Latest news with #DoubleRDiner
The Hill
29-06-2025
- Business
- The Hill
Protecting small-town America: Why high-speed rail is the wrong track for the US
High-speed rail has captured the public imagination, becoming a key benchmark for comparison between China and the U.S.. Observers point to its widespread ubiquity in the former and absence in the latter as a reflection of broader developmental trajectories. The Shanghai Maglev (short for 'magnetic levitation') train, with speeds of up to 268 mph, is one of many 'super-trains' seemingly backing the claim that China is 'living in the future' in 2025. However, the topic may turn out to be a case of comparing apples to oranges, due to structural differences in governance, geography and transportation culture. Building a high-speed transportation network — a large-scale infrastructure project requiring massive federal investment — would pose a significant challenge to the U.S. economy. The California High-Speed Rail currently underway, for instance, was predicted to require $33 billion in funding but has now reached an estimate of $113 billion. Among the many repercussions soon to be realized, however, one stands out as particularly overlooked. Such networks of high-speed rail would be disastrous to a part of America that has been driving the U.S. economy for many years, perhaps illustrated best in movies and television. Think of the Double R Diner from the show 'Twin Peaks,' or the gas station stops in the Coen brothers' film 'No Country for Old Men.' Depicted in these scenes were 'pass-through towns' or 'rest-and-stop towns' — small communities between destination cities that stay alive because travelers stop at local diners, gas stations and similar mom-and-pop businesses. Small towns and communities such as Seligman, Ariz.; Little America, Wyo.; and Needles, Calif., among others, have built their economies around providing such services. Unlike China, where there is a more concentrated settlement pattern, the U.S. has many such towns scattered across relatively remote areas, often encountered only during long drives. Implementing high-speed rail nationwide would be detrimental to these towns, in turn undermining key parts of the overall American economy. Such large-scale infrastructure projects disrupt local autonomy and free-market activity. As has already been reported in China, high-speed rail networks often produce what is called the 'siphon effect,' where the allure of large urban cities absorbs a great deal of investment and development opportunities away from smaller communities. This effect would be particularly damaging for small towns across the U.S. that have in recent years been in an economically fragile state. Many American social media influencers have disregarded this detail, and their pleas for the U.S. to join the hype have been echoed by policymakers and urban planners who have tried for many years to establish high-speed rail. There is a fundamental conflict between the notion of connecting the whole of the U.S. with high-speed networks and the American tradition of decentralized infrastructure. The success of the Eisenhower Interstate System was not that it connected major cities but because it empowered Americans to traverse the entire country, aiding local economies along the way. The Eisenhower Interstate System also allowed Americans to live far away from city centers and helped cement America's car culture. The vision for a high-speed rail within the U.S. imports the centralized planning of a nation with drastically different values and geography, fundamentally misunderstanding what has contributed to the historical success of the Eisenhower Interstate System. Furthermore, the financial logic of high-speed rail networks simply does not hold up, as ongoing projects turned into what many city planners now describe as logistical and financial 'nightmares.' Citizens Against Government Waste pointed to the mismanagement of California's high-speed rail, which has faced rising costs every year since the project began. While the claim that it would cost $33 billion was never feasible, the current $113 billion estimate is already 23 percent higher than the $81.4 billion that organization had originally estimated it would actually cost. It cites the 'opportunistic contractors' that have exploited the lack of foresight involved in the project, 88 of which were booted by Gov. Gavin Newsom far 'too late.' A misreading of the American public's needs has led policymakers to surrender to hyped-up benchmarks that undermine the traditions and geography of the U.S., as well as reasons behind previous successes in infrastructure. Thus, it would be wise to think twice before entering the super-train craze that China has spearheaded, re-evaluating ongoing projects and reflecting on the longstanding national value of decentralization. Rinzen Widjaja is a writer, political commentator and television guest speaker based in Melbourne, Australia, and a student of economics at the University of Melbourne.
