You never know when the Welcome Wiener will wave hello. by Megan Seling His name is Yo Dawg. Or Blink-Dawg. Or Hot Dog Man, Graffiti Weenie, Highway Hot Dog, or Welcome Weiner. Whatever you call him, you’ve likely seen the smiling, dancing, waving banger in a bun throughout the Puget Sound region. He pops up on trains, behind abandoned buildings, and in the shadows of freeway overpasses. Everyone loves Bill Hinker’s friendly hot dog graffiti, and I know this because when I started mentioning to friends that I was dedicating my summer to seeking out as many hot dogs as I could, they all enthusiastically exclaimed, “I love that guy!” before offering up their favorite spots. Welcome to Seattle! MEGAN SELING Hinker painted his first hot dog in 2004. “Back before 2017ish, the hawtdawg was pretty plain and didn’t come out much,” he says. “But in the last five years or so, he has evolved. [He’s] sprouted appendages, sometimes wears clothes, and even speaks!”  The rare purple weiner. THOM SWANSON Sometimes the hot dog is sporting jeans and a hat. Other times he’s naked, save for a scribble of ketchup or mustard. On one especially fruitful hot dog hunt, I stumbled across a pair of golf club-wielding wieners framing a Happy Gilmore-inspired mural near an abandoned mini golf course. “The price is wrong, bitch.” While I almost always see the character with either pink or red dog, legend has it that a purple weenie on the side of a train car can occasionally be seen passing through town. "The price is wrong, bitch." MS Hinker estimates he’s painted somewhere around 5,000 hot dogs over the years. Many have been covered by other artists or demolished or scrubbed away by Mayor Harrell’s multimillion-dollar graffiti clean-up efforts over the years—Harrell the Hot Dog Killer—but Hinker doubled down on his dog this year, when he launched a line of limited-edition enamel pins through Makeshift. His hot dog originals are also hanging at Broadcast Coffee at 20th and Yesler through October, and he’ll be selling paintings, pins, and more at Punk Rock Flea Market, September 20–22 in the old QFC space on 15th Avenue East. As you flip through the pages of our new Art + Performance Fall 2024 issue, keep an eye out. You never know when the Welcome Wiener will wave hello. THOM SWANSON MS MS