Automat restaurants - Horn & Hardart was the most prominent automat chain. Originally, the machines in U.S. automats took only nickels. In the original format, a cashier sat in a change booth in the center of the restaurant, behind a wide marble counter with five to eight rounded depressions. The diner would insert the required number of coins in a machine and then lift a window, hinged at the top, and remove the meal, usually wrapped in waxed paper. The machines were replenished from the kitchen behind.
The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal’s “Best of the Web” at The Wall Street Journal written by the editor, James Taranto.
Why Do Bad Things Always Happen to Him?
“Aleppo Challenges Obama’s Legacy”—headline, Agence France-Presse, Dec. 14
Make That 10
- “9 Ways to Save Money at Starbucks”—headline, Kiplinger .com, Dec. 7
- “Available to the Highest Bidder: Coffee With Ivanka Trump”—headline, New York Times, Dec. 16
Hey, Kids! What Time Is It?
“It’s 2016, and Macedonia Is a Real Place”—headline, TheHill .com, Dec. 15
Breaking News From 1912
“Automated Restaurant Opens in NYC”—headline, WNYW-TV website, Dec. 15
Breaking News From 1935
“Racial Profiling by Police Isn’t Just an American Problem: I’m Experiencing It in Germany”—headline, Vox, Dec. 15
Breaking News From 1988
“I Miss Our Sane, Calm, Empathetic, Funny President Already”—headline, TheNation .com, Dec. 15, 2016
News You Can Use
‘Unless You’re Doing Yoga, Put On Some Real Pants”—headline, Chicago Tribune, Dec. 15
We’re Tired Just Reading About It
Writing at the American Prospect, Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy denounces President-elect Trump and makes “The Case for Resistance”:
Essential to the sustenance of righteous opposition is maintaining an appropriate spiritual and psychological stance toward the Trump calamity. It will be difficult to keep fresh a keen sense of outrage, indignation, anger, disappointment, and, yes, contempt in the coming weeks, months, and years. Inertia dulls idealism and normalizes the outrageous. . . . But it is incumbent upon those who are rightly alarmed by the Trump ascendancy to resist familiar conventions. This is a peculiarly trying moment that will hopefully prompt an unprecedented assertion of resoluteness in defense of progressive values.
Man, being a progressive sounds exhausting.
For more “Best of the Web” from The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto click here.