Metro
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Twin Peaks pop-up in London abruptly scrapped as full cult series hits streaming
Fans of Twin Peaks were left disappointed today after Mubi abruptly postponed its much-anticipated dining experience in London – just 24 hours before it was set to open. The pop-up, inspired by the cult show's iconic Double R Diner, was due to take over the New River Café in Stoke Newington on June 18. The event was part of a wider celebration by the boutique streaming platform marking Twin Peaks' 35th anniversary and its long-awaited arrival on Mubi's platform. However, on June 17, Mubi took to social media to announce the sudden postponement: 'We wanted to let you know that unfortunately we will be postponing tomorrow's Twin Peaks diner experience,' the post read. 'We're so sorry for the short notice and hope to bring this back in the future.' No official reason was given for the last-minute change, though it comes amid controversy surrounding a recent investment deal. Earlier this month, Mubi faced backlash for accepting a $100million investment from Sequoia Capital, a firm linked to Israeli defence technology companies. We wanted to let you know that unfortunately we will be postponing tomorrow's TWIN PEAKS diner so sorry for the short notice and hope to bring this back in the future. — MUBI UK & Ireland (@mubiuk) June 17, 2025 Mubi responded to criticism with a statement: 'The beliefs of individual investors do not reflect the views of Mubi,' adding that Sequoia's ties were unrelated to Mubi's own mission and values. It remains unclear whether the Twin Peaks diner experience will be rescheduled. For now, fans will have to settle for indulging in the surreal mystery from the comfort of their own homes. Finally, all three chapters of the acclaimed series are now available to stream in full on Mubi. That includes the original two seasons (1990–1991), the prequel film Fire Walk With Me, and Twin Peaks: The Return, the 2017 sequel helmed once again by David Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost. Starring Kyle MacLachlan, Sheryl Lee, Sherilyn Fenn, and Lara Flynn Boyle, the show follows the investigation into the murder of small-town teen Laura Palmer and the eerie, supernatural forces swirling beneath the surface of the town of Twin Peaks. More Trending Beloved for its genre-defying weirdness, unforgettable characters, and unsettling atmosphere, Twin Peaks became a global phenomenon and remains one of the most influential shows of all time. Following the death of David Lynch, fans are thrilled that the series is finally available to stream in full. View More » Season one holds a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while The Return boasts a near-perfect 94%. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you.
Sydney Morning Herald
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Twin Peaks at 35: How David Lynch paved the way for all your favourite TV
When you step off Southeast Reinig Road, in the picturesque Pacific northwest town of Snoqualmie, Washington, the valley trail crosses the river at an old railway bridge, its rust-brown beams an industrial relic from a bygone age. But in popular culture, the bridge, long stripped of its tracks and sleepers, and the surrounding town endure as the real-life reflection of what was Twin Peaks, a now 35-year-old postcard-perfect town that sat on a fictional fault line between the light and the dark. This is where Laura Palmer's body was found in 1990, wrapped in plastic, washed up on a riverbank. This is where Ronette Pulaski walked across that railway bridge – one small piece of a larger, grotesque mosaic. And this is where, in 1990 and 2017, for 48 one-hour episodes, director David Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost hypnotised a television audience by taking them into a community paralysed by grief and horror, and underscored it with an acoustic requiem by Angelo Badalamenti that remains haunting to this day. In Twin Peaks, over a 'damn fine cup of coffee', we met FBI Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), and his absent secretary Diane, spoken to only via dictaphone; dependable Sheriff Truman (Michael Ontkean); Double R Diner owner Norma Jennings (Peggy Lipton); and Maddy Ferguson (Sheryl Lee), the mysterious look-alike of the murder victim. Such personalities were the tip of the iceberg: the deeper we delved, the stranger they became. The Log Lady (Catherine E. Coulson); The Giant (Carel Struycken); The Man from Another Place (Michael J. Anderson); and Killer Bob (Frank Silva), a demonic force who seemed to manifest in dreams. In deference to a 35-year-old spoiler, we will not reveal Bob's real-world identity. Twin Peaks could have just been a jumble of genre tropes, music cues, doughnuts, coffee and random abstracts, but under Lynch's hand it was transformed into something greater: a slowly moving oil-on-canvas, every brushstroke revealing another layer of the mystery, every plot twist steeped in subcutaneous horror. It was ground-breaking when it premiered on television back in 1990. As a television critic, journalist and TV geek, it fascinated me. I somehow persuaded an American TV publicist – by fax, no less – to post me a VHS preview tape of the pilot. It gripped me, from its opening, haunting frame to its last. Three-and-a-half decades later it remains one of the most artistically significant works ever produced. Long before the emergence of HBO and the first signs of television's golden age, Twin Peaks was simply unlike anything that had come before it. At the heart of the story sat a lingering question – who killed Laura Palmer? – which pivoted on the riskiest tool in the story toolbox: withheld closure. The not-knowing was the heart of the audience's paralysis and compulsion. Revealing the answer, ultimately, destroyed the spell that had held the entire work in thrilling suspension. 