The Palms Rooftop Hot Dog

The Palms neighborhood of Los Angeles, a nondescript residential area bordering Culver City, doesn’t have many unique features. But it’s known for one iconic piece of art: a giant hot dog. This absurdist art crowned multiple L.A. businesses on the other side of the city until it was permanently moved to the intersection of Overland Avenue and Palms Boulevard. 

When Red’s Hot Dogs, a frankfurter joint in Los Angeles’s Thai Town, opened in 1998, they hoped to cash in on the demand for food from Pink’s Hot Dogs, a counter-serve joint in the Melrose-Fairfax district. To distinguish their new business, the Red’s founders commissioned a giant hot dog statue from an unknown artist and mounted it atop their restaurant at the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue.

When the now-defunct hot dog restaurant failed to achieve the same long-term success as Pink’s and was forced to close in 2007, a restaurant called Thai Town Express moved in. The building’s lease allegedly forbade removing the hot dog, so the Thai restaurant kept the iconic statue for the duration of their occupancy. In 2008, Thai Town Express moved out and the dilapidated building sat empty for years, with nobody to care for the rooftop artwork as it faded in the Southern California sun.

But when the building was finally condemned in 2011, locals rallied to save the statue from destruction, finding it a new home in the Palms neighborhood. The statue was transported 11 miles southwest from its original location, where it was positioned with a crane atop National Promotions and Advertising, a marketing agency. It’s unclear why the agency wanted the statue, but the location couldn’t have been better. It currently overlooks a 7/11, a chain known for its countertop hot dogs. The statue’s ketchup, mustard, and onions were given a fresh coat of paint and ever since, the wiener has been an eccentric fixture of Palms.