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How Automats Worked · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's not here, but Chuck is Chuck's Your
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: nickname is Poopy.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: McGhee, actually Puky mcke not both. Now let's here's the story, everybody.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: I went to Mexico City again and got sick again,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: thankfully at the end, and I couldn't record yesterday, but
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: we were in danger of missing a pubblished date for
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: the first time, yes in seventeen years.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Grave danger. I would say, like, it's Wednesday at three
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: and we need an episode for tomorrow at five am.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Right, and we've never cut it this close. So first
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: of all, my friend, thank you for your flexibility.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: Thank you for not throwing up long enough to record
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: this episode.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: I lasted up about an hour ago, man. And the
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: main problem is it's just I've been in like a
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: fugue state. Man. I have nothing in my body for
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: three days now. Yeah, so I'm just like spacey and
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: can I told you want to email you guys still
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: love this that like, I'll go thirty minutes where I
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: just like, I'm just so zoned out. I can't have
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: a I don't even have a coherent thought for a
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: half hour. And Josh said, well, that part sounds kind
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: of nice.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: It really does man to be able to just turn
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: it off.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, I love that city. I'm gonna
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: keep going back. I'm gonna maybe next time drink only
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: bottled things and not even cocktails with ice. I'm trying
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: to figure out what's triggering me. It may just be
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: my biome and some of the food. I don't know.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: You need to learn four words in Spanish. I'll have
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: that neat.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Okay, it's not a bad idea, but I'm still gonna
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: go back. I'm gonna try it again. And this may
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: have also triggered my diverticulitis. Oh so that may be
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: why it's extending here in to day three. I don't know,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: but I'm here and this gives us, dude a rare
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: opportunity to do anything newsy or like current if you
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: want to mention anything.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: Well, that's what we're doing. We're doing an episode on automats.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: There's nothing more newsier current than that.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: That's right, automats. And we need to give a big
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: shout out to a documentary called The automat By from
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: director Lisa Hurwitz, because it's great and I saw it
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: a couple of years ago and that's what inspired this episode.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: But I wanted to I don't want to like write
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: on the heels of this great doc you know, kind
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: of swoop in and do a podcast episode about it.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: But great documentary. It's streaming on Max. Highly recommend it.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: She did a great job. I can't wait to see
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: what she does next. And it's a big help.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Here. We have another other huge shout out to give.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: This is the first episode we're doing with help from
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: our new writer, Laura Claus.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, welcome aboard Laura. Laura came to us through Libya,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: which is all the recommendation we needed right.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Right exactly, and she's been great. I've been thinking, Chuck,
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: a lot of our writers have good nicknames. Okay, Laura
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: spells her last name like claw claw Son, So I
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: think we should call Laura doctor Claw.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, I thought you're gonna say the Clauster.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: No, doctor Claw. It's an inspector, gadget reference doctor.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, I never watched that.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: That was good. I actually have seen it. So if
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: you don't have cable but you have an antenna over
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: the air antenna. Oh yeah, there's a station called me
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: TV and they just play all sorts of great reruns
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: and everything. Well, they just launched a whole new channel
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: called me TV Tunes and they show some deep cut tunes.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, like Beetlejuice the cartoon. There's Scooby Doo on
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: at six pm Eastern every day, which makes me very happy.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: But they show Inspector Gadget and I was like, this
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: is actually a much better cartoon than I remembered.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Uh, where is this in your off grid panic room? Like,
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: where are you watching antenna TV?
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Oh no, I've got I've got a really high tech setup.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: I have hijacked the coaxial cables throughout my house and
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: I connected my outdoor antenna to the indoor cable feed
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: so I can connect TVs throughout my house to get
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: the reception from the outdoor antenna.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: That is the Josh Clarkiest thing I've ever heard.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: It worked really well. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, So
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: there you go. You don't need to just stream. You
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: can also get free TV.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Heck yeah, man, I had free TV for many, many,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: many many years.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you need to be watching me TV tunes.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Chuck, all right, I'll check it out. Should we talk
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: auto match or did you have another announcement?
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: No, no, I don't have any announcements, but I do
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: have a question for you.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, Chuck, mm hmmm?
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: Have you ever eaten food?