'Let's say you have a goose, and the goose lays golden eggs. Pretty soon, you've got a lot of golden eggs, and someone comes along and says it's time now to kill that goose,' Lynch told me, in one of several conversations we shared over the years. 'That was not a good thing.' The brilliance of the series is that it bent an iconic American image – the small-town, filled with ordinary, everyday folks – into something malevolent and dark. Unlike Mayfield, location of Leave it to Beaver, or even the eponymous and scandal-soaked Peyton Place, when you pricked the surface of Twin Peaks, you found layers of shadow and darkness. The nearby woods – usually a benign playground – were transformed here into a dangerous wilderness, inhabited by disturbing entities and things that go 'Bob' in the night. The original series ended in 1991, cancelled after just two seasons. A film, Fire Walk With Me, followed in 1992. And then, in 2017, we got a sequel, Twin Peaks: The Return. The latter was foreshadowed in the original series when Laura Palmer, in a dream, speaking backwards, told Agent Cooper: 'I'll see you again in 25 years.' Lynch, like Laura, was true to his word. Thirty-five years after the fact, Twin Peaks remains significant as much for it tonal notes (red rooms, mysterious strangers and cryptic monologues) as it is for the raft of imitators which followed: Northern Exposure and Carnivale, and more recently, Riverdale, Top of the Lake, Wild Palms, True Detective and Wayward Pines. Even in 2025, The White Lotus still dances with the fire of withheld closure. Lynch, for his part, never saw Twin Peaks as an assembly of pieces. 'There are classes of screenwriting where they reduce things down to formulas, but there's shouldn't be any rules,' he said. 'The ideas dictate everything … You don't worry about a form, you don't worry about any rules, you follow the ideas that you fall in love with, and you try to stay true to those ideas. They tell you everything.' And yet, Twin Peaks laid the groundwork for cinematic television: cable masterpieces such as Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Oz and Deadwood, and, in the streaming age, The Crown, Squid Game, Succession, The Handmaid's Tale and Andor. As with most great artists, Lynch left his signature on Twin Peaks, in an Alfred Hitchcock-esque cameo, playing FBI boss Gordon Cole. Like The Log Lady and The Man From Another Place, he became a small but perfectly crafted piece of the living jigsaw. 'When you act, even if you're not really an actor, you realise how special the actors and actresses are,' Lynch told me. 'What they go through to make it real from a deep place ... it opens up the thing where the actors become very special to you.' And Gordon, I asked. 'Gordon is pretty fantastic, you know,' Lynch replied, with a wry smile. As is Twin Peaks which, for me, survives not just as a notable chapter in the annals of television history, but a town I visit every Thanksgiving – up the road from where we stay in Maple Valley, Washington – for a yearly fix of something I cannot quite articulate. Loading The Double R Diner (real name: Twede's Cafe) has only a handful of surviving clues to its history: notably, a cup of coffee and a piece of cherry pie painted on the wall outside. The 'Welcome to Twin Peaks' sign, about a mile down the road from the railroad bridge, is long gone. In common with every TV ghost town, the streets are inhabited by memories of fictional moments, made substantial by stepping through the fourth wall. Yet something intangible remains in every corner of Snoqualmie, as it is in Twin Peaks, and you sense it in every sideways glance. Amplified by the remoteness and the harsh cold and snow of winter, there's a lingering, otherworldly feel – the quality that first drew Lynch and Frost to this place. Something that rides on the mist at twilight; an echo of a mystery, from long, long ago.
The Age
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Twin Peaks at 35: How David Lynch paved the way for all your favourite TV
When you step off Southeast Reinig Road, in the picturesque Pacific northwest town of Snoqualmie, Washington, the valley trail crosses the river at an old railway bridge, its rust-brown beams an industrial relic from a bygone age. But in popular culture, the bridge, long stripped of its tracks and sleepers, and the surrounding town endure as the real-life reflection of what was Twin Peaks, a now 35-year-old postcard-perfect town that sat on a fictional fault line between the light and the dark. This is where Laura Palmer's body was found in 1990, wrapped in plastic, washed up on a riverbank. This is where Ronette Pulaski walked across that railway bridge – one small piece of a larger, grotesque mosaic. And this is where, in 1990 and 2017, for 48 one-hour episodes, director David Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost hypnotised a television audience by taking them into a community paralysed by grief and horror, and underscored it with an acoustic requiem by Angelo Badalamenti that remains haunting to this day. In Twin Peaks, over a 'damn fine cup of coffee', we met FBI Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), and his absent secretary Diane, spoken to only via dictaphone; dependable Sheriff Truman (Michael