But then he bought another diner, which he is now restoring and then plans to sell.
That's what made Flip It LJ Diner, which opened last year, such a welcome addition to the landscape.
The diner, which Mr. Laskaris bought 16 years ago, was his first love -- after his wife and children, of course.
There are a couple of restaurants and cafes in the surrounding blocks, including Millie's Diner, which is perennially jammed for brunch.
With the man's assistance, he rounded up $1,200 in loans and bought that diner, which he whipped into freshly scrubbed, newly painted shape.
"We used to go to the old diner," Ms. Samuels said, referring to the original, more modest Landmark Diner, which now sits empty down the street.
Little Purity is the younger sibling of the Purity Diner, which has been a Park Slope institution in some form since 1929.
Her tearful moment in a New Hampshire diner, which is widely credited with reviving her floundering campaign, went down particularly well with older women.
The distinctive shiny chrome diner, which is the restaurant's front room, is a vestige of another age, before such eateries morphed into the behemoths built today.
And that led, at his suggestion, to the Tibbett Diner, which still had its Christmas lights up, with candy canes dangling from the wires.