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Right? By the way, this is gonna be a tough
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: one for me to get through for obvious reasons.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because in the first paragraph I saw the words
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: oyster stew earlier and I almost vomited in my mouth.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Same here, And I don't even have diverticulitis.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: I have not eaten food in three days, but I
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: used to eat food.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: Oh nice, Okay, well, Chuck, then I think you would
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: have enjoyed a trip to the Automat.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: That's right, and we've been at it for six minutes,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: we might as well go in and say that. The
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Automat was a grouping of chain restaurants, self serve restaurants,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: sort of like a cafeteria, but instead of being served
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: in a line where people would dump food on a tray,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: they had these walls filled with glass fronted compartments, and
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: you would put in some money and a slot and
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: you would open the door and get your piece of
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: pie or your chicken pot pie or your pot roast
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: or whatever have you.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, your oyster stew. Yeah, but you got to you
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: you would walk up and you just sit there with
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: your finger like on your lower lip, looking from case
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: to case, trying to figure out what appealed to you
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: right then, very much like you were looking at the menu,
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: but you were looking at the actual food you were
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: going to consume instead, So you didn't even need to
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: be able to read to know what you wanted at
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: this at an automat. And then, like you said, you
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: put your money in and you get your food out,
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: and you go sit down. And two people who first
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: went to the automat chuck, We're talking like this is
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: the turn of the last century when they started to
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: take off. This was as high tech as anything got.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Because it's really important to point out the in like
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: the first third at least of the twentieth century, a
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: lot of people in the United States didn't have a refrigerator.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: They might have had an icebox, but they certainly didn't
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: have anything pumping free on through it. No no cable TV,
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: not even over the air antennas in some cases, no
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Beetlejuice the cartoon, and they also so might not even
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: have electricity in their home. So the idea of this
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: futuristic serve yourself out of a glass case that's lit
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: kind of experience was a really big deal. And what's
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: even more remarkable, it's so okay, you're like, Yeah, everybody
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: in the nineteen tens was just a yokel by definition, right,
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: These things lasted until the nineteen sixties, and they were
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: still viewed as these amazing places to go eat.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the last one, this is remarkable, The
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: very last one in New York close in ninety one. Yeah,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: which is hard to believe. They saw a couple of
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: sad decades, a few sad decades before that. But we'll
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: get to all that. But should we go to the beginning.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's start at the beginning. That seems appropriate.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: And where else are we going to go but our
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: old friend Germany, Because the first automat popped up in
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Berlin in eighteen ninety five, and the word automat was
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: just more of a general term for a ventding machine
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: in Germany, but it won a gold medal a couple
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: of years later at the Brussels World Fair. Europe kind
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: of got into them a little bit, and they spread
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: around Europe over the next five or so years before
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: making the leap to the United States.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it took a little college try, I guess,
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: the first few times for to make that leap across
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: the Atlantic. And it was two guys, Joseph Horn and
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Frank Harder, whose last names would become synonymous with automats.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: In fact, depending on what city you were in, you
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: would probably refer to the automat as a Horn and
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: hard Arc. That's just like they were like the Kleenex
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: of automats essentially, right. Yeah, they were already in business together.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: They owned a chain of cafeterias in Philadelphia, and they said,
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: what's next, what will the future bring? And they figured
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: out the best way to predict the future was to
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: build it themselves. And I think they actually made a
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: trip to Germany and found out about the automats, and
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: they decided they wanted to bring it back to the
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: United States. And like I said, it took a few
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: attempts for them to actually get it to work, right.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Their first one in Philly, which was the first
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: one overall, was nineteen oh two, but the equipment, you know,
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: because it started in Europe, was in Europe, and they
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: tried to get some of the stuff shipped over there,
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: you know, these big beautiful cases with the coin slots
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: and the little windows and everything, and the ship sunk
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: in the Atlantic, so they lost all that gear. They
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: tried again, and these were victim to a warehouse fire,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: but salvageble. They repaired that stuff. They got them up
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: and working, and they beat out their closest competitor. There
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: was one card Harcomb in New York that went out
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: of business. I think it was a little fancier. Yeah,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: and H and H definitely leaned toward, as we'll see,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: serving just sort of solid, affordable comfort food to the masses.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And so Horn and Hard Arts automats, I think,
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: like you said, started in Philadelphia, and then after Harcombe
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: went out of business, the Horn and Hardart kind of
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: muscled in on that market, which is actually pretty brave
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: because somebody had already proven that automats may not work
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: in New York. Good point, But I guess they had
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: faith in their food. They were like, have you tried
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: this oyster stew? It's amazing, God of stuff saying that
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: and so they they hit New York I think in
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: nineteen twelve. By nineteen thirty two, twenty years later, they
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: had forty two automats in New York City, another twenty
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: in Philadelphia. Amazing, and H and H became the largest
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: restaurant chain in the entire United States. The United States
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: was big at the time.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is like, uh, that's funny. By the way,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: this is like during the Great Depression, like people were
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: going out of business right and left, and they actually
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: H and H thrived during the depression because again, everything
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: was really cheap. It was comforting stuff. As you'll see,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: the coffee was great, the food was fresh and well,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: maybe not more than anything, but additionally it was it
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: was it was a great place to go. They were
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: beautiful places. Generally, they were clean and they were safe,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: and we'll get to a bunch of other ways that
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: they were inclusive as we go on.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: They were also known because they were clean and safe
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: and you could get really good coffee for a nickel.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: They became places where you would just go sit and
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: like rest your dogs, or take a load off for
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: a little while, or catch your breath, whatever you wanted
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: to do for a little while, and one of the
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: reasons why people did that was because part of the
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: allure of the automat was that there was no front
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: of house staff. Generally, there were no servers, there was
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: no matred, there was no manager. They if there was manager,
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: they were in the back. Yeah, So you didn't feel
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: like hustled or rushed or like anybody was judging you
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: for sitting there as long as you want nursing a
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: single cup of five cent coffee, and so like, Automat's
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: kind of kind of got that reputation where you could
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: just go chill out. And as big of a deal
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: as they were in New York and Philadelphia, they actually
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: didn't take off everywhere, even though people tried, because Horn
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: and Hardart were so successful.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's kind of hard to believe in
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: a way, because they were so successful there, you would
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: think in the other places, like of course the obvious ones.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: They went to Chicago, Boston, DC, and Detroit and some
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: other places. But you know, those were big cities, and
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: it's just odd that they didn't take off there. But
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: we do have a quote here from New York History
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: from a guy or an idea rather from this guy
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: named Nicholas Brammel, who basically was like, you know what,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: in New York, it's so dense, and they really concentrated
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: the restaurants around offices like in the garment district and
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: the financial district in Midtown where people were either shopping
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: or like going to work, far less in like you know,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: the quieter neighborhood streets and stuff like that. So it
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: was just so densely packed. And everyone knows how busy
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: New York foot traffic is around those places. And that
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: was at least Nicholas Brammel's take on why they took
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: off in New York and Philly.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: I have my own take. At the very least in Detroit,
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: it didn't work because of the name they used for
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: the restaurant. The Automat in Detroit was called Automatic lunch
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: Room Number one. I mean that's like, that's like the Cereal.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: It's like a plain white box that says brand flakes
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: and just black font yeah, or beer like that beer?
