Landmark Coffee Shop & Pancake House at the corner of Grand Street and Center Street is one of the last original diners in New York City. Family owned in the same location since 1962, the cafe is open seven days a week from 6am to 6pm and offers omelettes to sandwich wraps.

(Landmark Coffee Shop & Pancake House in May 2011)

Landmark Coffee Shop and Pancake House has been described by some as the kind of place you can stagger into with your hair all mussed and get a big breakfast and bottomless coffee for twelve dollars. Until recently, it was graced with a dilapidated, faded blue awning that slumped in the middle, a lovable token of dinginess in a neighbourhood where hotels like the Mondrian and the Crosby Street had been going up. In place of the awning that advertised old-fashioned egg creams and Nescafé, there is now a blindingly bright green sign advertising French toast and hamburger. The word famous no longer precedes the Landmark’s name.

(Landmark Coffee Shop & Pancake House in May 2011)

(Landmark Coffee Shop & Pancake House in May 2011)

(Landmark Coffee Shop & Pancake House in May 2011)

During the filming of Desperately Seeking Susan, Rosanna Arquette and Aidan Quinn spent an entire day inside the cafe where the breakfast scene played out; having been recognised by the owner as a trouble-maker from the jacket Roberta was wearing, previously owned by Susan, it is Dez who is thrown out onto the sidewalk with Roberta running to his aid.

Special Report (Day 6) looks at the nightclub, Danceteria.