Today’s Zippy is set in the Ghent neighborhood of Norfolk VA of a few years back, in a Do-Nut Dinette — whose name throws Zippy into a fit of onomatomania (aka repetitive phrase disorder) compounded with Spooner’s affliction (compulsive exchange of word elements in phrases):
(#1)
(Separately, there’s the use of dinette to refer to a diner, as a type of restaurant.)
Yesterday’s Zippy takes us to a historic diner in Albany NY and its notifications boards:
(#1) Note the parochial character of the messages: bulletins about the diner’s offerings
The real diner’s interior:
(#2) From the diner’s last day of service, posted 2/17/12 on the All Over Albany site
Today’s Zippy takes us to the banks of the Connecticut River in Chicopee MA, to a historic diner, and to the bizarre foods that Zippy fancies:
(#1) If you’re Zippy, everything goes better with a dollop of Valvoline on it — and, maybe, some canned beets:
(#2)
Zippy and Gladys are in Al’s Diner, a well-known feature of Chicopee, a northern industrial city that took advantage of the falls on the Connecticut to drive mills — which then entangled the place in the slave economy of the early 18th century.
Yesterday’s Zippy takes us to Littleton (NH, not the more famous CO — or, for that matter, IL, IA, KY, ME, MA, NC, or WV), where our Pinhead falls into an identity crisis:
(#1)
Everybody, including the counterman, is Zippy, or at least a Zippy. And the strip begins with a stretch that is both two panels, each with a Zippy in it, and one full-diner-view panel, with two Zippys in it. We’re in the nightmare world of clones — who am I?
Then there’s the observation in the last panel: No one brings small problems into a diner. Certainly, an interpretation of what happened in the strip before this, though as that it’s crucially ambiguous. But maybe also a moral that we should take away from those events, a piece of advice about what we should or should not do.
Today’s Zippy, set in the Bendix Diner in Hasbrouck Heights NJ (in Bergen County, in the NJ suburbs of NYC, near Passaic), celebrates grilled or fried ham and cheese sandwiches:
(#1)
Today’s Zippy, at the Main Street Diner in Plainville CT:
(#1)
takes us back to this 12/16/14 posting, “Telezippic communication”:
(#2)
The same artwork, slightly different coloring, entirely different text, but the same story line:
… in today’s Zippy, which features the old Fran’s Hamburgers in Austin TX — it closed in 2013 — and its notable fiberglass mascot:
(#1)
In Zippy’s world, fiberglass figures are often given to intense self-reflection, especially about their place in the world.
Today’s Zippy takes us to 449 S. Winchester Blvd. in San Jose CA (more or less next door to the Winchester Mystery House and across the street from Santana Row):
(#1) The title is an allusion to McDonald’s Happy Meal for kids
Two things: the location; and the goofy dispute over the meaning of the initialism B.L.T.