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Can you got me that time?
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Oh?
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: I mean I kind of like the off brand stuff,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: but yeah, that's definitely weirdly vague.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: That's not off brand, that's off brand awful. You want
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: to take a break.
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: H yeah, let's take a break. We'll be right back.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: Take a break so you can go throw up.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, we're back. I did not throw up. I think
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: of good. It's been subsiding every day in the in
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: the afternoon and I feel fine, and then in the
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: morning again I'm nauseous. So that's why I think it's
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: a diverticulitis.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: Man, that is awful. Are you going to be able
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: to record tomorrow?
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: We'll see right, No, I'll be okay, I'll be fine.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: Good. I'm gonna do a lot of studying after this, okay, kid,
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: all right.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: So we were talking about the busyness of New York
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: and why it worked out there, and one of the
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: other reasons it was really popular because, like I mentioned,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: it was it was a very clean place. They prided themselves,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: at least in the in the heyday decades, they did
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: go downhill and you know, kind of fall into a
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: little bit of shabbiness, but in the heyday they were
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: known as being really, really really clean, safe places. And
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: believe it or not, at the time, there were a
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: lot of cafeterias that like, if you were an unaccompanied woman,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: they would not serve you had to be in there
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: with your husband, or they just served men like businessmen.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: So a woman could go in by yourself, children could
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: go in and it wasn't like a seedy thing. Families
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: could feel safe and like they were in a clean
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: place with good food. And also a lot of these
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: were really really beautiful restaurants on the inside.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they were like there was a really low likelihood
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: that one customer was going to expose themselves to the
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: other customers. It just wasn't that kind of place, right, Yeah,
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: And like you said, they are gorgeous. They were Art Deco,
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: which was the trend at the time, beautiful, and they
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: would have some of them had like two story facades.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of marble, stained glass, bronze everywhere. They
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: had big windows that led in tons of light. Some
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: of them had a mezzanine upstairs dining area, like they
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: were huge. And then they also paid attention to details too,
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: like that famous coffee that you were talking about. You
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: would put your nickel in this cool little dispenser and
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: the coffee came out of like an italianate dolphin's mouth.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: That it's a beautiful like I would love to find
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: one of those on eBay just there there. Oh you
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: can buy those? How much are they?
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: I didn't see, but I'll get you one just just
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: as a present for recording today. How about that?
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: Well, I think in the I mean it's been a
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: while since it's seen the doc, but I think there
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: was someone that is getting like the automat machines too
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: and collecting in the.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, nice, pretty cool, kind of like the MERV
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: Griffin set. They just found them out back of a
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Burger King. What you remember in Seinfeld when Cramer the
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: old MERV Griffin set and he started hosting the MERV
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: Griffin Show in his apartment.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: That's right, Burger King will come back again in this episode,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: believe it or not.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: That's right. So you said they were rigorously clean. That
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: was one of the things they were known for. The
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: other thing they were known for was that their food
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: was like, like really fresh. I couldn't think of a
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: non offensive way to put it, but it was a
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: really fresh take on food.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think it was as fresh as food could
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: be for that format.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Let's say that the coffee was super fresh, like after
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: twenty minutes, they would throw the coffee out and put
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: new coffee in the food they did not sell the
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: next day. And if you're thinking, what a lot of
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: food waste because they're pre making this stuff, and you know,
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: we'll get to that in a sec. But a little
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: bit of genius here is they had three different day
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: old shops in lower income neighborhoods in New York. So
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: the next day they would sell the food there at
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: a discount. So even if you didn't have the nickel
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: for the piece of pie or whatever, you might be
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: able to get it for like two or three cents
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: the next.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: Day, yeah, or two and a half cents. Yeah, and
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: you can find it.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: I'll eat a pie for a week, So I'm fine
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: with that.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: For sure, as long as it hasn't fallen on the
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: street in public, for sure. And they were also known
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: for that really good coffee, right that came out of
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: dolphin's mouths. So at the time, if you were in America,
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: the coffee you drank and this is the I don't know,
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: the nineteen tens, it was boiled, yeah, and there was
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: no filter, no nothing, so like grounds would come out,
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: so your coffee was gritty. There was no filter again
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: to take out any of the oils. Any of the tastes.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: It was harsh, harsh coffee, and that's what people drank
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: and you liked it, and you didn't complain because the
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: coffee would punch you in the face if you did.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: It was that kind of coffee. Well, Horn and Hardart
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: had a different take. They had a French drip, right,
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: which is still mixed, pretty good coffee, but at the
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: time you had to go to New Orleans to get
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: coffee like that, and Horn and Heartart serving the stuff
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: in New York and Philadelphia at all of the sixty
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: plus automats for a nickel and every twenty minutes they
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: throw out the old coffee and bring in fresh stuff.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: That's right. They sold so much coffee that they ended
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: up losing money on it because they kept it locked
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: into that nickel price for thirty eight years.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I did the math. In nineteen twelve, which
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: is when they hit New York, and nickel was worth
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: a dollar sixty today. By nineteen fifty it was worth
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: sixty four cents. So they started definitely losing money over
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: time on that coffee.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So they were losing money. They eventually
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: had to raise the price. The only thing they could
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: do was double it to ten cents. Because their slots
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: took nickels and their sales dropped a lot, from seventy
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: million cups a year to forty five million, they still
