His identify is Yo Dawg. Or Blink-Dawg. Or Scorching Canine Man, Graffiti Weenie, Freeway Scorching Canine, or Welcome Weiner. No matter you name him, you’ve seemingly seen the smiling, dancing, waving banger in a bun all through the Puget Sound area. He pops up on trains, behind deserted buildings, and within the shadows of freeway overpasses.
Everybody loves Invoice Hinker’s pleasant sizzling canine graffiti, and I do know this as a result of after I began mentioning to pals that I used to be dedicating my summer season to in search of out as many sizzling canines as I might, all of them enthusiastically exclaimed, “I really like that man!” earlier than providing up their favourite spots.
Hinker painted his first sizzling canine in 2004. “Again earlier than 2017ish, the hawtdawg was fairly plain and didn’t come out a lot,” he says. “However within the final 5 years or so, he has advanced. [He’s] sprouted appendages, typically wears garments, and even speaks!”
Generally the new canine is sporting denims and a hat. Different instances he’s bare, save for a scribble of ketchup or mustard. On one particularly fruitful sizzling canine hunt, I stumbled throughout a pair of golf club-wielding wieners framing a Joyful Gilmore-inspired mural close to an deserted mini golf course. “The worth is fallacious, bitch.” Whereas I nearly all the time see the character with both pink or pink canine, legend has it {that a} purple weenie on the facet of a practice automobile can sometimes be seen passing via city.
Hinker estimates he’s painted someplace round 5,000 sizzling canines through the years. Many have been lined by different artists or demolished or scrubbed away by Mayor Harrell’s multimillion-dollar graffiti clean-up efforts through the years—Harrell the Scorching Canine Killer—however Hinker doubled down on his canine this 12 months, when he launched a line of limited-edition enamel pins via Makeshift. His sizzling canine originals are additionally hanging at Broadcast Espresso at twentieth and Yesler via October, and he’ll be promoting work, pins, and extra at Punk Rock Flea Market, September 20–22 within the previous QFC house on fifteenth Avenue East.
As you flip via the pages of our new Artwork + Efficiency Fall 2024 challenge, preserve an eye fixed out. You by no means know when the Welcome Wiener will wave whats up.
