The automat is something of a strange echo from my childhood.
When I was maybe 5 or so, my mom took my sister and I to Chicago from Kansas City. That train ride in and of itself is something of time capsule in my memory. My sister remembered the glowing handrails (radium?). I remember the lounge car where passengers sipped cocktails and watched the lights at night rush past outside. The women dressing, in my fuzzy recollection, like extras in The Thin Man.
Chicago was where I got to buy a pie, or some kind of dessert, from an automat. What a magical thing to give a kid some coins and just tell them to go grab what they like…
There are a number of things from my childhood that I came to find later were just gone. (Or obscure now to the point they are essentially gone.) Imagine my delight when the film Dark City featured an automat.
I was surprised in Tokyo to find something of a hybrid. Those places where you place your order, pay through something like a vending machine at the entrance of the place. The order goes back to the kitchen and, after you've sat down and waited a short time, your order is up.
Struck me as an efficient way to not have to have someone running a cash register, seating you, taking your order.
Also, there's a documentary called "The Automat" [1] that I tracked down just recently—have not yet watched. (Looks like it's streaming on Amazon, FWIW.)
> My sister remembered the glowing handrails (radium?)
That reminded me of the "glowy tape" my brother and I used to play with when we were kids. It had come from my grandparents' estate, and we had no idea what it was for, but it was fun. My father thought it was from WWII, as he had vague memories of it being used to mark the corners of furniture during 'lights out' air raid drills. I now assume it was radium, and am not overly happy with my childhood self playing with it.
[1] agrees that World War II-era luminous materials featured radium, yes. Another use seems to have been putting discs on helmet fronts of paratroopers, to help soldiers see each other in the dark.
This page [2] has a picture of a variety of luminous products from the era, and also mentions one civilian usage was marking edges of clothing, also to help make pedestrians more visible in the (blacked-out) streets.
I'm rather low on the Interest in History scale, but it's fascinating how often WW2 manages to deliver something new. Thanks.
> Those places where you place your order, pay through something like a vending machine at the entrance of the place. The order goes back to the kitchen and, after you've sat down and waited a short time, your order is up.
I know those places but at this point the USA seems full of them, or at least LA/SF. They aren't the same style as the Japanese ones but there are tons of places in California where you can walk in and order from a touchscreen and they just call your number when your order is ready.
Some Japanese restaurants are super tiny & ordering machines make it easier to use the space more efficiently. In some cases the machine is installed from the outside - you select what you want and get a ticket or two. If you get two then you are IIRc supposed to give one to the staff & they will start processing your order (eg. the machine is not always connected to a terminal inside).
Doing it like this you save space inside, don't have to handle dirty cash (less of an issue with electronic payments) and can concentrate on cooking without interruptions.
The examples at the link are mostly from around midcentury. I'm familiar with a more recent example: In 2006-2009, there was one of those on St. Mark's Place -- 8th street between 2nd and 3rd. It was called "Bamn!" and IIRC was open 24/7, so it mostly catered to late-night drinkers and partiers. (It happened to be on one of NYC's few streets that always had lively nightlife, even during the week.) It was cheap, at something like $1 or $2 for a burger, and it was reasonably good.
The last cafeteria chain seen in the SF Bay Area was Fresh Choice.[1] The business problem was that the outlets attracted too many old people who didn't buy the more expensive add-on items but just bought the fixed-price salad bar.
Today, the only remaining cafeterias in the SF bay area seem to be in-house feeding operations for employees. Many of the ones in hospitals are open to the public.
There's a minimum traffic level for a cafeteria, and it's fairly high. With low traffic, the food sits out too long and becomes leftovers. Like Whole Foods' salad and hot bars.
Restaurants seem to have fads. In the SF bay area, there are few French restaurants any more. California cuisine is dead. Fish is down. (Amusingly, on Doordash, all types of fish are treated as synonyms for "salmon".) Many restaurants no longer serve bread.
I was just about to post the same thing. It's a very enjoyable watch. Quite light and digestible (~80 min runtime) and featuring Mel Brooks and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Currently streaming for free on Kanopy, which is often available through local public libraries.
I’ve been there! Stony Creek used to be a little working class seaside village with some quirky artsy folks mixed in. My father would kayak in the sound.
These automats remind me of a service called "Magic" where the idea was that you talk to an interface but there are actual humans operating behind it. Also reminds of the mechanical turk. Anyway, imho, humans should talk to humans more, not less.
I remember going to the Horn & Hardart Automat when I was a kid. It was so cool and futuristic being able to choose something, putting in a coin, and getting it immediately. It made it easy to overlook it was basically just standard cafeteria food.
This is so interesting. I remember as a child my family would go to S&S Cafeterias, and Piccadilly. It was like the lunch line at school. Regrettably the closest I've gotten to an automat was when I taught in a prison, the classroom had vending machines of sandwiches, desserts, etc.
