Fantastic Photos of Iconic New York City Diners During the 1990s

By Alison Nastasi

Jan. 12, 2014

You can’t beat a good diner and a strong cup of coffee. In the city that never sleeps, they’re essential. New York City diners have become part of the pop culture fabric, featured in movies and television alike, and photographer Gregoire Alessandrini has captured several great Big Apple diners during the 1990s. “I’ll always miss the Moondance, which to me was a real part of SoHo and the West Broadway area of the ‘90s,” the artist related to us in an email. On Friends, the Moondance doubled as Monica Geller’s (Courteney Cox) place of work — the exterior shots, anyway. Alessandrini is also a fan of the abandoned Lost Diner, since the name reminds him of David Lynch’s Lost Highway (and who can forget the diner scene in the director’s Mulholland Drive?). A number of the diners featured here have since been demolished or left to decay, but Alessandrini’s images capture them in all their greasy spoon glory. To purchase prints of these beauties, which we first spotted on Kottke, visit the artist’s website.

Photo credit: Gregoire Alessandrini