Ontkean); Double R Diner owner Norma Jennings (Peggy Lipton); and Maddy Ferguson (Sheryl Lee), the mysterious look-alike of the murder victim. Such personalities were the tip of the iceberg: the deeper we delved, the stranger they became. The Log Lady (Catherine E. Coulson); The Giant (Carel Struycken); The Man from Another Place (Michael J. Anderson); and Killer Bob (Frank Silva), a demonic force who seemed to manifest in dreams. In deference to a 35-year-old spoiler, we will not reveal Bob's real-world identity. Twin Peaks could have just been a jumble of genre tropes, music cues, doughnuts, coffee and random abstracts, but under Lynch's hand it was transformed into something greater: a slowly moving oil-on-canvas, every brushstroke revealing another layer of the mystery, every plot twist steeped in subcutaneous horror. It was ground-breaking when it premiered on television back in 1990. As a television critic, journalist and TV geek, it fascinated me. I somehow persuaded an American TV publicist – by fax, no less – to post me a VHS preview tape of the pilot. It gripped me, from its opening, haunting frame to its last. Three-and-a-half decades later it remains one of the most artistically significant works ever produced. Long before the emergence of HBO and the first signs of television's golden age, Twin Peaks was simply unlike anything that had come before it. At the heart of the story sat a lingering question – who killed Laura Palmer? – which pivoted on the riskiest tool in the story toolbox: withheld closure. The not-knowing was the heart of the audience's paralysis and compulsion. Revealing the answer, ultimately, destroyed the spell that had held the entire work in thrilling suspension. 'Let's say you have a goose, and the goose lays golden eggs. Pretty soon, you've got a lot of golden eggs, and someone comes along and says it's time now to kill that goose,' Lynch told me, in one of several conversations we shared over the years. 'That was not a good thing.' The brilliance of the series is that it bent an iconic American image – the small-town, filled with ordinary, everyday folks – into something malevolent and dark. Unlike Mayfield, location of Leave it to Beaver, or even the eponymous and scandal-soaked Peyton Place, when you pricked the surface of Twin Peaks, you found layers of shadow and darkness. The nearby woods – usually a benign playground – were transformed here into a dangerous wilderness, inhabited by disturbing entities and things that go 'Bob' in the night. The original series ended in 1991, cancelled after just two seasons. A film, Fire Walk With Me, followed in 1992. And then, in 2017, we got a sequel, Twin Peaks: The Return. The latter was foreshadowed in the original series when Laura Palmer, in a dream, speaking backwards, told Agent Cooper: 'I'll see you again in 25 years.' Lynch, like Laura, was true to his word. Thirty-five years after the fact, Twin Peaks remains significant as much for it tonal notes (red rooms, mysterious strangers and cryptic monologues) as it is for the raft of imitators which followed: Northern Exposure and Carnivale, and more recently, Riverdale, Top of the Lake, Wild Palms, True Detective and Wayward Pines. Even in 2025, The White Lotus still dances with the fire of withheld closure. Lynch, for his part, never saw Twin Peaks as an assembly of pieces. 'There are classes of screenwriting where they reduce things down to formulas, but there's shouldn't be any rules,' he said. 'The ideas dictate everything … You don't worry about a form, you don't worry about any rules, you follow the ideas that you fall in love with, and you try to stay true to those ideas. They tell you everything.' And yet, Twin Peaks laid the groundwork for cinematic television: cable masterpieces such as Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Oz and Deadwood, and, in the streaming age, The Crown, Squid Game, Succession, The Handmaid's Tale and Andor. As with most great artists, Lynch left his signature on Twin Peaks, in an Alfred Hitchcock-esque cameo, playing FBI boss Gordon Cole. Like The Log Lady and The Man From Another Place, he became a small but perfectly crafted piece of the living jigsaw. 'When you act, even if you're not really an actor, you realise how special the actors and actresses are,' Lynch told me. 'What they go through to make it real from a deep place ... it opens up the thing where the actors become very special to you.' And Gordon, I asked. 'Gordon is pretty fantastic, you know,' Lynch replied, with a wry smile. As is Twin Peaks which, for me, survives not just as a notable chapter in the annals of television history, but a town I visit every Thanksgiving – up the road from where we stay in Maple Valley, Washington – for a yearly fix of something I cannot quite articulate. Loading The Double R Diner (real name: Twede's Cafe) has only a handful of surviving clues to its history: notably, a cup of coffee and a piece of cherry pie painted on the wall outside. The 'Welcome to Twin Peaks' sign, about a mile down the road from the railroad bridge, is long gone. In common with every TV ghost town, the streets are inhabited by memories of fictional moments, made substantial by stepping through the fourth wall. Yet something intangible remains in every corner of Snoqualmie, as it is in Twin Peaks, and you sense it in every sideways glance. Amplified by the remoteness and the harsh cold and snow of winter, there's a lingering, otherworldly feel – the quality that first drew Lynch and Frost to this place. Something that rides on the mist at twilight; an echo of a mystery, from long, long ago.
