“Elon definitely snapped,” Jamel Bullock says, conveying a compliment of high praise, a cultural colloquialism. A Silverlake-based design creative who works in fashion and tech, Bullock bought a Model 3 a couple of months ago and considers it “the best car of all time.” Overall, he says, the diner experience is what LA needs and will make for a great date spot. “Now, if it stays this loud, it might suck for them,” he says, pointing to the apartment complex across the street, where people gawk at the spectacle from their balconies. “Regardless of how you feel about it, though, it’s just cool overall.”
Umut, who came with a friend and asked that his last name not be printed for privacy concerns, heard about the opening on X Tuesday morning. He bought a Model Y a year ago and says he has endured some backlash for it since Musk’s public favor has waned. “I see a lot of people with those stickers saying I used to drive this before Elon went crazy. I’m not like that. I have my own opinion, but I don’t think it’s right to do that. It does feel a little weird to be honest. My friends make jokes about it sometimes—‘Oh, you’re driving a Tesla.’ It’s a car at the end of the day. It serves me well.”
PHOTOGRAPH: ETHAN NOAH ROY
PHOTOGRAPH: ETHAN NOAH ROY
So, what’s to love about the Tesla diner? Outside of the offering of superchargers, there doesn’t seem to be much replay value. Many people complain of long wait times—my own food takes 40 minutes to arrive—and though it’s good, it isn’t anything you can’t get at other diners, like Mel’s or Clark Street, across the city. From what I experienced, the diner does seem like a decent place to find a certain ilk of community, if that’s your thing—but overall the operation is gimmicky at best, and hypocritical at worst: a vision obsessed with the future but unable to let go of the past.
The sun finally comes out as Veerasingam waits for her food on the deck. “This is a MAGA diner. Why do I say that—literally you have a menu telling you how everything is made,” she says, and I don’t know exactly what she means. “I didn’t even know cheese is not real. Did you see that?” On the menu, Greenspan has detailed many of the ingredients he uses, most of them sourced from local farmers and brands, including Brandt beef (“from the Holstein cows of Brandt Cattle of Calipatria, CA”), flour tortillas (“made with heritage organic drought resistant wheat”), Bakers Bacon (“heritage bred pork and natural apple wood smoke”), and a kind of cheese called New School American (“made from aged cheddar, real cream and real butter without phosphates, starches, acids or fillers”).
PHOTOGRAPH: ETHAN NOAH ROY
Since the late ’80s, Veerasingam suggests, too many artificial preservatives have been added to food. “It’s all fake,” she says.
Returning to her earlier point, about the limitations of being on earth, she says there’s more out there. “If you’re exploring the unknown, it’s not about what anybody else has. Nobody knows. It’s a different kind of competition. It’s not about money. Money cannot get you to Mars. It’s beyond money.”
But won’t you need money to get there, I ask.
“Yes, but it’s not going to be the be-all and end-all,” she says. “Why do we need approval to go to Mars? Cut the shit, all the regulation shit. We don’t want politics, but politics has unfortunately come to us,” she says. “Normal people, we just want to get on with our lives.”
Before we depart, I ask her what she thinks is at the edge, what she hopes to find at the final frontier? “Nothing,” she says. “It’s like a cycle. We will start at the beginning. It’s like the snake that eats itself. And that’s the meaning of life. But first we have to go.”
