No one can out-Seattle this slice of local life: My friend Gay (whom I met when I worked at the corporate offices of Starbucks) and I are sitting in her SUV wearing our Polar fleece jackets, eating hamburgers at Dick's Drive-In in Wallingford, not far from University of Washington. The scene at midnight is only a little less crowded than at nine, with four windows taking orders for their very limited selection that hasn't changed in decades. There are no picnic tables or places to sit, except the car you drive up in. Pedestrians just stand and eat.

Gay has purchased not one but two bags of the hot salty greasy fries that are made with their skins on. I'm marvelling at the fact that we are in our mid-forties and she is in excellent shape even with such indulgences.

"Oh, look," she says. "There's Bill Gates."

"Oh, right," I say. "Why would the Richest Man in the World be eating at Dick's?"

"Because he likes the fries?"

I look up and there he is, standing in line, nose buried in what looks like a tech manual, trying desperately to blend in with the long, slow-moving line. He has parked his shiny black Lexus under the revolving Dick's sign for a fast getaway. Slowly the people in line begin to recognize him. "Hey, BILL!" a skateboarding kid yells at him. The place gets a little quiet.

We watch his every move like a side-show oddity, but also with a vague home-town affection. Gates gets to the front of the line, orders, hands over a bill. The kid hands him a bag of fries. Gates, the Richest Man in the World, waits for his change. As he waits, more people stare at him in recognition. You can guess he's thinking about NOT waiting for his change because he's not exactly going to be able to enjoy lingering in the Dick's experience the way he used to before he was on the cover of Time. He walks to his Lexus eating the fries, gets in and drives away.

Dick's is probably one of the safer places to go for a quick burger... it attracts all kinds of people who stand amiably chatting in line like forest animals taking refuge in a cave. The employees are the best paid fast-food employees in the state, starting at $8/hr, so they tend to stay. The food is simple and, though not particularly good for you, it's of high quality. The shakes are hard ice cream and milk done up in a Waring Mixmaster. The burgers are hot, decent, and unremarkable. No special orders, just hamburger, cheeseburger, Deluxe and Special. The fries are, as I mentioned before, an indulgence worth having. Hot, limp, greasy, crispy, salty made by hand right there from real potatoes. Condiments are discouraged... sometimes I'm standing behind Asian college kids who don't understand that ketchup is five cents even though they've just bought a bunch of other food, and I usually end up passing the window guy a nickel just to speed things up.

There is a hard ice cream window for sundaes, floats and cones. They're good Carnation varieties, not a Baskin-Robbins array, but plenty to choose from. A few classic toppings, and there you go. I have a weakness for a scoop of peppermint ice cream with hot fudge sauce on it.

There are five locations in the chain... the ones on Capital Hill and Wallingford are probably best known because of their established college neighborhoods and proximity to movie houses. They were the first built in 1954 and 1955. People with wonderful vintage cars like to show them off at the Wallingford store, which has a parking lot with lots of room for old Chevys and Checker cabs, delivery trucks, hippie microbuses, and 1977 Toyota pickups. The Broadway store has the most pedestrian traffic and the fattest pigeons. I paid a visit to the Holman Road and Lake City stores for the first time to take these pictures... the street life isn't quite as vibrant as the two earliest stores, but they have a presence that's clean and solid. Feeling down? Have a burger.

The Queen Anne store is an anomaly in the Dick's stable. It has lots of indoor seating and is in a nice modern brick building with an open, airy truss roof. It has a good Seattle Center location but it doesn't really attract the same retro social whirl as the others. Technically, it's really not a drive-in, either. Not a Checker cab in sight.

It seems these days, especially in a town like Seattle where history is as disposable as an aluminum can, replicas have over-written the authentics. University Village has evolved into an upscale shopping center where Pottery Barn and Barnes and Noble flourish and the bowling alley, hobby shop and Carnation creamery have vanished. Food Giant has succumbed to the QFC chain, though they've retained the big neon sign. The Neptune theater which played old repertory movies changed into a first-run theater and relegated the old stuff to postage-stamp screen cineplex hell.

Perhaps because its popularity hasn't waned and the original owners still run it, Dick's never feels like it may be on the brink of obsolescence. Here's hoping it outlives the cheeky interlopers, the burnished charlatans, and the soulless chains that have too many meaningless menu choices and no milk in their shakes.

Get Lost editor Leslie Strom invented this story so she could go to all the Dick's and eat french fries. She's considering a story on the Hostess bakeries next.