass.
Stay tuned. It's American Life.
It's 5 o'clock in the morning.
My name is Pete. I work from 10 p.m.
to 5 a.m. and now we're going to have the text drivers in the cops.
I come for a cup of coffee until 6 o'clock the morning crowd is going to be in.
Pete's one of the three owners of this restaurant, along with Nick and Tom.
All three are Greek, and one of them is always there, 24 hours a day.
The restaurant sits at one of those intersections where three streets come together, not two.
So every one of the corners in the intersection is wedge-shaped, which means that the restaurant itself is wedge-shaped, with booze along the windows on two sides of the wedge.
There's a counter with stools and a larger room with tables in the back.
There are those oversized laminated menus that go on for pages, pages, with pictures of the food.
By the door is one of those revolving dessert cases, an octagon made of glass, three shelves of cream pies and melon slices and cakes.
Lately, I've been nothing but trouble.
Here's Nick, another one of the owners.
I'm supposed to be turning.
It's not turning because the motor broke.
Jimmy's supposed to come out like three days ago.
He's still coming. Now if you can figure this one out.
The pie case is not turning and believe it or not, it's not selling this good.
That's a truth. Dessert sales are down, he says, by half, ever since it broke.
People just like desserts more when they're in motion.
It catches the eye. You know, when it's turning, it catches the eye and it sells.
Over the course of 24 hours, the staff of the Golden Apple Changes, the regulars who come in change and the atmosphere changes.
From quiet and early morning to crazy hectic late at night when the bars in the neighborhood got out.
Nancy Updike took the first shift of our 24-hour surveillance, Mike in hand, from 5 a.m.
to 10 a.m. This is Eddie.
He comes to the Golden Apple a few times a week in the mornings and plays the harmonica in the middle of the restaurant for a few minutes.
He's in a pale blue shirt and hopping lightly from foot to foot.
I might fall down. Eddie heads to the back of the restaurant to play there.
No one is complaining, no one is rolling their eyes.
In fact, a few people are smiling and saying hi.
Eddie is not an outsider here, he's a regular.
Early morning at the Golden Apple is like that, a profoundly democratic place.
Every morning welcomes the night shift workers, the unemployed, the retired, the confused, the disappointed, the slightly off.
The people who work for themselves and the people who don't work at all anymore, but crave a little morning routine.
Every morning I'm here between 4.30 and 5.
I love the Golden Apple, they're wonderful people, they got good food.
And that's it. This is how Joe Molica ends every sentence.
And that's it. Or sometimes.
That's all I could tell you.
Joe's not used to talking about himself, his story comes out bit by bit.
Our entire conversation takes place in a different era.
He's completely unself conscious about calling me honey.
He bangs on his coffee cup with his spoon to get the waitress's attention for a refill.
Please don't try this at home, but he gets away with it.
I do construction, remodeling, rehab.
And that's what I do. I retired.
I'm 78 years old. And I gave the business to my two sons.
And that's it. How did you start that business?
To my dad. My dad done the same thing when I was, I don't know, maybe.
10 or 11 years old I started working for him.
He was paying me a dime an hour.
And that was it. He'd be up, sweep up the floors that he's working on.
What else you want to know on him?
At 5.30 in the morning, almost everyone is sitting alone.
By choice, it seems. Joe's friend Bob is sitting in his own booth behind Joe.
No one's talking much, but it's a comfortable silence.
When you're up this early, it's hard not to feel some sense of community with everyone else who's awake.
But you don't necessarily want to talk to them.
Because it gets lighter and lighter outside, more people trickle in.
A guy with thick, dark blonde hair and a face that looks like it could use another six hours sleep sits down at the counter.
His name is Scott Johnson, and he says he usually comes in around 3.30 AM.
But today's different.
It's about 20 after seven.
How did you start coming to the Golden Apple?
I own a bar right down the street.
It's called Witz. And I own another one on Clark and Oatmeal called Jakes.
How did you get into the bar business?
