As I wrote somewhere the other day, I had sort of given up on Twitter some years ago as it had been described as a toxic environment. I didn't follow many people also so I didn't see any good in going there, but I re-discovered it after Putin's Invasion and quickly realised that Twitter is indeed the place to get the quickest updates on events such as this, if you know where to look. You also don't have that toxicity of posts, shares and comments that are all over the place; again if you know what to follow. But I digress...
It's been a while since I follow Justin King, in theory a journalist that used to be a military contractor (and if I'm not mistaken married a military woman), but that now just describes himself as Guy on YouTube. I've shared many of his videos, in articles here but also in my Facebook page. You might know him as Beau of the Fifth Column and he's of course on Twitter as well.
It was in Twitter that I noticed several references from north-americans to Waffle House, being used almost as analogy or metaphor to some situations or reactions. I noticed that Waffle House was a chain of restaurants (as in a place to get food) but couldn't understand why all the side remarks and comical mentions to it, so I asked a question on Beau's twitter and the floodgates opened...
Not only did my question had a lot of reactions (more than 78k views and 357 interactions) but Beau himself replied to the question with a thread of his own dedicated to it, that gathered even more reactions, and there were even requests for a video dedicated to this.
As I tweeted later, my own Twitter exploded, by getting a couple more followers (still very low numbers) but the notifications during the 24 hours period were probably more than the total notifications I had in the previous years! So I enjoyed my 15 minutes of fame (and tried to capitalise on it by making more commentary of my own in English both here in the blog as in Twitter itself).
But I just want to summarize Beau's description of Waffle House: it is basically a 24-hour diner but in the South there aren't many restaurant chains that open 24-hour, so Waffle House became a kind of own micro-cosmos because of the people that go there and when they go there. The special thing about it is that due to being open 24-hours, it will get different groups at the same time, in particular periods of the day. For instance, on Sunday morning there will be church going families looking for a breakfast mixing together with the Saturday night party-goers that are half (or fully) drunk still eating the greasy food that works wonders when hangover! Every class of people go there and mingle, you can even find at the same place police, sex workers and drug dealers enjoying a break.
And it is also a restaurant famous for staying open with the worst of weather conditions. Because americans like to use everything as an index or a benchmark (except for the actual scientific ones), there is a Waffle House Index for natural disasters: if the WH is closed it means it was a catastrophe.
That might sounds silly, their insistence in keeping open during hurricanes and huge storms, but actually they are providing a community service as even when a restaurant is forced to close in an affected area, they will send as soon as possible a special team to reopen it - this way they can provide food for relief workers as well as people that won't be able to prepare food at their place but can grab a bite to eat. I admit that is actually cool.
Waffle House is also full of controversies and it seems that a lot of scandals happened in their restaurants. One of the first replies I got to my question was a guy saying his latina wife would not enter in one, and I assumed it was probable a place known for being racist. I later realised I might have jumped into conclusion.
It really seems to be a collection of what makes America, in particular the South, special.
Not everyone agreed with the more positive and curious opinions though, with many complaining about servicing, some sharing stories of acquaintances that used to work there, some seeing it just as another cheesy chain restaurant.
It's been a while since I follow Justin King, in theory a journalist that used to be a military contractor (and if I'm not mistaken married a military woman), but that now just describes himself as Guy on YouTube. I've shared many of his videos, in articles here but also in my Facebook page. You might know him as Beau of the Fifth Column and he's of course on Twitter as well.
It was in Twitter that I noticed several references from north-americans to Waffle House, being used almost as analogy or metaphor to some situations or reactions. I noticed that Waffle House was a chain of restaurants (as in a place to get food) but couldn't understand why all the side remarks and comical mentions to it, so I asked a question on Beau's twitter and the floodgates opened...
Not only did my question had a lot of reactions (more than 78k views and 357 interactions) but Beau himself replied to the question with a thread of his own dedicated to it, that gathered even more reactions, and there were even requests for a video dedicated to this.
As I tweeted later, my own Twitter exploded, by getting a couple more followers (still very low numbers) but the notifications during the 24 hours period were probably more than the total notifications I had in the previous years! So I enjoyed my 15 minutes of fame (and tried to capitalise on it by making more commentary of my own in English both here in the blog as in Twitter itself).
But I just want to summarize Beau's description of Waffle House: it is basically a 24-hour diner but in the South there aren't many restaurant chains that open 24-hour, so Waffle House became a kind of own micro-cosmos because of the people that go there and when they go there. The special thing about it is that due to being open 24-hours, it will get different groups at the same time, in particular periods of the day. For instance, on Sunday morning there will be church going families looking for a breakfast mixing together with the Saturday night party-goers that are half (or fully) drunk still eating the greasy food that works wonders when hangover! Every class of people go there and mingle, you can even find at the same place police, sex workers and drug dealers enjoying a break.
And it is also a restaurant famous for staying open with the worst of weather conditions. Because americans like to use everything as an index or a benchmark (except for the actual scientific ones), there is a Waffle House Index for natural disasters: if the WH is closed it means it was a catastrophe.
That might sounds silly, their insistence in keeping open during hurricanes and huge storms, but actually they are providing a community service as even when a restaurant is forced to close in an affected area, they will send as soon as possible a special team to reopen it - this way they can provide food for relief workers as well as people that won't be able to prepare food at their place but can grab a bite to eat. I admit that is actually cool.
Waffle House is also full of controversies and it seems that a lot of scandals happened in their restaurants. One of the first replies I got to my question was a guy saying his latina wife would not enter in one, and I assumed it was probable a place known for being racist. I later realised I might have jumped into conclusion.
It really seems to be a collection of what makes America, in particular the South, special.
Not everyone agreed with the more positive and curious opinions though, with many complaining about servicing, some sharing stories of acquaintances that used to work there, some seeing it just as another cheesy chain restaurant.
I just want to say that like some other chain restaurants, such as IHOP (International House of Pancakes), they are named after a particular type of food, but they server many other stuff, and I assume that now most people go there for that other stuff and not their waffles! Also, I don't think we have that kind of restaurants in Europe. We have places open at late night, with the greasy food needed to compensate too much alcohol consumption, but I can only remember some fried chicken and indian food joints that would be open (almost) 24-hours in the UK, when I was there in 2006.
I do want to experience a true american diner, those places where you go at anytime and eat whatever you feel like. Waffle House seems a perfect good place, where I can go at different periods of the day (or night) and check that hilarity that occurs with the opposed group of people sharing the same space at the same time. If I ever visit the South, I have to put it on my list.
And just to end, Beau's not the only personality that has this opinion of Waffle House. Bourdain once visited it for one of his shows too, and the video has a very similar tone to what I learned from my question on Twitter:
In a way I'm happy I never seen Bourdain's show with Waffle House (or forgot about it if I did); asking a question on Twitter and getting reactions was priceless in so many ways.
I do want to experience a true american diner, those places where you go at anytime and eat whatever you feel like. Waffle House seems a perfect good place, where I can go at different periods of the day (or night) and check that hilarity that occurs with the opposed group of people sharing the same space at the same time. If I ever visit the South, I have to put it on my list.
And just to end, Beau's not the only personality that has this opinion of Waffle House. Bourdain once visited it for one of his shows too, and the video has a very similar tone to what I learned from my question on Twitter:
In a way I'm happy I never seen Bourdain's show with Waffle House (or forgot about it if I did); asking a question on Twitter and getting reactions was priceless in so many ways.
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