NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- The famous Moondance diner left the nation's largest city early Saturday for a tiny Western town, leaving behind not so much as a bent fork or a greasy spoon.
1010 WINS AUDIO: Glenn Schuck Reports
The famous Moondance diner left the nation's largest city early Saturday for a tiny Western town, leaving behind not so much as a bent fork or a greasy spoon. 
A die-hard group of about 20 former patrons and fans waited through a long night of preparations to bid farewell to the
74-year-old Manhattan eatery, said Michael Perlman, a Queens preservationist and diner aficionado. They blew kisses and took photographs as the Moondance began a 2,100-mile trip to LaBarge, Wyo., he said, describing the moment as bittersweet.
``I am really grateful that it has a secure home in Wyoming,'' Perlman said, ``but we're sort of sad that a New York City icon is abandoning us.''
After a developer bought the Moondance's site for luxury housing, Vincent Pierce and his wife, Cheryl, saved the doomed diner by buying it for $7,500. He said he expected the trek through nine states to take about a week, with the route depending on where the 14-foot-high load can pass under bridges along the way.
Pierce and his father-in-law, Kent Profit, will share the driving. Profit owns the truck, and the flatbed trailer was borrowed from a company in Wyoming.
The diner's departure came after a three-day bureaucratic snarl over city permits and a torrential rainstorm that briefly delayed the project.
Pierce said he and his wife had been looking for a restaurant investment when they spotted the Moondance for sale on the Web site of the American Diner Museum in Providence, R.I. He said the idea of a New York-style diner is generating a buzz in LaBarge, where the population is officially 493 but probably closer to 600, according to town clerk Betty Mocieka.
PHOTO: Vince Pierce sits outside the Moondance Diner, waiting for additional permits from the city.
The town has one restaurant, when it's open, but nothing resembling a descendant of the railroad dining cars of a bygone era. They were considered cultural icons in cities of the Northeast and Midwest, but their numbers have dwindled from 6,000 to 2,500, according to American Diner Museum director Daniel Zilka.
The Moondance, originally called the Holland Tunnel Diner, was the city's ``oldest extant diner,'' according to Perlman. It was recognized as a place where celebrity revelers sometimes showed up for breakfast, and as a location for scenes in ``Spider-Man,'' ``Friends'' and ``Sex and the City.''
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