Oh boy. Well about eight years ago, I turned 30, quit my career, got a divorce, and bought a bar in the same month.
Oh my god. Took the edge of sketch and shook it.
To stood upside down and shook it real hard and changed my life forever.
It's completely light outside now.
The motor traffic is picking up.
The Golden Apple isn't crowded, but all the front booths are taken and most of the counter.
Nick keeps getting deliveries, orange juice, potatoes, and his butcher comes by.
John's service. John is a big man in that way that's the norm in Chicago.
Not fat, just big. John has been eating at the Golden Apple and supplying its meats for 10 years.
When he was 8 years old, he became famous for being the youngest butcher in Illinois.
Back in 1979, I was interviewed by Fahey Flynn.
I don't know if you remember back in 1979, Fahey Flynn was a well-known newsman right here, Channel 7 News, before he died in 1981.
I was a youngest butcher in Illinois in 1979.
And yeah, I met Governor Thompson down Randolph Street.
My father was in a retail business too on Randolph Street.
And that's how I started learning how to cut.
So I've been doing this for 33 now.
By 8 since I was like 8 years old.
For butcher when you were 8?
Well, yeah, I've been involved, you know, cleaning tables.
In about 12 years old, I started cutting meat on a bandsaw.
Oh, do you remember the first piece of meat you cut?
Poor traps. You said poor coin and I sliced it.
I remember very well, like it was yesterday.
A real slow on a bandsaw, poor traps.
Poor coins like 18 pounds.
I used to, I first thing I did is cut it down the middle and it started from the middle.
The trick is at the end, not to cut your hands when it comes really small.
You got to use a special kind of thing that's underneath a bandsaw.
Not to put your hand in it.
Because a bandsaw doesn't have any friends.
I mean, if it's going to grab your hands, it's going to cut it.
The front of the Golden Apple is the smoking section.
Sitting there is a grayish woman with a fleshy face and wavy hair in one of the small two person boots.
Her name is Alice Diluka.
I work at a purification center, it's a sign of running vitamins and minerals.
It's a program to rid your body of cats and some radiation.
Wow. Have you done the program yourself?
Yes, I have. Now, to the naked eye, it looks like you're smoking and drinking coffee and about to have some sausage.
So how does that square with the whole toxins thing?
Well, I'm trying to wake up.
You need some toxins to wake up.
I guess so. The restaurant never gets crowded this morning.
Turn over is slow. The window is a little bit more quiet.
It's a weekday, so there's no impatient brunch crowd waiting for tables to open up.
And if you don't have an office you need to get to, why rush?
Donna, the waitress, is finishing up the night shift and getting ready to go home.
She's been on since 11 p.m., but you would never know it to look at her.
She's six feet tall and looks like Catherine DeNove.
She's one of the most beautiful people I've ever seen in person.
How long have you been working here?
26 years. Wow. How old were you when you started?
Wow, you think I'm going to tell you that?
Are you kidding? My kids don't even know how old I am.
Donna says she's actually not a night person, but she's worked the night shift the entire time, all 26 years.
She came to Chicago from Oklahoma City in her early 20s with three kids.
I was divorced when I came here and I had married so young, had my children, no education.
And I had a little baby. That's why I started working nights.
But this is a great job for that.
I mean, working nights that way you're with them during the day.
You don't sleep much, but when they're sleeping you're working.
And I'm still working the night shift.
I don't know why, but I still am.
Every Christmas Eve, Donna brings in a big tray of homemade cookies for the homeless guys and the old men and the taxi drivers, anyone who shows up that night.
Every once in a while on her afternoon off, she'll go see a play starring one of the actors who come in every night after their own shifts waiting tables.
Her customers give her tapes of the bands they're in, bringing their artwork for her see, tell her about their successes and failures.
These are people she's known for years.
It's like home here to me.
And when I think about going on a day job, I just can't.
It's almost like it'd be another separation because it's like home when you've been here this time.
Donna runs her shift at the Golden Apple with a lot of compassion and generosity.
But like any good waitress, she's also ruthlessly practical.
