West Side Highway

On Saturday, after meeting friends at a diner in Chelsea and walking a portion of the High Line, I decided to check out an abandoned stand-alone diner that I had read about. I walked about a mile down the West Side Highway, which I don't do very often but I really love the desolate and gritty feeling of the far west side.

Of course every neighborhood in New York has become impossibly cool and expensive and the west side is no exception (probably  especially the west side), but the West Side Highway still feels a bit abandoned, especially on a cold, winter weekend. I only passed a few people—mostly walking dogs—and I didn't cover much ground, but saw so many wonderful things. There are some really great old hotels, abandoned and for-sale buildings, auto-body shops and so much amazing signage and vintage typography that I couldn't have been happier.

I only went as far south as the abandoned diner and then turned around. It was hard to take photos through the tiny openings in the chain link fence, but the inside of the diner is falling apart, filled with debris and is still totally amazing. All of the windows are out of the old dining car and it's in really bad shape, but you can still imagine how it must have looked in its glory days. I hope someone resurrects the diner instead of just tearing it down—what a dream it would be to be able to bring it back to life—but its pretty incredible in its current state of decay.