Show HN: Restaurants in Peace – leave a remembrance for a closed restaurant (restaurants.rip)
It’s been a project long in the making - it started in 2019, before everything shut down/changed. The list of closed restaurants I found - for New York only - was already really long. So now (that I have time to work on it at recurse.com) it really felt like I needed to do something about it.
When a restaurant (or any business) shows up on Google Maps as “permanently closed”, in that bright red font, there’s always a tiny bit of a pang of sadness. It’s definitely more than a pang when you look for a place you loved and expected to visit again.
The project’s “aesthetic” is inspired by early 2000s funeral homes’ websites. The combination of funeral + restaurant is what made it click for me. Maybe what we long for is a place to share our losses? Maybe.
Thanks for checking it out! :)
95 comments
[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 155 ms ] threadSee https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nonexistent_features
In addition we cannot import data from Google Maps or use Street View due to licencing terms.
https://www.openhistoricalmap.org/ collects also objects gone without any remains remaining visible. Not sure about their handling of licensing.
If it were up to me, I’d recommend keeping it with a flag that notes it as closed, rather than deleting it. (Just as you can mark a row in a database as deleted and not physically delete it). I know it’s not that simple. :)
I’ve seen cases on Google Maps where a previously bookmarked restaurant, after having closed, will completely disappear there. It used to be that bookmarks of closed places would still work for some time - you could still read the reviews and see the photos.
But now, I’m finding more and more of these bookmarks just pointing to a lat,lng point. True digital rot/loss. It’s really sad when that happens - that was one of the impetuses for creating this site.
OpenStreetMap has you covered with a so-called lifecycle prefix: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Lifecycle_prefix
But once fully gone it should be removed - this way OSM data can be always verified/updated by visiting a given place, without being aware of now gone objects there. And keeps it objective - otherwise you would run into big discussion "where was this restaurant closed 20 years ago?"
Or "how this castle was structured in year 1450" where you often have multiple competing reconstructions.
Although I see what you mean, I imagine that any particular Burger King etc could still have felt “significant” - imagine someone who stopped there regularly, or had memories of going there with a relative. Or the people who worked there for a year or 20.
I definitely remember a specific McDonald’s to which my mom often brought me as a child. I remember what seat we’d always pick. So… it’s meaningful..! :) If that McD closed, I’d definitely feel something.
There’s plenty of ways that people and events can make an otherwise unremarkable place memorable.
I do know a place that makes pizza pretty close to an early 90s Pizza Hut pie. It’s like $20+ a pizza, because that’s what early 90s Pizza Hut would cost if they hadn’t been cutting quality to keep the the price relatively stable, for the last two-plus decades. So that’s nice.
If you were from downtown, it was where a lot of our stories and memories happened. You knew legends about people who you saw there but might not have talked to much. I left the city shortly after it closed because there wasn't anything to replace the life it made possible, where you could spend a saturday morning with a newspaper at the bar that served real food and make small talk with strangers. You might learn their names and what they did after a decade of seeing them, but it didn't matter. I still pop into the new place once in a while to pick up the coffee that is like nowhere else and it's worth the trip, but the downtown chapter is closed.
Same with La Hacienda on Queen St. Those two spots were landmarks of the city and its culture, and when they went, they took a lot of the coherence of the stories of people who grew up in them with them. Brunch tables full of punks, goths, and rockers wearing last nights makeup at La Hacienda usually with some awful local hardcore blaring over the speakers and farcically hostile service were what defined Queen st. People there were legends too. You'd see them and hear stories about them even if you'd never been introduced, and everyone would always talk about how they knew each other when.
Pandemic policies killed those places and also destroyed the culture of the city, so I left. I'm sure new people will make new memories, but it takes generations to make anything like that again.
If you don't mind my asking, where did you move to?
I love it, thanks for sharing!
It reminded me of Geocities, just a hobby site with no intentions other than being a hobby site. I hope you can maintain this one for a long time, and doing so gives you joy!
Have been into Gordon Ramsay and Kitchen Nightmares lately, most of the restaurants featured are now closed. That might be a fun list of restaurants to celebrate.
We think we want things to go back to the way they were, but really we just want to be young again.
To be more constructive, would be cool to tie in some connection to the present. For example, ad model for the new restaurant that is there now.
I'm sure a higher fraction of closing restaurants are mid (or worse), but by raw numbers there are many places legitimately worth memorializing. Associated personal memories are a thing of course, but there are multiple closed spots that I feel were inherently very good and have not properly been replaced in my area.
I'll definitely investigate.
Bug report: I tried to submit a remembrance there but this page it sent me to returned a 404:
https://restaurants.rip/r/forbes-island-restaurant-pier-san-...
Update: I force refreshed the original page and submitted again and it worked.
I haven't found anything like the East Coast Grill, though.
East Coast Grill is irreplaceable. Schlesinger's inventive mix of tropical flavors and and bold style made that restaurant a special treat at every visit. Whereas others would drag their parents to Henrietta's Table or the like, I directed all outside buyers of meals for me to ECG. I learned I loved fried plantains and anything marinaded in molasses&lime.
The Martini from Hell was undrinkable.
If you don't have Schlesinger's cookbooks, I would recommend them - they are excellent and straightforward to follow.
Like a New Orleans section would say.
Was going to say this looks like a perfect use case for Django and yep - you confirmed in the comments - is Django :)
Held on for a long time through Covid, but finally gave up without reopening the dining room again.
https://sf.eater.com/2022/6/17/23172806/goood-frikin-chicken...
How are you liking Recurse?
(Also I didn’t see Trouble in the SF list, in case you’re looking for places to add.)
Recurse is amazing. Truly an amazing gathering of accomplished, interesting and curious folks. It’s an amazing community and setting - if you can swing the 6 or 12 weeks, and especially if you can come to the physical space in downtown Brooklyn, I would very much recommend it.
Lots of Recursers end up on the HN homepage these days - from https://jvns.ca to https://jakelazaroff.com ‘s series on CRDTs. I think there’s a connection between the Recurse and HN communities, and an appreciation of what Recursers tend to gravite towards (personal projects that are meaningful to its creators, and are typically about explaining, exploring or building something new).
Feel free to email me to talk more about it.
As for Trouble, thanks for the suggestion! I’ll be adding it, on top of all of the other places that people have been mentioning.
It would be nice if people could add restaurants, I guess you are worried that that would require too much moderation?
For now, you can email info@restaurants.rip
Thanks a lot!