From the exhibition Still Life: 1970s Photorealism:

This painting represents a familiar, even ordinary subject: an older man lingering over coffee in a diner. Many Photorealists reflected the influence of Edward Hopper by depicting the culture of roadside diners and isolated figures within them. Goings was dedicated to representing working-class subjects and aspects of consumer culture not normally the subject of large-scale oil painting. Here, he complicates the apparent simplicity of his subject by focusing his camera outside the diner’s window, on the sign across the street. As a result, the majority of Goings’s painting is out of focus, reminding viewers that we are looking at a painting of a photograph.