Empire

Union workers, apparently, like to show up to non-union construction sites with a large generator-powered blow up rat and a handful of union workers. The construction site here is across the street, and the blow up rat to the workers' right. It seems like the metaphor there is obvious, but I can't quite pin it. Are non-union workers rats? Or they will get eaten by rats? I'm not sure.

In the background is the Empire Diner, which closed in the last couple years after 34 years of business. It was somewhat of a New York institution, enough so, that I tried to find some articles about it to explain why it was so revered. The New York Observer wrote, upon its closing:

The diner was meticulously designed by young people - some of whom worked at MoMA! - to appeal to other kids their age who sought a taste of the blue-collar eating experience but wanted to get it while hanging out with other artists, actors and writers like themselves. It is this built-in nostalgia that allowed the Empire to survive for 34 years, even as Chelsea changed from a wasteland, to a center of gay life, to the world capital of contemporary art.

The kids who went to the Empire during the late 1970s, when it first opened, genuinely thought they were the coolest kids in New York City. They loved the Empire because it wasn't just a diner but an elegant, Art Deco-inspired reenactment of one.