There's something special about 24-hour diners that can't be matched in any other atmosphere.
It's a magnet for the strange, for those trying to get away from the confines of their homes and more often than not, a bizarre ritual for an intoxicated crowd that is trying to sober up before crawling home to bed.
Late-night munchies only scratch the surface where caffeine is king.
Some come for the endless cup of coffee. Others just come to sit in syrup-soaked seats to people watch. The rough caricatures of strange people seem to always be wandering in and out the battered, and sometimes broken, glass door to the restaurant.
The strange environment itself is often an addicting and twisted form of entertainment.
For many, such as elementary education junior Brandon Miller, the late-night dining experience was discovered in high school, where he practiced arriving at a restaurant with a mob of 20 people.
"All of us would go to Coney Island at least once a day," he said. "Usually we're all pretty broke, so we just go to Coney to hang out and order a few cups of coffee."
Miller now calls the pale blue booths of IHOP - the trendier name for the International House of Pancakes at 2771 E. Grand River Ave. - home. There, he shuffles a stack of cards while he waits for friends to arrive with Yahtzee. It's already 12:23 a.m. on a Tuesday, and Miller is thankful his first class isn't until 4:10 p.m.
Server Kristi Hayhow looks puzzled, for her the night is still young.
Booths, which she says are normally full at this time of night, are lifeless and silent. It's almost quiet enough to hear a spoon drop.
"This place is always lively at night," she said. "Tonight, though, it got quiet around 11:30 p.m."
Hayhow, a Lansing Community College student who is working her way through school, prefers the late shift that usually stretches from 10 p.m. to 6:30 a.m.
She's already seen a lot in her three months of duty.
"It never fails to have a party of 20 - usually we get them about once a week - that walks in and puts their mouths all over the helium tank or does something else strange.
"Of course, I have to tell them to knock it off and then get talked back to in that stupid helium voice."
Others think it's funny to steal the tank while they're drunk.
"Even though we've chained it to the wall now, people still don't seem to get it."
Not far down the street lies another well-known late-night place that has given nearly everyone a story to tell - Denny's, 2701 E. Grand River Ave.
The diner, which averages a brew of 375 million cups of coffee nationwide each year, has been entertaining a more two-sided crowd recently with a large finals-week clientele that has a wicked demand for coffee.
Laptops are no stranger in the more scattered sea of drunks. Books and binders seem the norm.
Studying for a test, appropriately enough on substance abuse, kinesiology junior Kelly Didomenico said the restaurant keeps her awake better than anything else.
"I don't think there is an appeal to this place," she said. "It just lets me study more than anything."
Across the table, in an adjacent booth, a rowdy crowd laughs while the girl sandwiched in the middle falls asleep. The tiara on her head might seem strange in most places, but it's fitting here.
Fortunately, Didomenico and her study buddy brought headphones.
Across town, drunken babble and the familiar voices of Lansing resident Lisa Smith's regular customers are comforting sounds for the 31-year-old. For eight years, she's been working the late shift at Theio's Restaurant, 2650 E. Michigan Ave. in Lansing.
The loud and rowdy types are Smith's specialty.
"Last Saturday I ended up jumping in the middle of a fight," she said. "It's rare because I can usually spot the problems before they start. That lets me play the bouncer.
"I've been there so long that it's my place, so I feel the need to defend it."
But Smith admits that during an earlier incident she didn't try to stop a man who walked naked from the bathroom to the front door, only donning a pair of cowboy boots.
"That was something I wasn't about to interfere in," she said.
The diner, which can often have a line out the door on a Friday night after the bars close, takes pride in having a menu that is "made to order."
"When we get a big group of 100 or so people at once, they don't always understand that it's going to be a bit because we don't have food just sitting out," Smith said. "Everything is made when ordered."
People, no matter how demanding, friendly or drunk, don't get to Smith very easily, and that, she says, is the key.
"I wouldn't work another shift and I wouldn't work another job," she said. "It is entertaining here."