She can be direct when she needs to.
Early morning is no time to stand on ceremony.
I got to finish up with my rest of my work.
All right. Are you doing anything to set up or clean up?
I didn't check to see what I got to do.
Can I just follow you around and you tell me what you're doing?
I'll just like, I don't even know how to do anything more.
Do I just want to do the money talk anymore?
No, okay. I didn't want to be rude.
No, no. I'm tired of talking.
In the middle of the day, a muted light streams through the windows through a pale haze of cigarette smoke.
It's certain now it's, it feels like everybody is smoking at the Golden Apple.
Three industrial smoke eaters.
I'm non-stop. I launch some customers come in, eat quickly, and head back to work after just a half hour, but they're in their minority.
Probably three-fourths of the customers are regulars.
Many of them stay for hours.
Nick the owner says some come two or three times a day.
I mean, they go home and sleep, of course, but this is their base.
We got Charlie right now in the restaurant that comes twice, three times a day.
Floyd, which is right next to him, Mitch, Mitch with his son on the counter.
He was the counterman. Mr.
Harland there with Stephen, they come twice a day.
The rush comes about three or four times a day, out two or three times a day.
At the counter, a man who looks a little bit like the actor Harry Dean Stanton, Scruffy and Leighne, is here for the second time, 24 hours.
He gives me what he says is his nickname, Robert.
He says he usually just comes for coffee.
Can't afford my child. So why do you come here?
It's something to do. It's for free.
I can't love him because I'm single.
No wife, no girlfriend.
No kids here. Robert is one of three different men to tell me that they come here in the afternoon to drink coffee and talk to the waitresses.
All three actually seem a little shy and intimidated by the waitresses.
Robert is so bashful. He has a hard time saying much of anything to them.
I've never said more than hello or goodbye.
That's all I ever said. I don't know what to do when I go, when I put it together.
What to say. I don't know what to say.
At a table in the back, Manuel Hernandez is here for the second time today.
He's a retired carpenter, came to Chicago from Mexico in 1965.
He was one of the workers who built the Sears Tower downtown.
On the tallest buildings in the world.
He created, he says, on the guy to the hundred fifth floor.
He was to win the up there.
After two guys, they fall down and then I quit.
I don't want to the next.
This afternoon passes.
He calls over one of the waitresses, Sherry, an actor for help reading a document that he got in the mail from an insurance company.
He's already did some kind of scam.
She reads it, tells him now.
They sent him a check. It's real.
Sherry says this kind of thing happens all the time.
Some of these guys, who else do they have to turn to?
Had on the sidewalk when the weather's good, the restaurant sets up tables.
At one, Allison Musgrave and her two kids are eating.
Ian is four, Madeline is two.
Both are wearing their bicycle helmets at the table.
And eating the Mickey Mouse pancakes.
Three pancakes, arranged in violation of US copyright law.
Two ears in a head. Marichino cherries, can pine apple and whipped cream as the eyes and mouth.
Cover it with maple syrup and you have a sugar concoction so powerful that four-year-old Ian literally cannot sit in his chair.
Ian, Ian, around here please.
Thank you. I don't live far from here and I do not think there is a four-year-old in a ten-block radius who does not know the Mickey Mouse pancakes.
Turn around now, Ian. Please.
The restaurant has toys for kids in a corner inside.
One couple named Mike and Liz tell us that they come here so often with their four- and seven-year-old.
They feel so at home here that they've instructed their kids that if they're ever lost, this was to find a policeman.
They tell them not to bring them home.
Bring them to the Golden Apple.
This evening falls, takes a while for the dinner crowd to show up and any kind of force.
It's a slow day everybody says.
It is Friday and couples start to arrive.
Someone dates, some just friends, some of that vague territory in between.
And the topics of conversation in the room start to make an orbital shift toward a couple sorts of topics.
One of our producers, Susan Burton, notices one couple in particular.
A man and a woman in their 30 sit down in a booth by a window.
The man's long hair is tied back with a bandana.