I think we still have automats. Ikea cafe for example, the cafeteria in the basement of the Natural History and Science Museum in Washington, D.C., any number of places where you get food, checkout, sit, eat, leave without interacting with anyone.
Ya'll need a trip to Japan. So many versions of the automat approach. One favorite is ガスト (Gusto). Self seat, Order from the tablet at your table, food delivered by a rolling robot with "Kitty" theme, and self checkout with the reciept/ticket at an unstaffed kiosk. They put all of the human labor effort into kitchen staff and great ingredients. Better food than the best Denny's or IHOP in the heyday of the late 80s or early 90s, and breakfast for two totaling under 12 dollars. Its a winning twist on Automat, and other examples of this are around the corner in almost every town. Its the future we were promised in the 50s that never got delivered beyond some Art Deco public works buildings.
I started dieting recently and I've come to understand the people who say that American portions are huge. An automat lets you sample a bunch of different stuff instead of the typical fast-food format of a main, french fries, and a drink each in a too-large portion. I'd like something like that.
Not only american portions. I'm a remote worker since 20+ years. My first visit to the main workplace eating lunch was a revelation. The portion size was gigantic! And my coworkers (none having a physical job) was done within 15 minutes while I took a lot longer to not even finish half of my portion. It was at least five times my normal lunch portion. Insane. And the prices were lower than our village.
Art Deco has always been one of the best architectural styles, IMHO. I also like the pseudo-classical Greek design often found in American government buildings in small towns (city hall, the public library, and so on). They're very different styles, yet they complement each other nicely.
The automat is something of a strange echo from my childhood.
When I was maybe 5 or so, my mom took my sister and I to Chicago from Kansas City. That train ride in and of itself is something of time capsule in my memory. My sister remembered the glowing handrails (radium?). I remember the lounge car where passengers sipped cocktails and watched the lights at night rush past outside. The women dressing, in my fuzzy recollection, like extras in The Thin Man.
Chicago was where I got to buy a pie, or some kind of dessert, from an automat. What a magical thing to give a kid some coins and just tell them to go grab what they like…
There are a number of things from my childhood that I came to find later were just gone. (Or obscure now to the point they are essentially gone.) Imagine my delight when the film Dark City featured an automat.
I was surprised in Tokyo to find something of a hybrid. Those places where you place your order, pay through something like a vending machine at the entrance of the place. The order goes back to the kitchen and, after you've sat down and waited a short time, your order is up.
Struck me as an efficient way to not have to have someone running a cash register, seating you, taking your order.
Also, there's a documentary called "The Automat" [1] that I tracked down just recently—have not yet watched. (Looks like it's streaming on Amazon, FWIW.)
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4554690/
> My sister remembered the glowing handrails (radium?)
That reminded me of the "glowy tape" my brother and I used to play with when we were kids. It had come from my grandparents' estate, and we had no idea what it was for, but it was fun. My father thought it was from WWII, as he had vague memories of it being used to mark the corners of furniture during 'lights out' air raid drills. I now assume it was radium, and am not overly happy with my childhood self playing with it.
Interesting, did some light (heh) digging.
[1] agrees that World War II-era luminous materials featured radium, yes. Another use seems to have been putting discs on helmet fronts of paratroopers, to help soldiers see each other in the dark.
This page [2] has a picture of a variety of luminous products from the era, and also mentions one civilian usage was marking edges of clothing, also to help make pedestrians more visible in the (blacked-out) streets.
I'm rather low on the Interest in History scale, but it's fascinating how often WW2 manages to deliver something new. Thanks.
[1]: https://www.paratrooper.be/articles/luminous-disks/
[2]: http://www.butterflybalcony.com/2013/10/the-home-front-black...
> Those places where you place your order, pay through something like a vending machine at the entrance of the place. The order goes back to the kitchen and, after you've sat down and waited a short time, your order is up.
I know those places but at this point the USA seems full of them, or at least LA/SF. They aren't the same style as the Japanese ones but there are tons of places in California where you can walk in and order from a touchscreen and they just call your number when your order is ready.
Some Japanese restaurants are super tiny & ordering machines make it easier to use the space more efficiently. In some cases the machine is installed from the outside - you select what you want and get a ticket or two. If you get two then you are IIRc supposed to give one to the staff & they will start processing your order (eg. the machine is not always connected to a terminal inside).
Doing it like this you save space inside, don't have to handle dirty cash (less of an issue with electronic payments) and can concentrate on cooking without interruptions.
I saw that first at McDonald's. Also just about any place that has an app or website to order is effectively like that.
The examples at the link are mostly from around midcentury. I'm familiar with a more recent example: In 2006-2009, there was one of those on St. Mark's Place -- 8th street between 2nd and 3rd. It was called "Bamn!" and IIRC was open 24/7, so it mostly catered to late-night drinkers and partiers. (It happened to be on one of NYC's few streets that always had lively nightlife, even during the week.) It was cheap, at something like $1 or $2 for a burger, and it was reasonably good.
