The NASA Scientists Working on Top of the ‘Seinfeld’ Diner Are Being Evicted
The Seinfeld gang spent a staggering amount of time hanging out at a local diner, discussing everything from relationship problems, to Iron Man’s underpants, to how long they could each go without playing with themselves. But apparently the tenants just above them were working on climate change and outer space missions.
In real life, Monk's Café was played by Tom’s Restaurant, a family owned diner that dates back to the 1940s, and which still resides on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
While none of this is news to fans of Seinfeld, what people may not be aware of is the fact that the building also houses NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies lab, which is “dedicated to studying climate change and other Earth sciences.” So there’s a chance that anyone who has the 4K UHD re-release of Seinfeld might be able to see some geniuses at work during the show’s many establishing shots.
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But according to The New York Times, after “nearly six decades” of “expanding human knowledge about Earth’s climate and the atmospheres of other planets,” the scientists are being kicked out — not because they forgot to send their rent check in on time, or have been blasting EDM at four in the morning, but due to “a Trump administration cost-cutting push.”
It’s not like the Institute’s work hasn’t been important. Reportedly, they had a part in “robotic spacecraft missions to Venus and Jupiter” and their first director, James Hansen, was the first scientist to warn Congress about the threat of climate change back in 1988. That was a whole year before Seinfeld premiered. Although the show first featured some other diner that presumably didn’t have any astrophysicist neighbors.
Per The Times, the annual rent is a whopping $3 million. But even though the NASA workers are being ousted, the move could end up “costing taxpayers more.” That’s because the building is owned by Columbia University, and although NASA has canceled their lease, the deal was made between the school and an entirely different federal agency. So the rent will need to be paid even though the employees have been relocated to other spaces.
“There is no logic behind this,” one research scientist told the paper.
“I think that it is unlikely that this will save the federal government any money,” the current director of the Institute stated.
Presumably no amount of funky bass licks will fix this situation.