I'm Daniel Romero. Sylvia and I just got through playing a few sets of tennis and Grant Park and stopped at Healing Earth for a little incense and some good karma.
And we decided to stop and grab a bite.
You know, Sylvia and I have this kind of weird history.
She actually dumped me not too long ago.
And that's right. Long, long, long time ago.
She's now happily in a relationship and I was telling her as we were driving here about how lonely I am.
Actually, it's been three years since Daniel and Sylvia broke up.
They met when they worked together at the same nonprofit organization.
But you're ready to settle down now.
I am. Well, I'm proud of you.
I'm proud of you. I actually, when you first told me that, I actually wasn't sure.
But you wasn't not being coming to the wedding.
You already told me that.
I did, I did tell you that.
I won't be participating there.
You'll have my best wishes.
We're friends. I still love you and care about you.
Why can't you be there? Well, well, why can't it, it would just be weird.
I mean, you and I have a pretty significant history together.
But I would still be happy for you and you'd have my best wishes and I'll still buy you a toaster.
A toaster. Oh, okay. See, I think that that's unusual.
I think I would be very happy for you.
Would I have some feelings there?
Yeah, maybe there would be a little twinge thinking why wasn't it me?
That's actually a sex in the city topic a lot.
Absolutely. In case you've missed it, sex in the city is a TV show on HBO.
Each episode circles around some central question.
Like, can you be friends with your ex?
Like Daniel and Sylvie and I were suddenly cast in our own episode of the show.
This would be the moment where I would light a cigarette and flip open my power book and ponder what I'd seen.
Daniel and Sylvie began by talking about Sylvie as new boyfriend, but wound up discussing each other.
And I started to wonder, when you talk about your ex's new relationships, are you really just talking about the two of you?
I didn't tell you this. You asked me how my love life was a little bit earlier.
I did meet somebody about a week ago.
Her name is Amy and she works at, where does she work at?
She works at supercuts.
And she was with her boyfriend, actually.
And she was hitting on you.
And she was hitting on me.
She said to me, I want to go out with you.
And I said, fine, let's go out.
She says, well, you have to wait a month because I'm still going out with this idiot over here.
And she's talking about, you know.
So nothing happened though.
I'm out with a woman who went to grade her boyfriend that way, who would treat the guy that's just possibly dating that way.
But I'm not going to marry.
I'm not going to marry this girl.
You know, I mean, I wasn't interested in a lifetime commitment at that moment.
I mean, I was much more looking for the immediate ratification.
That's what you're always looking for.
Yeah, that's not entirely true.
That's not entirely true.
Each time Daniel brings up someone he's interested in, Sylvie gets exasperated with him for refusing to make a commitment.
It happens when he mentions the woman he saw an allowance chair by a pool in Las Vegas.
And the girl he's taken on a dozen dates, but is pretty sure he wants to break up with.
It turns out that this is a conversation they've had before at the end of their own relationship.
I was ready for the next step and humans ready to back out.
Anytime I pressed forward, he went backwards a couple steps.
You're right. You and I were in a place where you were frustrated because I couldn't move forward.
I was frustrated because you were pressing so hard.
And then the next girl and moved in with her after three weeks.
I think it's a hard topic for us both.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
It's just the thought of...
It's like... He trails off, staring out the window.
I don't know. It's kind of hard to...
It's kind of hard to... It's kind of hard to tap when two pigs go back.
Outside on the sidewalk, two girls with blonde hair and short skirts approach.
They catch Daniel's eye.
He mumbles. As the girls stride by the window, he turns his head and follows them from one end of the glass to the other.
The gesture seems to happen in slow motion.
He does that all the time.
Yeah, but I'm not saying that.
I'm just saying that when we were together and you did that, that really hurts.
Even though it's just looking.
It says you're not interested in what's going on right here and that's exactly what you did by doing that.
You couldn't even formulate the sentence because your eyeballs were glued to that window.
Look. This is another topic on Sex in the City.
Just for the record, would actually happen in that episode?
