Erwin Wurm’s “Hot Dog Bus” serves free franks in Brooklyn Bridge park on weekends through August (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Brooklyn Bridge Park
Saturdays on Pier 1 and Sundays on Pier 5 through August 26, free, 12 noon – 6:00 pm
www.publicartfund.org
www.brooklynbridgepark.org
hot dog bus slideshow
For two decades, Austrian artist Erwin Wurm has been transforming such capitalistic items of consumption as homes (and beds, toilets, pillows, and couches) and automobiles into more abstract and theoretical objects in such series as “Fat Cars,” “Melting Houses,” and “Discipline of Subjectivity.” In 2015, Wurm’s “Curry Bus,” a dramatically altered Volkswagen Microbus, sold curry sausages outside the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg. The “One Minute Sculpture” artist has now reshaped a VW Microbus into “Hot Dog Bus,” a mustard-yellow, pudgy, frankfurter-shaped vehicle that is giving out free wieners in Brooklyn Bridge Park on Saturdays on Pier 1 and Sundays on Pier 5 through the last weekend in August. According to the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, franks were developed more than half a millennium ago, either by a butcher in Coburg, Germany, or a community in Vienna, the Austrian name of which is Wien. In the nineteenth century, European immigrants brought the dachshund-shaped edible to the States, where a bun and sauerkraut were soon added. Thus, Wurm sees the hot dog as an all-American food that brings equality to the rich and the poor, the native born and the immigrant, the worker and the tourist; for example, stand by any frank cart in New York and marvel at the vast array of men, women, and children stopping by to pick up a quick fix. The bus itself looks somewhat obese, hinting that the frankfurter is not exactly the healthiest of lunches or dinners and is an example of Americans’ less-than-stellar diet as a nation. Just remember to wait in line at “Hot Dog Bus” and clearly state whether you want ketchup or mustard on your free weenie, then take a long walk around beautiful Brooklyn Bridge Park to burn those extra calories.