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: came out on top revenue wise, if you do the math.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: But I remember watching the documentary and they were talking
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: about this. I've wondered and I haven't found my way
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: to wrap my head around how to actually do this topic.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: But something about change like coins and how they established
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: so much commerce, like a coin slot only taking a nickel,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: the only thing you can do is double it. So
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: what does that mean to the economy? Like there's something there,
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: but I'm just not quite sure how to frame it.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: So maybe somebody could help me with that.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: Maybe we could tie it into the idea that I
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: had about why everything is so much more expensive now,
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: even really maybe speaking than it used to be.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because I mean the idea of like doubling the
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: cost of something is crazy, even if it's a nickel
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: to a dime. At the time, like doubling your price
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: is just insanity for a business, But there was nothing
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: else they could do.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: But even still, even doubling the price from a nickel
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: to a dime in nineteen fifties money that was still
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: twenty or so cents less than what they were getting
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: for in nineteen twelve, Yeah, adjusting for inflation. So it
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: sounds like to me the bigger problem is that they
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: just doubled it overnight. And again that's all they could
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: do because their slots only took nickels. Yeah, so that's
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: what they had to deal with. But like you said,
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: even still they came out on top revenue wise. But
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: I get the impression that there were probably a lot
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: of grumblers over that kind of thing who really just
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: took super good cheap coffee for granted, and frankly, shame
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: on them.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they also sold a lot of pie, and I
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: do remember this from the dock. Pie was a very
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: big deal at H and H in nineteen sixty four.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Here's a pretty fun stat They sold an average of
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: eight hundred and twenty two pieces of pie in New
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: York City between eight and eleven am. And there are
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: some people who said, some historians that have said that
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: I don't know about this, but maybe that there was
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: a desire for people to do things like eat pie
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: for breakfast, but if you had to order it from
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: a server. You might be like, oh, you know, I
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: can't order apple pie for breakfast.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: Right, pancakes with apples on them?
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. But at the autumat you could just do it,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: you know, on the down low and be quiet about it.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: I just I didn't know people would be judgy like
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: that back then. But maybe, uh.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think everybody, yeah, because they were pretty proper
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: back then too, you.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Know, pie for breakfast.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Even today, though I went and looked, I was like, okay,
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: surely our attitudes have changed. No, no, they haven't. If
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: you look up breakfast pies, it's all like, you know,
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: breakfast stuff, but in like a pie shell or something
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: like that. There's no one out there eating actual pie
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: for breakfast. It's insane.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah, because it's a dessert. It's a little weird.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: First.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: I like the idea, but it is a dessert.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: You can make the case that almost all breakfast foods
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: are desserts in the United States. Man, have you heard
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: of like I hop.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: So after your steak dinner you can get a bacon,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: egg and cheese biscuit exactly.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: I would that sounds good, although I don't like biscuits
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: very much as a sandwich. I like a biscuity on
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: its own, like say cracker barrel. If you get biscuits
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: and honey, okay, really good. But if you take that biscuit,
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: cut it in half and put anything like a a
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: cheese or something on them, like this is grody. Give
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: me an English muffin, make it a mist Wow.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, never knew that. All right, still getting to know
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: each other after all these years. All right, So let's
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the nickel throwers. Because if
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: you're gonna require a bunch of nickels, you're gonna have
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: to have a bunch of nickels. And you don't often
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: come in with a bunch of nickels as a consumer.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: So they had change people. They were women, basically. They
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: called them nickel throwers. Yeah, and they just sat there
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: all day long shoving nickels across the counter, just like
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: when I would go to the ninety nine cent movie
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: when I was a kid. They had a big stack
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: of tickets and a big stack of pennies and they
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: would just shove it back to you in the window,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: and it was always a lot of fun.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: I thought, that's funny. So I guess they decided that
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: that ninety nine cent price really brought people in more
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: than a one dollar movie would. Huh maybe.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: And I'm curious how much they would lose in a
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: year on those pennies.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: One of the things though, Chuck, did you see I
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: guess in the documentary the nickel throwers and like the bubble,
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: the glass bubble, Yeah, fronted things that they said and
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: they look like fortune tellers.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty funny, but it was part of.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: That whole ornate look to everything, like its just the
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: whole Most of those places were really.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Pretty Yeah, absolutely, and you know, like you said, it
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: conveyed a sense of the future. Like kids loved it
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: for that reason because they were it was like being
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: in the Jetsons or something. But kids also loved it
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: because that gave him a sense of autonomy to go
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: in there and get a couple of nickels from their
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: parents and to be able to walk up and pick
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: something out.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: You got to read that Neil Simon quote.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: It's great Neil Simon. I take issue with this quote
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: or the end of it. Oh you okay, Neil Simon,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: the Great Neil Simon said this when he was a
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: child about going there or as an adult, about going
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: there as a child, to have your own stack of
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: nickels placed in your tiny hands, to be able to
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: choose your own food richly on display like museum pieces,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: to make quick and final decisions at the age of eight.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: That was a lesson in financial dealings that not even
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: two years at the Wharton School could buy today.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: Maybe you look there, you think that hyperbolic. Yeah, that's
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: probably so, but it is a pretty great quote for
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: it's very sweet. So one of the things though, is,