The woman got so mad at her boyfriend that she punched him in the face.
And then she realized she couldn't change him.
Ever by the restaurant's front windows, which will get on Santa Fonse's Catholic Church, a huge building, sits K Frank.
No wonder her friends is Katie Keane, 75 years old, dressed in a nice outfit, matching scarf.
She's here because one of her longtime neighbors, another golden apple customer, is laid out dead in the funeral home right across the street.
She'll eat and pay her respects.
She tells me that she's lived her whole life within walking distance of this very spot.
I was born and raised on Lakewood, 75 years ago, went to Santa Fonse's school, so this is my neighborhood for a long time.
And it gives me a lot of pleasure to walk the neighborhood and say, Margaret Couldn't Slipped the Nand House.
It was Lucille Satchel lived in the Nand House.
I can still see all the things in my mind as I did in the 30s and 40s.
Back then, for instance, a pharmacy was on this spot.
And K-inter friends would come here after 11 o'clock mass.
I'm talking about first year, second year, high school, when you didn't go to the Kitty Mass anymore at 9 o'clock in the morning.
This was like a hangout here, after a mass.
And this whole section here, they had a wonderful soda fountain, was right here, where this would be.
See what I'm saying? She points at a section of booths.
For years, this neighborhood was all about which parish you belong to.
The piano fonts us for the Germans, St.
Andrews for the Irish and Italian, St.
Joseph Fatt for the Polish.
Till finally, in the 1960s, that ended.
Case five, sisters and her parents, I'll move to wave from the neighborhood.
I'm the only one that stayed in the neighborhood because we couldn't afford to move out of here.
We bought our house in the mid-60s, 64.
And everybody thought the neighborhood was going to change.
So of course, they're moving to the suburbs or farther north or farther west.
Change. I mean, people thought it wasn't going to be white anymore?
They thought, yes. They thought it was going to go down.
That's why people were scared and moved out.
So we couldn't afford to move.
So we bought a house there for 27,000.
I've had offers of 550,000 for my house.
Mima, whatever sisters who moved to an area too expensive for care or husband to afford, just sold her house for only 200,000.
And the electrification, which spread through this neighborhood in the last 15 years, hasn't made it out to where her sisters live.
But around here, on Southport and on Carc and all over, there are little boutiques and several Starbucks and expensive restaurants with fake European names.
The neighborhood has changed a lot.
A whole lot. Some for the better, some for the worse.
All by, we have our gay people, which we never had as a kid.
They were around maybe, but we didn't know who they were today.
You know who they are. My husband coming from the old school, we have the nicest neighbors we've ever had, two gay men.
They can't do enough for you.
They cut your grass for you.
They watered now that I'm older.
And when they moved in, my husband coming from way back, oh my God, you know, he didn't want really too much to do with them.
Within a year, I'd say we saw that they were nice people, very clean.
And when we had our 50th wedding anniversary party, had some Deutsche Nick here.
It was our neighbors that went to the hall without any.
They wouldn't take a penny.
They decorated that place like you wouldn't believe.
Now, our main neighbors would do that for you, you know.
So gay or not gay, they're really nice people.
So I think that the gays can be credited for being such a nice people.
They swayed a lot of the old time people into different thinking.
There's still a lot of racial stuff.
Maybe if you had a black neighbor here, or one of the people would rent to a black person, I think they'd be frowned upon a little bit.
But if you rent to a gay person today, it's okay.
A lot of things that we think are should be this way and that way as you grow up.
It's really not that way.
It shouldn't be that way.
So I don't feel that we should really judge them, you know.
Let the Lord judge them.
Coming up, Drunks, Partiers, People on the Make, and lots of other people to try not to judge.
I mean, we have not even gotten to the cops.
In a minute, from Chicago Public Radio, warm up that coffee for you?
When our program continues.
It's American Life, I'm Ira Glass, today on our program, 24 hours at the Golden Apple.
If you're just tuning in, we try to interview every person at every table of a 24 hour restaurant here in Chicago, starting at 5 a.m.
in the morning on Friday, July 14th, going to 5 a.m.
the next morning. This is all back in the year 2000.
