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Show HN: Restaurants in Peace – leave a remembrance for a closed restaurant

restaurants.rip

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Show HN: Restaurants in Peace – leave a remembrance for a closed restaurant

#1

Post by gregsadetsky »

Hey HN! I go a bit about the project on the about [0] page, but wanted to chime in here as well.

It’s been a project long in the making - it started in 2019, before everything shut down/changed. The list of closed restaurants I found - for New York only - was already really long. So now (that I have time to work on it at recurse.com) it really felt like I needed to do something about it.

When a restaurant (or any business) shows up on Google Maps as “permanently closed”, in that bright red font, there’s always a tiny bit of a pang of sadness. It’s definitely more than a pang when you look for a place you loved and expected to visit again.

The project’s “aesthetic” is inspired by early 2000s funeral homes’ websites. The combination of funeral + restaurant is what made it click for me. Maybe what we long for is a place to share our losses? Maybe.

Thanks for checking it out! :)

[0] https://restaurants.rip/about

Show HN: Restaurants in Peace – leave a remembrance for a closed restaurant
restaurants.rip

Re: Show HN: Restaurants in Peace – leave a remembrance for a closed restaurant

#6

Post by progne »

When a restaurant closes that is functionally identical to every other franchisee, like an Applebees, Olive Garden, Burger King, etc., it doesn't need a remembrance because you can just go to a different one. Like, if there are twelve identical clones of you when die, is it really an occasion for mourning?

Re: Show HN: Restaurants in Peace – leave a remembrance for a closed restaurant

#8

Post by motohagiography »

Too bad they don't have Toronto listed. There was a place called Il Gato Nero on College St that had been in a couple locations in the area for about 50 years. The family has a new and different location in Etobicoke, but I spent probably 20 years drinking coffee at its College bars and they were an anchor for the street and neighbourhood.

If you were from downtown, it was where a lot of our stories and memories happened. You knew legends about people who you saw there but might not have talked to much. I left the city shortly after it closed because there wasn't anything to replace the life it made possible, where you could spend a saturday morning with a newspaper at the bar that served real food and make small talk with strangers. You might learn their names and what they did after a decade of seeing them, but it didn't matter. I still pop into the new place once in a while to pick up the coffee that is like nowhere else and it's worth the trip, but the downtown chapter is closed.

Same with La Hacienda on Queen St. Those two spots were landmarks of the city and its culture, and when they went, they took a lot of the coherence of the stories of people who grew up in them with them. Brunch tables full of punks, goths, and rockers wearing last nights makeup at La Hacienda usually with some awful local hardcore blaring over the speakers and farcically hostile service were what defined Queen st. People there were legends too. You'd see them and hear stories about them even if you'd never been introduced, and everyone would always talk about how they knew each other when.

Pandemic policies killed those places and also destroyed the culture of the city, so I left. I'm sure new people will make new memories, but it takes generations to make anything like that again.

Re: Show HN: Restaurants in Peace – leave a remembrance for a closed restaurant

#9

Post by gregsadetsky »

progne wrote: post #6

When a restaurant closes that is functionally identical to every other franchisee, like an Applebees, Olive Garden, Burger King, etc., it doesn't need a remembrance because you can just go to a different one. Like, if there are twelve identical clones of you when die, is it really an occasion for mourning?

Yeah that’s an interesting point.

Although I see what you mean, I imagine that any particular Burger King etc could still have felt “significant” - imagine someone who stopped there regularly, or had memories of going there with a relative. Or the people who worked there for a year or 20.

I definitely remember a specific McDonald’s to which my mom often brought me as a child. I remember what seat we’d always pick. So… it’s meaningful..! :) If that McD closed, I’d definitely feel something.

Re: Show HN: Restaurants in Peace – leave a remembrance for a closed restaurant

#10

Post by gregsadetsky »

motohagiography wrote: post #8

Too bad they don't have Toronto listed. There was a place called Il Gato Nero on College St that had been in a couple locations in the area for about 50 years. The family has a new and different location in Etobicoke, but I spent probably 20 years drinking coffee at its College bars and they were an anchor for the street and neighbourhood. If you were from downtown, it was where a lot of our stories and memories happ…

Thanks for all of this! I’ll definitely be adding more cities. I miss a lot of places in Montreal as well.
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