I’m not old enough to have encountered an automat as a kid. I think my first time seeing one was in the film Dark City. However, I was lucky enough to visit Amsterdam about a decade ago, and got to experience the joy of grabbing a croquette from a FEBO. If I go back, I’ll likely make it a point to visit the automat again at least once.
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In Dark City you can get a wallet at the automat!
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Here in Denmark you could buy hard core porn mags from those back in the 70’ies…
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The H&H in Philadelphia was pretty useful as a student in the 70s. Super-cheap, the food was adequate (the pie was pretty good), you didn’t have to talk to anyone, and sitting and reading was socially acceptable (though at lunchtime you might have a bunch of strangers at your table). The interior was kind of drab and depressing, so nothing to distract you from the 200 pages of Kant you needed to get read by the next day.
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Maybe it was this one.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see more of this, either. As you mentioned, many restaurants were hard hit by the pandemic, and lots of workers from that industry don’t want to go back. We might see a time when fast food and fast casual locations are mostly or completely self-serve, and only upscale restaurants will have waitstaff.
CBS did a report on the Automat last year. This contains some interesting comments from many famous people reminiscing about their experiences, and more images. It also describes why most went out of business:
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For me, the ‘64 NYC Worlds Fair was full of animatronic dinosaurs, The Pieta, Disney’s Small World and Carousel of Progress, Eames’ IBM exhibit (!!!), …but not waffles.
BTW Seattle’s '62 World’s Fair claims to have introduced the no-syrup, whipped-cream-and-strawbery “Belgian Waffle” to America.Belgian waffles are introduced in America at the Seattle World's Fair on April 21, 1962. - HistoryLink.org
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Someone on youtube posted a series of videos called “At the Automat” (pt. 1, pt. 2, etc.) containing scenes from old movies at automats … it’s a nice series of slice-of-lifes about these things. I find it very comforting. (I too am just barely old enough to have fond memories of them — these are a nice way to reconnect with these times.)
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The only automat I ever visited was in Bklyn with my 8th grade buddies right after we had finished taking an entrance exam at Brooklyn Tech HS. I was the first to grab a meal (ham & cheese sandwich and milk) then found an open table to sit at. I wasn’t alone for a minute when a guy, perhaps in his mid-50s, came over and sat right across from me. He didn’t bring a meal over, so he wasn’t eating. He just sat there smiling at me and not saying a word. For a moment I thought he was a “hobo” (that was the word that ran through my 14-year-old noodle) and I thought that maybe he wanted me to share my meal with him. Then I thought, “nope”. He was dressed as if he’d just come from some important office job. Yes. I was uncomfortable. But I felt that just getting up to find another table would have been rude. I could see my sugar-addict buddies (help!!) had finally finished piling desserts on their trays. That’s when I made my move from the table. “Oh! There you guys are!” I told them about my brief encounter. Theories were discussed. To this day I still feel guilty about getting up and walking away like that.
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I dunno…not bringing food to the table gives bad vibes to me too. I think you probably made the right call…
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Yeah I went there! it was called Bamn! (Edited my post with photos where you can see the food names). It looks like it closed in 2009.
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reminds me of how in old movies some characters will mention that they live at “such-and-such hotel”
The characters weren’t supposed to be rich and bad with money—they lived in SRO’s, which were a normal housing category at the time
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Not an automat exactly, because it used conveyor belts instead of little doors, but in the 70s one of the Smithsonian cafeterias was amazing to 12yo me. Can’t remember which museum it was at though, and a cursory Google has failed me
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The 1950s computer anxiety comedy “Desk Set” contains quite a few scenes in an automat, including scenes depicting the workers on "the other side.
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Those devolved into (or always were) tenements, and are unfortunately still a housing category (though I don’t know if “normal” would be the word). The Tenderloin in San Francisco, for example, is rife with them to this day. I don’t know if SROs were ever nice places to live, really? Perhaps “normal” in the sense that many people who had no better options lived in them, but…
Hotels were also a common housing choice for new people in small towns though, so you see this in Westerns especially. Those towns didn’t have apartment buildings, so if you were new and hadn’t yet or couldn’t afford to buy land and build a house, you lived in the local hotel (which was often just rooms above a bar).
That’s also still kinda true, although off-the-record basement apartments and such fill that niche in many small towns now. Again, few small towns have much in the way of apartments, so people who can’t afford to own houses make due other ways.
Sorry, I guess I’m dragging this off topic now.
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Not-so-fond memories…
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The Smithsonian Museum of American History on the Mall in DC had an automat in the basement back in the '80s – I was so excited to see it until I realized it was just an exhibit, and not functioning.
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These are GREAT—thanks for posting!
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So apparently there were some attempts at automats/similar style automated restaurants just before the pandemic that failed because the owners felt like diners expected a certain level of service - it’ll be interesting to see, post-pandemic, how this changes. More people are going to be willing (desiring) to have a dining experience with fewer human interactions, but there will also be a tension between what diners expect (which the last couple years have conclusively demonstrated is often unreasonable) and what workers are willing to put up with that will need to be resolved too. (Now I’m also wondering how much Japan’s love of food vending machines is tied to labor shortages…)
Reading about the food vending machines which became popular during the pandemic in certain markets, I wonder if the convenience for consumers will change minds about other automated food experiences…
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