LOS ANGELES — If you want to see the canvas of “Nighthawks,” you have to visit the Art Institute of Chicago, where, for a mere $32, you can admire Edward Hopper’s unnerving portrait of urban wartime isolation. But if you’re interested in gawking at the closest real-life reproduction, the price is free. Just linger for a little while at the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Orange Drive in Los Angeles, the site of Elon Musk’s Tesla Diner. But be careful: Should you park any gas-guzzling V-8 atop the half-acre of spots reserved for electric vehicles, rest assured, your chassis will be towed.
Since its opening last July, I have regularly cruised past—but never entered—the South African emigre’s sleek gunmetal monument to retro-futurist nostalgia. This silvery, curvilinear, two-story ersatz spaceship doubles as a drive-in movie theater, merch kiosk, restaurant, charging station, and accidental homage to Hopper’s 1942 masterpiece.
In his original oil painting, the New York realist immortalized three customers slouching and smoking in a half-empty all-night diner. A stooped waiter serves them, far too old to be wearing a paper soda jerk hat. The eerie blend of oppressive dread and soothing hot coffee familiarity combined to make the painting the cultural shorthand for big city alienation.
With its chiaroscuro of sickly fluorescent light and obliterating darkness, Hopper influenced the shadows and contusions of both classic and sci-fi film noir. On the set of Blade Runner, director Ridley Scott reportedly waved a reproduction of “Nighthawks” at the production team to convey the look and mood that he desired.
In the dystopian Los Angeles of the mid-2020s, the opening of Musk’s long-delayed project brought hourslong lines and global news coverage (a New York Times headline read “The Future Looks Mid.”) Protesters paraded outside—apoplectic at the Tesla CEO’s Texas chainsaw masochism at the helm of DOGE. Sample…