Today shows a rerun. Not everybody said yes.
Not everybody could fit into a one hour radio show.
And the day is just heating up.
Let's jump ahead to midnight.
One of the owners, Pete, is explaining something sort of surprising about a restaurant like this to our reporter Wendy Dorr.
We're never close. We have no kiss.
We got no kiss. If you see the doors, we have no locks.
Always open. We'll never, never lock a door.
Just to that moment, a young woman burst through the door, laughing.
She swivels around and drunks only tries to lock it.
Keep her two friends out.
It takes a second before she realizes there are no locks.
The three stumble to a table.
This is Kim. I'm at the Golden Apple.
I know him. And I'm with Oscar and Beth.
Oscar, Oscar. No, I do who he is.
Beth and I are riding in a cab and he like hops.
I've never met this guy.
I need to order food. I'm a journalist, I'm a graduate.
Yeah. So I understand what you're doing right now.
I work with Kim and Kim lives, I don't live downtown.
I live in suburbs. And Kim, it was like, OK, we want to live downtown though.
Right. I do. She lives in traffic.
It doesn't matter. Anyway, so we go to this premiere party of the Star Wars exhibit at the Field Museum.
Yes. It was so awesome by the way.
Kim, this is my story. Look at my stars.
Look. Yeah, she sees Star Wars.
I'm the most sober one here as you can probably tell.
So anyway. I'm sorry. That's fine.
I meet Oscar. We just meet him like standing at the party.
He offers. He buys us a couple shots.
So we're like, you know, fine.
We start drinking with them.
We start talking to him.
Oh, so I'm sitting there talking to Kim.
All of a sudden, I feel two hands on my back.
Two hands. I do not recognize.
Two hands that I do not want on my body.
And I look and who do I see?
It is Oscar. And I don't even know your last name.
Do I? I'm not going to stay on the radio.
I'll be honest. I will be honest with you.
He paid for a lot of tonight.
Like he paid for my drinks.
OK, great. You know what?
Don't touch me. But you can buy my drinks for me.
If you're going to hop into the cab and pay for it, then I know why you get into the cab with me.
That's fine. And he's probably going to buy our food here tonight.
So that's fine with me. Riddle, true.
Super. I'm just honest.
I'm not going to go home with you.
Is your name best for you?
My name's Oscar. I bought them a drink or two.
For a bottle of $300 champagne.
OK. Successful. OK, I said.
We didn't even have kids pay when we watched it.
I'll be completely honest with you.
My goal is to share about tonight.
Yeah, I'm a football team.
So he doesn't matter which one.
It's just to share about.
He just wants to get some play, basically.
Is that what you're saying, Oscar?
And I'll bet you if you follow his home, one of them, too, will be about with me tonight.
MUSIC Would I be sitting here talking to you if you're not on microphone?
Any practice with them if I was not going to go home with them tonight?
Either I'm like a wee moor on, or I know something that you don't.
I really am, but. Oscar, you're a good guy.
I understand you have a lot of hormones, and that's fine with me.
You're just not going to be able to act on them tonight.
With me, I don't know about you, but.
For me, either. Unless it's paying by food.
Where the hell's the waitress?
I don't know. I just want to know how the waitress is.
MUSIC By one o'clock, the diner is at capacity, and it feels like one big party.
A woman sits in a booth in the back with a friend.
She's in her early 40s. Grew up in the neighborhood.
My name is Nancy. Where am I, and what time is it?
I don't think I'm really here.
I think that I'm doing like a two-dimensional kind of thing.
So there's part of me that's here, and then there's part of me that's somewhere else, the future me.
So what time is it? Earthly time, it's 1.15 a.m., and there is no time where my future self is.
You know how you, when you go to sleep and you dream, how you can bend and shape the events that take place in that dream?
Well, then what if that were your reality?
And what if this were the dream?
You can actually paint your future, and you can make everything that's ever happened.
Is he happening, and will happen?