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: including people like Neil Simon and other people who were
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: interviewed in the Automat documentary, people tend to remember the
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: food as like good, and it's entirely possible it was
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: for a while. But the older, the longer you go
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: along in the history of the Automat, the worse the
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: food probably got for a little while. So it's not
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: entirely clear that that the food was actually good toward
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: the end. And we can't really say because again, the
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: last one closed in nineteen ninety one, and I'm guessing
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: by the time that one.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Closed it's probably wasn't too good.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: Right, You shouldn't really compare the food in general over
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: the course of the history of the automat to that
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: last one. But I'm guessing it was probably pretty decent
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: for a while based on some of the stuff I'm reading.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: I bet it was pretty good, if for no other
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: reason than in the nineteen twenties and thirties and forties
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: and fifties, they use real food, right, and real ingredients,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: and it wasn't like it is today. So I just
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: think by virtue of that, it was probably not bad.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, I'm with you, So, Chuck, I say,
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: we talk about how automated the automat really was, because
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: it turns out not really. It was really a facade. Literally,
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: it was a facade of food that seemed to be
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: mysteriously conjured out of nowhere, possibly by robots.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was one of the selling points that,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: you know, another piece of pie on a tiny plate
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: would pop into that window when one went out. It's
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: not like it just stayed empty. I guess if they
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: ran out of pie, it would or they'd probably put
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: you know, something else in there. But they had a
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: huge actually a few different central commissaries in the city
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: where they would make all the stuff. They would ship
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: it over there, and they had tons and tons and
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: tons of worker bees behind the scenes doing all that stuff.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: They had these rotating drums that would do the work
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: of filling the actual slots. But there had to be
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: someone filling those drums. So it wasn't a bunch of
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: robots back there. It was not George Jensen. It was
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: just a bunch of people plating stuff up and putting
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: it in the drum to put in the window.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So say that you went up and you're like,
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: I'm going to have that delicious bowl of bubbling, greasy
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: oyster stew that's just sitting there looking at me in
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: the face. I think one of those oysters might still
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: be alive. That's how good it was. Right, And you
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: put your nickel in and you pull the lever correct.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: I don't remember if there was a lever, but that
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: sounds about.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: Right, or like you pulled the like you were buying
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: cigarettes as a kid when you were fourteen in a
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: coin operated machine, that kind of lever what I'm talking about, right.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: Well, I didn't like you did, but sure I saw
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: the bad kids doing that exactly.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: So you would do something like that and then either
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: it would open like it would allow the little glass
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: compartment window to open up so you could get your
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: oyster stew or what have you from inside, or it
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: might rotate a drum like you were saying, so that
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: that oyster stew was now available to you. And you'd
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: open the window, and then there would be an open
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: compartment in the back of the drum that somebody who
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: was working the back of the automat cases would see
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: was empty and would put a new thing of oyster
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: stew in there, and then the whole thing would just continue.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: I also saw that some of them had a photo
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: of the food and that yeah, you would like open
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: the case and just pull it out, and then the
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: people in backwood notice that that one was empty. But
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: suffice to say, however the food came out, there was
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: a way to see in the rear that that compartment
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: needed refilling. And one of the things Horn and Hardart
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: was known for was armies of people who made sure
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: that that food was there, that the compartments were full,
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: and that the food was fresh too, that the salisbury
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: steak wasn't getting jiggly. You know what I mean.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: I'm struggling.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: I know you're doing it on a purpose. It's all fun.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: That last part was purpose.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: For a while there they didn't have hot windows. They
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: just had the cold windows, so the hot food was
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: served from a steam table. But it was not too
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: long until they had the hot windows and the cold windows,
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: or the hot cases. Probably how they treated their workers
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: is a matter of debate. They struck a couple of times.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: Nineteen thirty seven they struck. They had three thousand employees
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: at the time. That failed. That organizing effort did not hold.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: Then again in nineteen fifty two they struck again, and
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: eventually New York State Supreme Court Justice Melvin Barash was
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: one of the people trying to organize at the time
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty two and in nineteen ninety one he
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: said the conditions were straight out of the nineteenth century.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: That effort failed other people. If you watch the documentary,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: the son of the president of the company said, no,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: it was great. We had company picnics and Christmas parties
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: and like every it was really really really.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: Great that I loved the workers, Yeah, exactly. There was
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: also an actor named Apache Ramos, who is best known
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: for playing one of the orphans in The Warriors, but
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: also is lesser known as having managed the Fat Boys
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: in the eighties.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Oh the Warriors. That Warriors.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like, come out and play a patchie ramos.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'll have to check that guy out.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: Oh man, he had a magnificent afro in that in
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: that movie.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Yep, I totally know exactly the guy.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah what a great Yeah. But he also managed the
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: Fat Boy like the Fat Boys are back, uh huh.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: In the eighties, he worked at an automatic and so
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: did his grandmother. I'm assuming one or the other got
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: the other one the job. But he remembered that the
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: horn and Hardart would throw holiday parties for the workers
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: children around like Christmas time. Oh man, can you imagine
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: how beautiful those places looked when they were decorated for
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: Christmas parties in like the fifties and sixties. Like I
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: if you know, people are like, if you could ever
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: go back in time, what would you do? I would
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: go to that Christmas party?
