The View From the Counter.(US economy)

Whenever I want to know how the American economy is going, I ring my friend Jamis in California's Silicon Valley. Jamis McNiven is the proprietor of Buck's Diner in Woodside, where the big venture capitalists on nearby Sand Hill Road drop by to do multimillion-dollar deals over pancakes with young entrepreneurs.

Or at least they used to. I got an inkling of how bad the tech bust had become when I dropped by a year or so ago, and Jamis told me that investors were getting "rope burn." That's when they lose money so fast that it doesn't just pass through their hands, but peels the skin off with it.

Buck's of Woodside is proof of a theory I've developed, as a journalist covering the United States, that the American diner is a key economic indicator. The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, reportedly counts empty containers stacked up in ports. But he could equally well make sound judgments on the state of the nation by dropping into local eateries--like the Gee Whiz Diner near the site of the World Trade Center, close to where I live. It's the sort of place where you are greeted by name and your cup of coffee is plunked down on the counter while you are still taking off your coat. Before September 11, it was always packed.

The Gee Whiz got swallowed in dust and was closed for many months. Now it has been remodeled and is back in operation. The first thing I checked when it reopened was the counter. You can't really chat up the staff or other people and find out how the world is treating them from the depths of a booth. And that's really the whole point of a diner--to exchange gossip and pleasantries about the weather, or dissect the news headlines in the way people used to do in town squares before the malling of America. After years of following candidates on ...