Has already happened. It's shape-shifting time and events so that you know why your soul is here.
And that's the purpose to know why you're here, to know why you came back.
I know one past life, I was a cowboy, and I was shot by accident.
And I've met two of my four buddies that I was with together.
And here we agreed to come back on some kind of subliminal basis.
So yeah, I was a cowboy in one lifetime, probably right before the turn of the century.
And my other lifetime, I really don't know, but I know I was crushed.
And I don't know by what, but probably a large building.
I haven't identified the time yet.
I'm still working on that.
Can I have a short stick, please?
That's all. Thank you. Not far away in another booth, sit Danielle, who's 17, and Allison, 18.
They're best friends. A month ago, because of problems at home, Danielle moved in with Allison's family.
They both live in the basement there now.
They've been driving in from the suburbs to the Goldmaple, hang out, meet friends, guys mostly.
We're sitting here waiting for this guy, Jeff, who's hopefully gonna come.
We've just been coming here for the last three nights about midnight, one o'clock, just sitting here, waiting for random people to show up.
She kind of has a crush on this guy.
And so we kind of come here and hopes to find him.
It hasn't worked yet. Yeah, I paged him and told him to come here, paged him, no answer.
Paged him again, no answer.
Paged him again, no answer.
So basically we have no life.
So we come down here and wait for people.
All right, phone call time.
Yeah, I have the number.
All right, give me money.
All right, I am calling this guy, Jeff, and I'm going to make him come here, because my best friend wants him to.
All right. And it's still ringing.
Hi, Jeff. Hi, Jeff. We are at the Golden Apple, and I am wondering if you're at all coming because Allison kind of wants to see you.
And I'm not going to stick around here all night because I have to sleep.
So hopefully you'll be here by like two, if not call Allison tomorrow.
All right, I, and he'll be here.
He'll be here. Six messages on his machine at home.
I just called Jeff and told him that he's not here.
And he should be. I still think he will come.
I just don't know what. So that makes this a big deal is the fact that I think he actually might like me back, which doesn't happen ever.
So that's why I like want to see him again.
I know the really weird thing about us is she hates herself.
She never likes anyone ever.
And whenever anything goes right, she freaks out.
Seriously, you say that there's so many people that like me, but how many times has it actually ever worked out?
It's not hard for you because you're just like this massive guy magnet.
You know, when you act sometimes like you don't see it, you see it.
You've got to see it. Because we go somewhere and it's like, whoosh, and everyone's there by you.
And not even just guys like you're just like people like you, you know, takes no effort just wrong though, because it's not like I just get them like that.
It's dark. Okay, I'll give you sometimes, it's just, I don't know why, but sometimes it happens like that.
And it's the fact that I talk and I'm not like boring and I don't just sit there.
No, I'm not saying you're boring, I'm just saying that that's what I'm not.
People like I said before are robots and they're going to want to follow the life of the party.
That's how people are. If you put an idea in their head, like if one person says you're a good kisser, you are deemed a good kisser forever and ever and ever.
Like you have this thing where like you just like radiate positive vibes, you know?
And you're always like upbeat, you know, when I've been like really outgoing or trying to be, you know, and like almost imitating you to see if it works.
It doesn't work for me. And you know, we're best friends, especially now that you live with me.
It's like you're just always there.
So the issue is always there.
When you didn't live with me, you know, sometimes I'm not even thinking about it, I don't care.
But now you're there all the time and you know, we've been like going out more and it's always there.
It is 125 almost. Okay. I am calling my friend Marion in hopes that he is up.
Okay. Are you sleeping?
You are. We're just at the restaurant and waiting for people and no one's coming.
So we were wondering, do you want us to come pick you up?
Say yes. So come back here, just say yes.
No, say yes. So don't go to sleep.
Oh come on, you know you love me.
Thank you. I will be there to pick you up in like two minutes.
Bye. So we're here. Hi, Marion.
Hi, I can't go anywhere.
You can't go anywhere. Get in the car.
How are you doing? Marion.