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure. This reminds me of a childhood
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: trauma that I suffered because growing up, my sister had
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: a best friend whose father worked for Craft Foods and
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: they had a big craft like they rented six flags
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: or something. It was some big thing every year. Wow,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: my brother's best friend worked for Coca Cola, and every
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: year they had the big Coca Cola picnic thing. I
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: had nobody an never got to go in. Every single
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: year I had to watch Scott and Michelle go to
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: the craft event in the coc event.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: Man, that's terrible.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it just it still sticks with me after all
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: these years.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: Your friend Richie was like, well, my dad owns the
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: tire shop. So you come to that. We don't really
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: have a party, but we stand around.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: Should we take another break? Yeah, all right, we'll take
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: another break and talk about the inclusivity of the automat
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: right after this.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: Okay, Chuck, just before we took a break, you nailed
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: it up on the head. You said, we're talking about
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: the inclusivity of the automatic and in particular the horn
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: and Harder automat, which again they were synonymous with automats.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: They were one of the earliest chain restaurants in the
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: United States to integrate, not discriminate against their clientele, not
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: just you know, like unescorted women, God forbid, but also
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: racially speaking, economically speaking, like like whoever came to a
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: horn and hard are automat to eat was treated equally
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: and that was huge. I mean we're talking starting in
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: the nineteen tens. Yeah, that was an enormous deal. And
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: that's something that I mean, my hat's off to them
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: for that.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. They had a motto which would serve
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: everybody and serve everybody in the same way, which is
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: a great quote. And Colin Powell, former Secretary of State,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: is in the documentary and it's a great, really sweet
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: interview and he said, the one we would usually go
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: to is automat on forty second straight, forty Sive Street.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: I never even thought about the fact that I'm a
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: black kid. Should I go into horn and hardart? Is
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: it okay to go to the automat? All? The automats
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: had that beautiful diversity that didn't exist in most of
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: the rest of the country, of economic standing, of color,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: of ethnicity, of language. You never knew what you'd run
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: into in an automat.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty cool. There was also a historian named
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: Lisa Keller I believe in the documentary pointed out that
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: if you were an immigrant, this was a great place
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: for you to go because you just went and looked
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: at the food and put your nickel in. You didn't
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: really have to be able to read or speak English,
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: and you could still get a good meal of boysters too.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: I can't wait to see what Aaron Cooper does with this.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They were also known for their celebrity fans. They
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: had those one very famous Esquire spread. Of course, this
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: is for Esquire, so it was all set up. But
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty one, Audrey Hepburn was a photograph for Esquire.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: So cute shopping at an automat, very cute. But in
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: the documentary Reiner and Brooks, you know, Carl Reiner and
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: mel Brooks loved the automat and they talked with great
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: adoration about their childhood of going to those restaurants.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and James Dean his favorite big beans in the
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: world were horn and hard arts big.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Beans, James bean more like, that's right.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: He really knew what he was talking about too. That's
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: how he died in that car accident. He was eating
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: some big beans at the time and lost control of
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: the steering wheel. God, that's not true, everybody. We did
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: a short stuff on it, so, yeah, exactly, don't at me.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: So, I guess we're at the sad point, like so
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: many of these episodes that we do on a cool
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: thing from the past. Where the decline begins. The nineteen
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: sixties is when that started, although they were still like
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: a huge deal culturally. You know, everyone knew about the
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: automat and I don't think we mentioned you know, at
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: a certain point in New York City, they were so
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: famous that it was like, when you go to visit
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: New York, you would go to an auto that just
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: for that experience.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: Right, Like how like when we were kids, you went
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: to that city's like hard rock cafe to get the.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah sure remember that, oh man, totally Yeah.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: You wear with your Panama Jack sunglasses and everybody at
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: home would be like, you had a great summer obviously.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, my band did one gig at the hard
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: Rock Cafe here in Atlanta one time.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: Wow, wed they put your guitar up under a glass case?
