By Jared Misner

It might seem curious that a vegan should write the obituary for a hot dog joint, but this story really isn’t about hot dogs; this is a story about growing up, finding home, and growing old. And, sure, hot dogs. 

When I fell in love with the man who is now my husband, we moved into a rented two-bedroom bungalow with a red door right on Scott Avenue in Dilworth. You’ve seen it before. You just didn’t know that was the place two people started a life together. 

We’d listen to the cars speed by at night like they were all white noise machines. We’d sit in the great big backyard under the starry glow of string lights and say things like “Wow, how can two people be so lucky to find each other and this house?” 

We were so young then, Nate and I. We did things like lie to our landlord about having two dogs instead of one because we couldn’t afford a second pet fee, but we couldn’t very well part ways with Stella. This was her first home. She’s older now, too – 13 and with rickety joints.

On summer nights, fall nights, spring nights and, come to think of it, sometimes even winter nights, we’d walk down the block to JJ’s Red Hots, sit on the rooftop, and be in love — with each other and with this city that had adopted us both. 

JJ’s was cheap – hot dogs don’t cost much even if you had to order the fries separately, which, of course, we did. You can’t very well have hot dogs without fries. 

But JJ’s had something special, too. It was that novelty of just selling hot dogs. Yeah, they sold chicken too, but you’d have to be a little bit crazy to go to a city’s most beloved and famous hot dog restaurant and order chicken. 

Before my parents retired and moved north from Florida to be nearer to us, we’d all walk down to JJ’s, Nate and I showing off this cool new city that had a restaurant just for hot dogs. My mom would say things like, “We’re going to JJ’s, right?”

And of course we always did. Everyone likes hot dogs, and JJ’s served vegan ones, which was special and felt like such a Big City thing way back in 2016. 

When my brother visited, we’d walk down, drink beers on the JJ’s rooftop and watch the sunset over the city. I felt so grown up when I paid for both our meals. 

Eventually, we did grow up. Nate and I bought a house on the west side of Charlotte and moved away from that bungalow in Dilworth with the red door. We fell in love with our new home and our new lives, as we watched the city continue to blossom and grow all around us. There was a streetcar now a block from our house! Cranes dotted the city like spots on a dalmatian, building big new things for this great big city. 

JJ’s became a less frequent field trip for us. But it was always there, a spot we knew we could count on when we just couldn’t be bothered to make plans for dinner. When we’d go back, we’d get out of our car and say, “Remember when we were young and we could walk down here?” Or, “Remember when we used to go to Sausage Fest in JJ’s parking lot every year for a while and stumble home drunk? Man, those were the days,” we’d say. 

After you’ve lived in a place for a while, the shine of a city becomes less novel. You forget how special it is to have a restaurant just for hot dogs. You make a list on your phone of new restaurants you want to try, and the list never gets shorter; it only gets longer because you can’t possibly keep up with all the newness.

After a while, you grow up so much that you find you’ve become a city’s de facto restaurant obituary writer, the chronicler of happier times. You think of the young people living in South End, rolling their eyes at you, you old fogey. But then you remember they’ll never know the joy of seeing that opossum in the tree at the old Common Market in South End that used to have a food truck festival every Friday. They’ll never know Soul used to have a cupcake of the day. And, soon, you’ll be so old, you’ll be telling the youth about this place in Dilworth that used to sell hot dogs. 

I’ve lived in Charlotte long enough now to watch it change so drastically that I’m starting to forget what even used to be. Catalina – wasn’t that once Philosopher’s Stone right on that corner in Elizabeth? Don’t I have a picture somewhere of Nate sitting out by the fire at the metal tables with our 80-pound pit bull, Sawyer, in his lap, Nate’s head all the way back laughing at the absurdity? Wasn’t there a cocktail spot called Zephyr once upon a time? Do you even remember that? Solstice had a nice patio too, right? 

As Charlotte continues to grow, it craves the next new shiny thing. We want to be Atlanta or Nashville or Austin. We want that to be the first to check out that new loud and trendy tapas bar, or to share with our friends how awesome an out-of-town concept was when we tried it in another city.

Maybe I’ve become the old and cynical writer I thought I’d never become when I was young and naïve and full of hope that things would always be good. Or maybe this just hits differently. And maybe JJ’s really is just a hot dog restaurant. But with JJ’s closing, we’re losing so much more than hot dogs. We’re succumbing to banality with another North Italia or Sixty Vines or some other chain restaurant to take its place because no individual restaurant can survive the rents in South End or Dilworth or anywhere really and so we’re happy when a copy-and-paste restaurant chooses us. 

When I heard JJ’s would close on March 16, I called my parents and said, “One last time? For the memories?”

Other people, it seems, had the same idea. The line for hot dogs one last time on a Tuesday evening in March snaked out the door and around the parking lot like this was a Best Buy on Black Friday in 2009. All for hot dogs. 

So many people stood in line to say goodbye to their old friend on Saturday that the owner had to come out and personally say there’s no way we could ever possibly feed each and every one of you hot dogs, so please try again tomorrow. The mourners turned away from a wake.

And so – spirits crushed that we’d never get to sit on that rooftop again and watch the sunset – we went to a new restaurant down the street that used to be something else. 

Misner is a writer in Charlotte. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Charlotte magazine, Our State, The Chronicle of Higher Education and more.