Marion has convinced me to stay.
Marion, go tell her that you have to come back to the restaurant.
I have to wake up at 8 tomorrow morning.
Marion? I'm going to go beat you up.
Danielle, however, does not do such a good job convincing them with her fists.
Actually, she doesn't try.
She won't come. So she climbs back into the car, head back to meet Allison.
He's waiting, back at the gold napple.
Okay. Me and Allison. I think that she feels like we're growing apart because I've kind of been mean lately.
Not like, not like, too mean, but like she's my best friend.
She will always be my best friend.
It's just like now that we live together, we have constant each other and it's just like we realize the things that we could overlook before are actual issues now.
Like we're complete opposites.
She doesn't like people.
I love people. She like staying home and reading.
I can't stay and staying home and I can't stand reading.
And I mean, I don't like thinking.
It's like thinking is something you do in school and then when you need to.
And she's not like that and that's very cool.
I mean, it shows that she's not a robot or whatever.
But she's 17. She's only 17.
And she acts like she's 23.
She's, I guess above, the normal teenager.
She thinks of things. She cares.
And that's what people in college do and that's what older people do.
But me and most of all my friends, we're not ready.
We don't want to do that.
We want to just sit back and have fun.
I mean, she just needs to find the right people to hang out with.
And for right now, it's not my thing.
This is my thing. I like this scene where it's just like we're going to sit back and have fun.
We're going to laugh. We're just going to let everything go.
You know? Just like, all right.
Golden Apple scene. Yeah.
Hi, ballbear. Hi. When she's back in the restaurant, after all this thinking, that how she and Allison so different, she heads over to her best friend.
They started a band together called Mixed Emotions.
Just the two of them. Allison plays guitar.
They both sing. And they do one of their songs together now for the microphone.
Ready? Okay. So much for faith.
So much for loving you. So much for everything.
So much for love. So much for love.
You won't believe in me.
So much for all the times you say you never leave.
I needed you. And thought you'd be there.
But now I see the change in you.
And now you just don't seem to care.
So much for faith. So much for loving you.
So much for everything.
The scoochins tied to each other near the mic as they sang.
Allison sitting. Then you'll stand in leaning in close.
And then the thing that they have been waiting for all night finally happens.
Sorry. Hey, I don't know if you want to live.
Yeah, stop right here. It's a job.
That's what he's got a family.
He's got a family. Billy is okay.
It is 2.15 and they have finally arrived.
Yeah, like when we've given up all hope, poof, they're here.
I told you I knew it. I never gave up bait.
They also down together.
I say I have been waiting for who they called six times.
Jeff, he never arrived.
But there is another Jeff with this group.
Now listen, transfers your crush to Jeff number two.
At some point Danielle drags her outside the diner to confer.
They stand on the sidewalk just on the other side of the plate glass window from Jeff number two and everybody else.
Alison reviews the facts, the case.
It's just like, okay, he's into some of the supernatural stuff too.
And we have a lot of things in common.
We're both big Tim Burton fans.
So I know I actually had somebody talk to you about for hours now.
But then again, it's like what's the point of liking him if he doesn't like me.
So I asked him, no, I'm just going to go under like, okay, here, look, I'm trying to hook her up.
And hey, I was wondering.
I'm trying to set Alison.
I'll be slick. It'll be fun for you.
Yeah. I'll give him a flower.
Come on, it'll be fun. If you says no, we just won't come out here ever again.
Please. Whatever else it might do for Alison, if she will hook that with somebody, it might just reduce the general level of tension between her and Danielle.
And Danielle does not take no for an answer.
She gives the flower to Jeff number two, saying it's from Alison.
He smiles a big number two smile.
Then he and Alison sit alone at a table and talk for a while until Danielle comes over.
Are we leaving now? Yes, we've paid.
And we left stiff and I put the rest of the change in this little box here and now we're leaving.
Research Foundation. It was fun.
We got here at like 1130 and it is now 315 and it is time to leave.
So we'll be back tomorrow.
Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.
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