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: They did.
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: It'd be pretty sweet.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: But the sixties is where things really started to struggle,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: even though they were again still popular culturally. Stockholders were
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: involved by that point obviously, just revenues started dropping. The
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: suburbs was a big cause of it. You know, when
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: people started moving out to the suburbs, offices and office
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: complexes started getting built in the suburbs, and people started
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: shopping at malls in the suburbs, and there were fewer
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: and fewer people just you know, walking around New York
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: doing things like shopping and going to their office. So
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: it it started to sort of slowly drop and slowly
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: drop until they got a little weird with some of
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: their ideas.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, wild West Room. I could not find a
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: picture of that, but apparently one of the automats this
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: one in Times Square they put a Wild West Room
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: inn in nineteen sixty six. I mean, I'm sure people
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: would have gone crazy for that in nineteen sixty six.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: Not a wild restroom. That's every restroom in New York City.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: There's like a ton of potted plants and a tiger
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: in there.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Right. They also tried to beer garden, They tried the
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: roller skate waiters thing. They tried entered you know, live
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: bands and dancing and stuff like that. But eventually Horn
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: and Hardert looked at each other and they said, well
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: this has clearly seen its best days. The silver lining
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: is as we are sitting on a bunch of really
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: valuable real estate.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: I know, like forty buildings in Manhattan.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so they don't feel too bad.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: They were doing okay, no, but instead of selling them,
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: they said, hey, I've got an idea. Let's remove the
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: automat and put burger Kings in instead. They have franchises,
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: So that's where you would have gotten your old automat
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: cases is in the back of a burger King.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: I was just about to improvise one of those terrible, terrible, terrible,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: terrible Burger King commercial songs.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: That's that's one of the big drawbacks to watching Me
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: Trevy tunes.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: Oh oh, is that on there too?
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: There's this one Burger King that keeps playing over and
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: over and over again. I had to hit myself in
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: the knee with the hammer to get it out of
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: my head.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: Well, is this whole new campaign with a guy that's singing, Yeah,
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: that can't sing.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: Don't don't do it. No, no, no, that's like my oysters too.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Well, I guess I won't do a song right now.
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: Actually I know exactly why now we're even exactly so yeah,
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: I guess you can. Just if you can mute the
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: the the TV fast enough, then you can keep watching
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: me TV tunes.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right, So burger Kings went in, Automats
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: were going downhill. Another thing that happened was as they
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: started going downhill, a different kind of shopper started coming
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: in there. People that were itinerant, to people that were unhoused,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: people that were vagrants and just sort of coming through
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: town who knew that they could hang out there for
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: that nickel cup of coffee for hours and hours and hours.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: And when that starts happening, families stopped coming in, and
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: it just creates this sort of vicious cycle where your
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: clientele is different and it's not seen as that safe
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: middle class space any longer.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: No, in those same families, they're like, Oh, let's go
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: down to the automat step in and they're like, oh,
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: it's ced here, So they stopped coming in, which just
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: reinforced the ability of the homeless population to hang out.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: And Horn and hard Art. Horn and hard Art's whole
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: thing was serve everybody, and serve everybody the same way.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: So as far as I ever saw, they weren't exactly
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: rousing vagrants who were hanging out drinking like a cup
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: of coffee. And it just was basically the same story
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: as the inner city in the United States in the
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: sixties and seventies. They once the suburbs rose and everybody
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: moved out of there, and the neighborhoods and the communities
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: that did survive had US interstates built right through their neighborhoods.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: Things just took a turn for the worse, and the
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: automat was not immune to that whole thing.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Another big part of that is, like these this
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: huge central commissary kitchens where they were cooking all this
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: stuff is an excellent, excellent, efficient way to do it
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: when you are booming with business. Once business drops and
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: you're not cooking, you're not needing to cook as much.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: All of a sudden, your the economy of scale isn't
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: there any longer, and you have these huge places with
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: fewer employees and less food being pumped out, and it's
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: just it was just a downward spiral. It's very sad.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: Yep. So the other thing too is it's it's interesting
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: and I think it's kind of appropriate that Horn and
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: Hardart got into fast food franchises because the automat kind
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: of helped lay the foundation for that. But rather than
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: hundreds of different dishes, which is apparently what Horn and
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: hard are offered at each of their automats, you know,
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: fast food has like ten and like yess, you can
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: have it your way, but really you can have it
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: your way choosing from these five ingredients or whatever. And
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: there were much like downscale like surroundings. It was just
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: like the Automat's vision with all of the glitz and
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: idealism removed from it. Then you have fast food franchises.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, basically that last one that closed in ninety one.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: It was the last one starting in nineteen seventy seven
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: at two hundred East forty second Street. So right there,
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of your time square. Sure, and it
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: lasted fourteen years on its own as a nostalgia piece
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: basically before becoming a gap.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: That's right, it's the gap.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: What else?
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: So, like you said, if you went to New York,
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: like you go to the Empire State Building, you might
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: go see a Broadway play and you would go eat
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: it in an automat. That's just how iconic it was, right.
