An Ode to the $1.25 Hot Dog

Photo credit: Flickr/doobybrain

Let’s all pour a drop of mustard for the loss of the Greenwich Village Gray’s Papaya, that dingy corner fast food joint so beloved for its $1.25 hot dog. It’s the year 2014 at the intersection of Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street, but a pass under Gray’s neon sign was transport to 1973.

But that’s no more. As we write, construction workers are hacking apart the insides of Gray’s Papaya to make way for an outpost of Liquiteria, a chain of juice bars that serves pressed elixirs in all the colors of forest-floor fungi.

It’s another punch to the gut for lovers of the dirt-cheap dog, so ubiquitous on New York City streets in the ’70s, before it was fathomable that anyone might buy a $16 lobster roll from the belly of a food truck. There is one remaining Gray’s on Manhattan’s Upper West side, and its predecessor, Papaya King, is still kicking, but by and large, the era of those frugal franks is finished.

Some might say a pasture has been cleared for better, fancier fast food, across the country at large. In New York, shinier outfits like Shake Shack have sprung up, where the most basic dog goes for $3, or Asiadog, where a cheddar bratwurst is $6.50. Even the dog at Nathan’s Famous in Coney Island, which was founded in 1916, runs $2.49 these days. (They used to cost 5¢ in the early days. Prices are always going up, it would seem.)

Maybe our sadness is misplaced—a nostalgia for a New York we only know from Woody Allen movies—but darned if we didn’t feel something as we, standing, downed a Gray’s Papaya dog at 2 a.m. Something other than indigestion. We were a part of the city’s steady hum, always in a hurry, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with people down on their luck, precocious NYU freshmen, and an assortment of ragtag hot dog revelers. Those dogs were often greasy and slopped with unidentifiable toppings, but they hit that spot for us all. That’s something those $1.50 Costco franks just can’t do, no matter how many years the store fails to raise its price.

And so we tip our hat to Gray’s Papaya, and to all the other $1.25 hot dog spots we’ve lost. It’s happening all over, and not just to hot dogs. Greasy spoon hamburgers are being passed over for more recent models, topped with ever-more-elaborate ingredients. Doughnuts are being made with truffles. Gold leaf desserts aren’t the absurd treat for the rich they once were.

Maybe one day an artisanal hot dog will excite that something we felt at Gray’s Papaya. But probably not.