Hot Dog: Plain with mustard and ketchup
My first trip to New York was for a conference for the religious order that I worked for at the time that ended with their annual ordination liturgy for new priests joining the order. The day itself was beautiful, so I wandered around the city. Being my first time in New York, I wanted to pay my respects to the World Trade Center victims. At this point in time, it was a massive hole in the ground. I don’t think any construction had actively started yet, but the site had been cleaned. Infrastructure was up. If it wasn’t for the memorials posted on the fence or the display setup in St. Paul’s Chapel across the street, it wouldn’t have stood out from any other skyscraper construction site.
On the hot dog front, this was the first of a double-header. New Jersey’s PATH train terminates at the WTC so I started with the stereotypical New York experience—a street vendor. I bought a $2 dog off the street—which is actually amazingly cheap considering the city. You can’t find a hot dog in Austin for $2, much less in the Big Apple.
Absolutely nothing fancy about the hot dog, but munching it down while rushing to catch a train in downtown New York felt like I was doing it right.