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: It popped up like anytime you're trying to get across
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: how New York your your movie was like, there would
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: be a scene in an automat or something like that. Yeah.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: Francis Ford Coppola apparently directed a movie in the sixties
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: that featured an automat called Automat Now then showed up
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: and I'm kidding it showed upga it Now I'm a
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: little slow dog. Hey, I think you're doing magnificent for
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: considering what you've been through the last couple of days.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: Man, I've been through apocalypse now.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: Bugs Bunny went to an automat and the hair grows
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: in Manhattan.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: That's right. What the flintstones? They even had a flintstone
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: automat in a nineteen sixty two episode.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: And there's a book that I think I've heard of,
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: but I'd never read from the mixed up files of
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: this is Basil E. Frank Weiler.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: That sounds familiar.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: Well, the thing that sounds familiar to me is that
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: these kids hide out living in the Metropolitan Museum of
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: Art in New York.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's the Royal Tanne Bombs that's.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guarantee homage to that then. Yeah. But anyway,
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: in this children's book, these kids are runaways and they
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: live in MAT That's the Met, right. The Met isn't
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: the opera house, it's the art museum.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the Met.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, right, Well, one of the things that they
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: do is they feed themselves by going to the automat.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: Oh that's fun. And I did not know he totally Yeah,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: let's call him homage. You're kinder than I am.
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Wes Anderson does not rip stuff off. He
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: lovingly pays homage to it.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. Pat Boone tried his version of
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: the automat called the Dino Matt in nineteen sixty two,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: which was frozen food that was then microwave. That did
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: not work out too well, that's supprising. But there were
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: a few other things over the years that were tried
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: like this that did not take off like the automat did.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: My favorite was the Andy Matt.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what's up with that?
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: Andy Warhol. This is just what an artist he was.
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: He could just talk about it. He just mention something
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: in passing and people are still talking about it fifty
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: years later. But he said that he was going to
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: come up with the chain of Andy Matts, which are
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: like automats, but instead of having to go get your
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: food from a case, you would sit down on like
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: a red mohair banquette and order through a pneumatic tube
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: and you would order frozen food and champagne. That's what
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: he was going to offer at the Andy Matt.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's funny, but that never happened at all, right,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: just an idea.
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: No, I didn't, but there's some people who are trying
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: to revive it.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there are things like this. I mean
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: Japan has stuff like this, right.
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: They have what's called katain zushi.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, what's that.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: It's the sushi that comes around in a conveyor belt.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: Now, but they I've seen little windows as well of things.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: It may not be hot food, maybe it's other things.
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure that they do. I remember going to
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: Toledo Hospital visit my mom when she's at work, and
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: they had basically auto sandwiches Like I always just thought
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: it was like a like a vending machine, a vending machine. Yeah,
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: but they know it was an automat basically. Yeah.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: There's a place in Brooklyn called the Brooklyn Dumpling Shop.
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: I think there are like twelve of them and here
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: in Canada and they I just looked up a picture
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: of them, and they they had these little automat kind
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: of like cubbies that you order through an app like
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: a locker system. And I've also seen. I think it
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: was a shark tank product that I ended up seeing
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: in a hotel where it's like a machine that gives
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: you like a cheeseburger or a pizza like but made
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: to order, so like you can say what kind of
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: pizza you want and it'll it's just got this machine
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: inside it'll, you know, load it up with whatever and
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: then bake it and then it spits it out in
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: fifteen minutes or whatever. So things kind of like this
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: but not not truly automat stuff.
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: One of the things you can choose for that pizza
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: maker is I don't want the cheese to scald the
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: roof of my mouth, right, And the pizza machines like, yeah, yeah, sure, sure,
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: definitely not.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: And then they have a hidden camera on you, right
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: and spit out a picture of you going, ah.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, damn it, you got anything else?
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: I have nothing else. I don't think I have to puke.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: I think this is the best I've felt in a
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: few days. So hopefully that.
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: That makes me feel good about the effect I have
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: on you.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just a little josh, a little side cup of
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: oyster stew. I'm back on my feet again.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: There you go. Well, since Chuck's back on his feet again. Obviously,
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: anyone who's ever listened to this show before knows that
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: he just unlocked the listener mail.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: That's right, this is short and sweet. This is kind
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: of fun because it's a this is coming out tomorrow
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: and it's a correction on an episode that was just
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: out awesome. So maybe for a change we won't get
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: like four hundred emails from crafters.
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: Okay, oh yeah, hey guys, are the.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: High Times episode In Martha Stewart, hodgepodge is a big
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: jumble of things that don't go together. Modgepodge is the
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: craft supply. Just don't want you to embarrass yourselves at
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: the craft store. That is from Kelly.
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: Modgepodge is what you use to glue together a big
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: jumble of things that don't go together.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: That's a great Kelly. Thank you, and to the other
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: thousand of you who wrote in. It's nice to know
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: that there are people out there still using modgepodge.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: It's fun.
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's fun to say, and it's got
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: a cute label too.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, magpodge is really a lot of fun.
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: I enjoy it for sure. And we heard from Martha
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: Stewart too. She said, yes, I have Modgepodge laying around.
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: Think Jerry got in touch with there and asked, that's right. Well,
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: if you want to be like who Kelly? If you
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: want to be like Kelly and right in to gently
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: correct us, we love that kind of thing. You can
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: send it via email to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.