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By JOHN LELAND
Night becomes day over Williamsburg with the same celestial unreasonableness that it does everywhere else, but inside Kellogg’s Diner, on the corner of Union and Metropolitan Avenues, the hour of transition is negotiable.
Is it tonight or tomorrow? Last night or this morning? How do you bid a stranger farewell: is it “Good night,” “Have a nice day” or “Get home safely — you sure you’re all right?”?
At 5:35 a.m., The Daily News on the counter is Thursday’s; in a booth, it is Friday’s — a whole day gone by in the time it takes to melt some American cheese on a Mexican omelet. Let’s have some eggs, potatoes and coffee, just something light to tide us over until later tonight — or is that tomorrow?
At 5:37, Patrice Miranne and four friends roll in, fresh from a night at the Delancey on the Lower East Side, where one of them, Stephen Kaminanda, 37, was the D.J.
Ms. Miranne, 23, wears hoop earrings the size of coasters with the word “Love” in the middle, and an explosion of fur around her left wrist — maybe somewhere, in a galaxy far, far away, a Star Wars Wookiee wears a silver tennis bracelet.
“My favorite part of the day is when the sun is out and the moon is out and you can’t really tell which one it is,” Ms. Miranne says, “though I think we’re more toward the day.”
She’ll drive Mr. Kaminanda to the airport later, so he can fly to Ashland, Ore., where he’ll do it all again. Then she’ll crash.
Across the table, Nicholas Frech, 25, is still going strong, in a black felt hat and mustache with the tips twirled into points. It is not a look for the weary. His secret?
“I did a double session of yoga so I’m extra powered up,” he says.
For them, the day is coming to its end; for others, it is just beginning. This is the meeting point. Twenty years ago — can it be that long? — Carlos LeBron might have been keeping pace with the Delancey crew. But this morning, Mr. LeBron, 41, spreads butter on his toasted bagel; he is freshly groomed, rested, girded for whatever will face him at the Setai Hotel in Manhattan, where he works as an engineer.
“Those days are over with,” he says. “I used to be a three-or-four-nights-in-a-row guy,” always ducking the sunrise at Kellogg’s.
Back then the neighborhood was unsafe, he says. “Now at midnight you walk around free. If someone sees you on the street, they might say hello or good night. It’s great.”
If his 17-year-old son were to walk through the door, fresh from adventures, “I’d say: ‘Enjoy yourself. It’s your youth.’ ”
Behind the counter, liquor bottles abut white porcelain coffee mugs. Cholesterol pours forth from the kitchen; classic rock hums softly on the sound system. NY1 plays silently on the television, today’s news today — or is it still tonight?
Still, there is danger in the air. At 5:58 a.m., John Stewart, 29, gets a call from his girlfriend, and hands the phone to his buddy Mike Martinez, to vouch for him. No, Mr. Martinez assures the caller, they’ve been angels all night, mostly.
Phew. But still.
“After this?” Mr. Martinez says. “Go home, go to sleep, get in arguments with our girlfriends — why we out so late?”
“Routine,” Mr. Stewart says.
One of the overnight crew goes home unhappy, only $70 for a night’s work.
“I didn’t do that to you,” says Bobby Kotlarz, 49, the overnight manager. “The girl did that to you.” Mr. Kotlarz lives in Queens these days, but by coincidence, he used to live in a nearby apartment now inhabited by —
Tod Crouch, 34, eating alone and writing in his diary after his first night of tending bar at LP ’n Harmony on nearby Grand Street, presumably a mecca for singing nurses. “I’m a little weak on my cocktails,” he writes, “but I’ll do some homework.”
He likes Williamsburg because you cannot tell the day people from the night people. Why is he here? Because even in Williamsburg, he says, “I don’t know a lot of places that are open at the hour of the wolf.”
It’s 6 a.m.; where are the freaks? There should be freaks.
“In Park Slope,” says Paulie Pisano, 30, seated with Allison Mixology, 28. They work in a punk-and-metal club called Lucky 13 Saloon in Park Slope.
“These are the pretentious freaks,” Mr. Pisano says of the Williamsburg crowd, “but in Park Slope, you get the authentic freaks.”
“We come here to get away from there,” Ms. Mixology says.
“Just for a little while,” Mr. Pisano says.
Truth be told, we have doubts about Ms. Mixology’s surname.
At 6:12 a.m., the sun crowns over Sunac Natural Food. Venetian blinds come down to protect the innocent.
Such are Nicholas Gazin, 28, and Marcus Hedgpeth, 30, who work at the Flat nearby. Mr. Gazin spins music; Mr. Hedgpeth tends bar.
They were having an awesome conversation, involving race, caste, politics and a girl with whom they had both made out. Who could go home?
“I offered to buy him breakfast if he would join me and keep talking,” Mr. Gazin says.
“We’ve hung out at the bar, but this is, like, our first bro-out,” Mr. Hedgpeth adds. “And so we both realized we were bro-ing out, and we wanted it to come full circle.”
“I don’t think most people’s bro-ing out is as good as what you consider bro-ing out,” Mr. Gazin says.
At 7:03, they are the last of the night crew. The morning shift, it seems, is sleeping late. Summer is like that. When they arrive, the eggs will be waiting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/ny...l?ref=nyregion