It’s a Hot Dog! It’s Art! Tourists React to Giant Times Square Weiner

New York City tourists can expect many things when they go to Times Square, the iconic Big Apple destination: towering flashy advertisements, the Naked Cowboy, King Kong, hot dog stands. But these past two weeks have been special. Tourists have also been able eat a hot dog and take pictures with a 65-foot-long public art sculpture of their food at the same time.

“Hot Dog: The Second Serving,” which is standing—if a hot dog can stand—on the western side of Duffy Square at 7th Avenue and 46th Streets through August 8th, marks the second time Brooklyn-based artists Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw have erected a comically large hot dog monument in midtown Manhattan.

On the first occasion, which ran from April 30 to June 13, 2024, the installation was titled “Hot Dog in the City” Presented then as now by Times Square Arts, Catron and Outlaw said about their weiner, “Like us, the hot dog is an absurd mass of mashed-up fragments masquerading as one remarkable product, a Trojan Horse of individual narratives and sordid histories. When you boil it down, there’s no symbol that better relishes the American conglomerate than our audacious, record-breaking hot dog...unless that hot dog is also in Times Square.”

As the juicy-looking, mustard-topped, red, white and blue bunting-draped meat monument goes into its second and final week on display just steps from the statue of “Give My Regards to Broadway” songwriter George M. Cohan, Straus News spoke with New Yorkers, tourists and hot dog stand owners to see the impact Catron and Outlaw’s work is having on their tube steak experience.

Courtney and Michael, a Tampa, Florida-based couple who visit New York regularly, said that their initial impression entailed thinking the sculpture was “really ugly.” Courtney wondered whether President Donald Trump had any role, given the golden Statue-of-Liberty-esque figure at the tip of the hot dog, her costume adorned with patches of grey duck tape. “It’s very gauche,” she said.

From the Trump Gold Card to the golden details on Trump Tower or, most recently, the Trump administration’s $5 million restoration of DC statues with gold plating, the interpretation isn’t difficult to understand.

Who Let the Dogs Out?!

Courtney and Michael have been to Times Square several times, visiting New York City every couple years since the early 2000s. They said they love New York and Times Square – but for maximum five days at a time.

Others had a more surface-level reaction to seeing a giant frankfurter and bun in the middle of Duffy Square.

“Y’all celebrate anything,” a young New York resident named Whywhy sent to their group chat alongside a selfie with the giant hot dog, laughing as they showed me the screenshot.

Hot dog stand owners at the four corners of Times Square shared mixed reviews, but were mostly unaffected.

“People like it, they like coming to get hot dogs,” one operator on West 46th Street and Broadway said. Another nearby dog slinger said that they sold 100-200 hot dogs per day, unrelated to the sculpture, while another said that business hasn’t been impacted but that tourists seem to like it.

Kaito, visiting from California, said that the monument was “really funny” and was curious about its meaning.

“The hot dog returns in an altered form to reflect an altered nation,” said Catron and Outlaw in an artist’s statement. “The United States marks its 250th anniversary, we found ourselves returning to questions that animated the original project: spectacle, patriotism, celebration, and power. Symbols persist. Myths persist. Their meanings shift. Two years after its initial appearance, the sculpture returns to a country that is both familiar and changed, revealing new tensions within a symbol that once seemed self-evident.”

They say art is in the eye of the beholder, but in very few places is one’s art beheld by over 200,000 pedestrians daily. With the many interpretations inherent to displaying art in Times Square, it’s inevitable that some will think about politics and Trump, like Courtney, while others will simply appreciate random fun.