There's a pic: https://www.flickr.com/photos/93779577@N00/4235886625
It was a fun place. Wish there were more like it.
Thank you! I was wondering if I had imagined that.
The last cafeteria chain seen in the SF Bay Area was Fresh Choice.[1] The business problem was that the outlets attracted too many old people who didn't buy the more expensive add-on items but just bought the fixed-price salad bar.
Today, the only remaining cafeterias in the SF bay area seem to be in-house feeding operations for employees. Many of the ones in hospitals are open to the public.
There's a minimum traffic level for a cafeteria, and it's fairly high. With low traffic, the food sits out too long and becomes leftovers. Like Whole Foods' salad and hot bars.
Restaurants seem to have fads. In the SF bay area, there are few French restaurants any more. California cuisine is dead. Fish is down. (Amusingly, on Doordash, all types of fish are treated as synonyms for "salmon".) Many restaurants no longer serve bread.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresh_Choice
It’s interesting how the Automat is basically the opposite of the Subway/Chipotle/salad shop model that now dominates casual dining.
Instead of, here are all our ingredients, which do you want, it’s a precise set of premade meals with no substitutions.
Highly recommend the 2021 documentary "The Automat" if you're into this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Automat
I was just about to post the same thing. It's a very enjoyable watch. Quite light and digestible (~80 min runtime) and featuring Mel Brooks and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Currently streaming for free on Kanopy, which is often available through local public libraries.
Those pink granite cubes make that H&H look like it's built in Minecraft.
The same source has an article about the pink granite quarry involved in a lot of NYC buildings,
https://www.untappedcities.com/stony-creek-quarry-and-the-gr... ("Stony Creek Quarry and the Granite that Built New York")
I’ve been there! Stony Creek used to be a little working class seaside village with some quirky artsy folks mixed in. My father would kayak in the sound.
If you're ever in the Netherlands, check out FEBO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEBO -- same kind of thing.
I 'member seeing these depicted in A Hare Grows In Manhattan (1947) when I was a kid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDKBZ9kY-F4
These automats remind me of a service called "Magic" where the idea was that you talk to an interface but there are actual humans operating behind it. Also reminds of the mechanical turk. Anyway, imho, humans should talk to humans more, not less.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087819
I remember going to the Horn & Hardart Automat when I was a kid. It was so cool and futuristic being able to choose something, putting in a coin, and getting it immediately. It made it easy to overlook it was basically just standard cafeteria food.
This is so interesting. I remember as a child my family would go to S&S Cafeterias, and Piccadilly. It was like the lunch line at school. Regrettably the closest I've gotten to an automat was when I taught in a prison, the classroom had vending machines of sandwiches, desserts, etc.
I think we still have automats. Ikea cafe for example, the cafeteria in the basement of the Natural History and Science Museum in Washington, D.C., any number of places where you get food, checkout, sit, eat, leave without interacting with anyone.
Ya'll need a trip to Japan. So many versions of the automat approach. One favorite is ガスト (Gusto). Self seat, Order from the tablet at your table, food delivered by a rolling robot with "Kitty" theme, and self checkout with the reciept/ticket at an unstaffed kiosk. They put all of the human labor effort into kitchen staff and great ingredients. Better food than the best Denny's or IHOP in the heyday of the late 80s or early 90s, and breakfast for two totaling under 12 dollars. Its a winning twist on Automat, and other examples of this are around the corner in almost every town. Its the future we were promised in the 50s that never got delivered beyond some Art Deco public works buildings.
You see a lot of this in US Korean places (at least outside of Atlanta). The robots are a novel touch.
I started dieting recently and I've come to understand the people who say that American portions are huge. An automat lets you sample a bunch of different stuff instead of the typical fast-food format of a main, french fries, and a drink each in a too-large portion. I'd like something like that.
Not only american portions. I'm a remote worker since 20+ years. My first visit to the main workplace eating lunch was a revelation. The portion size was gigantic! And my coworkers (none having a physical job) was done within 15 minutes while I took a lot longer to not even finish half of my portion. It was at least five times my normal lunch portion. Insane. And the prices were lower than our village.
If you haven't seen it, "The Devil and Miss Jones" (1941) stars Jean Arthur and Charles Coburn and features a food fight in an automat.
Here's another one with Jean Arthur at automat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIfzFGAAOyk
Also Dark City
it's been .. too long, but Amsterdam used to feature lots of food vending machines and it seems like they're still there [1]!
[1]: https://dutchreview.com/dutch-quirks/dutch-quirk-107-eat-foo...
The H&H style is enchanting. Not sure why but I like it.
Art Deco has always been one of the best architectural styles, IMHO. I also like the pseudo-classical Greek design often found in American government buildings in small towns (city hall, the public library, and so on). They're very different styles, yet they complement each other nicely.
Yeah, and the font is pretty good!
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