Food, Glorious Food

There’s something about the nightshift that leads, inevitably, to food. Talk of food. Pursuit of food. Weight gain from food. Perhaps it’s that Russell, Corey and I love good food. Possibly it’s because the NYPD, MTA, Port Authority, and taxi leasing companies turned down our requests for interviews but the Cheyenne Diner and other eateries kept their doors open to us. Or maybe it’s that working nights, as we’ve mentioned in other posts, makes you crave carbs instead of vegetables, which leads to what many refer to as the “overnight fifteen” extra pounds.

No, these all played a part but the real reason there’s lots of talk of food in the book is that everyone we interviewed talked about food. Since we often interviewed them on breaks or just after their shifts, they were also often eating while we talked. During our first conversation with Fatima at the Cheyenne, around 3 a.m., she drank a Diet Pepsi and ate a slice of cherry pie.

Steve, the night manager at the Skylight Diner, eats just once a day – in the morning after his shift. He might eat eggs. Or he might have a burger or pizza. “That’s why I’m big,” he said.

At midnight, at the start of his shift working at a Penn Station newsstand, Ahmed ate an apple. “I like to have something healthy to eat,” he said. Echoing this statement, Alam, who managed a Penn Station café, usually ate either a salad or a chicken sandwich at the start of his shift at midnight.

Rick, an exterminator, said that he too eats breakfast at the end of his shift, at 7 a.m. Then he goes to sleep until 3 p.m. “And then I’ll really be in the mood for Eggs Benedict,” he said.

Peter at JFK gained weight. “I gained 10, 12 pounds, maybe more. Now that I’m on a dayshift,” he said, meaning the 4 p.m.-midnight shift, “I’m 8 pounds lighter. I would eat before I came to work. Then I wouldn’t eat at all at work, then I’d eat right before I’d go to sleep. Go right to sleep, wake up maybe a half hour before I had to be at work and then rush to work.”

At his Brooklyn bodega, Sunny, the owner, grilled us amazing shrimp one Monday night around 4 a.m. Then at precisely 5 a.m., his night customers gone and his morning customers not yet awake, he made himself a turkey sandwich. For the first time all night, he sat down. And he ate.

PICU nurses Jessica and Tamar described their eating habits over a diner breakfast at the end of their twelve-hour shift. Since they don’t have much of an appetite before their shift, they admitted to grazing throughout the night. “On whatever’s available,” Tamar said. Jessica elaborated that she eats a number of small meals throughout the day, and has distinct names for each of them. “I have a pre-lunch lunch, lunch, and a post-lunch lunch, and then,” she added, pointing to her scrambled eggs, cinnamon toast, and orange juice, “breakfast.”

If all this leaves you craving carbs after midnight, try the four garlic rolls for $1 at John & Tony’s Pizzeria on First Ave in the East 50s. Not uptown? Try the samosas at taxi-driver hangout Lahore Deli on Crosby between Prince and Houston (and subscribe to this blog to know when we’re having our launch party at Housing Works Used Book Café next door, replete with Lahore samosas). Or, if you’re of healthier ilk, head to one of the two 24-hour New York Sports Clubs at 80th & Broadway or 23rd & Park Avenue.

Eyeliner Twins

After 4 a.m. one Friday night, the bars in Manhattan just closed, Penn Station fills with drunk girls and guys heading home to Long Island and New Jersey. Several girls strut past a 24-hour coffee shop. A store employee shakes his head and howls at them. He’s got spiky hair and wears dark sunglasses. He’s had this job for two weeks but doesn’t mind it, he says, because he gets to look at the girls. He stops talking to howl as more girls jiggle and stumble past his shop. Some girls roll their eyes. Some laugh and continue their catwalk. Still others veer into his store. While he does this, er, publicity work, four other employees, all Spanish-speaking new immigrants, do the work that doesn’t relate to the cash register.

Three African-American women in their early twenties totter by on 3-inch heels and barely-there dresses. He interrupts his conversation with another customer to howl at them. They walk over. He tells them they look beautiful. One of them eyes him suspiciously, saying, “We feel like we look.” Not missing a beat, he says, “Well, if you feel like you look then you feel gorgeous.” She smiles. Her friends smile and laugh. They buy a few things and traipse toward their trains.

If this book was a novel, alcohol would be a character. One of the chief differences between the nightshift and dayshift is the use of alcohol by customers. Dayshift employees, even at the same sites, have far more interaction with sober people than drunk ones. At night, it's the opposite. People who work days party at night. Even if they only get a little out of control once a year, they're going to do it at night. That's partly because night affords darkness, a shroud covering all illicit behavior. It's also partly because of biology, and a neurotransmitter known as GABA (Gamma-aminobutyric acid to science geeks). GABA either increases excitability or inhibits behaviors best shrouded by darkness, depending on a number of factors. For example, alcohol and certain drugs block GABA's inhibiting ability.

Several more girls come into the coffee shop. Almost interchangeable, they're all voluptous, tan, and spilling out of tight dresses. Though he’s only been here two weeks, the spiky-haired employee knows them already. “Where’d you go tonight?” he asks like they’re old friends.

“The Gypsy tea club,” one of them answers. She’s propped precariously on a stool. Her friends arrange themselves similarly on similar stools. He approaches them. “I wanna marry your sister,” he says to one of them. Another of them, the 5 a.m. smeared eyeliner beneath her eyes wider than a cigarette, turns to him, smiles coquettishly, and says, “I’m really bad.” Perhaps she’s the sister he wants to marry. “You don’t have to settle down,” he says generously, “as long as you just come by to see me.” He asks for her number. As she’s gives it, s-l-o-w-l-y, another employee leans over the counter behind them listening. He has a pencil and paper ready, waiting to record her number.

A twenty-something male customer enters the store. He makes his purchase, witnesses these curvy ladies straddling their respective stools, and saunters toward them. “It’s my birthday,” he begins, “Do I get a birthday spank?” Every girl takes her turn giving a birthday spank. “Does that mean you like what you see or what?” he asks. One girl, whose eyeliner also runs halfway down her cheek, says, flirtatiously, “Maybe.”

The men disperse. The customer leaves. The employees get to work. The girls sit alone. One of them reflects on their evening out. She says to one of the other girls, “We didn’t do very much acid.” The other replies, “We didn’t do much of anything. We were so out of it.” Yet another says something about how they didn’t pay for many drinks. “What?” asks one of the eyeliner twins, loudly, almost angrily, “Do you think we paid for drinks?” More loudly, she says, “Are you stupid? Only stupid girls pay for drinks!”

The point isn't that people shouldn't drink. It's far more complicated than that. And it's true that lots of the male nightshift workers we met consider all the drunk girls the main perk of their jobs. Here's an article, published in the UK this week, by a nightshift doctor who too often sees the result of all these lowered inhibitions. Even he's not saying drinking should be banned. And here's an article I wrote for PAHO on alcohol abuse. (The Spanish version if you're so inclined.)

What do you think?