Hotdogs, Cold Nights

BY STEVEN PERLBERG

It’s 10:30 p.m., the cart is out, grill fired up, but Adam Stoker forgot the tongs. Which is a problem.

It’s the one thing he really can’t forget – “other than the hotdogs.”

But Adam sets up anyway. Apron on, he lines up the buns, stirs the cheese, and marshals the mustards. He also sends a few frantic texts.

Because in this line of work, the tongs are essential.

For Washington University students who have frequented the Loop this winter, Adam’s bearded visage huddled over a hotdog cart is a familiar one. Every Friday and Saturday night, he sets up shop outside the old Delmar Lounge, luring drunken passersby as they make the midnight trek across Skinker Boulevard toward greener pastures – bars that are still open.

On a good night, Adam takes home 70 bucks hawking dogs. On an arctic night like this, he’s lucky to make $40.

But it pays a bill a week. Tonight, Adam rolled up with $1 in his savings account, $8 in checking, and $4 in his pocket. He’s got enough gas to haul the clunky cart back to its home in a South City garage.

For warmth – other than his chest-length bushy beard – Adam’s got gloves, a black jacket too thin for a mid-February night, and the occasional Edgefield cigarette.

He hoists the jumbo jar of hot peppers and pours the juice into a simmering batch of his special onions. “If you’re going to do it, do it right,” Adam mutters.

What kind of night will it be?

Adam doesn’t know where the name originated, but “Loop Dogs” have been a Delmar fixture for eight years – although he has been making his cut selling dogs only for a few weekends.

He’s a friend of Joe Bullock’s, owner and proprietor. Joe, who used to do Adam’s job, bought the cart last year from its prior CEO.

Those were the glory days, before University City regulation and a new construction project moved the venture from its original location outside the Pageant.

Joe says the Loop has gotten less popular in the last few years – the outdoor hotdog business isn’t what it used to be. But, for tonight, at least the tongs are here.

Right on time for the first customers.

Adam gives them the rundown: For $4 “plus a tip if it’s worth it,” he’ll craft you an all-beef dog. Jalapeños, relish, ketchup, spicy or regular mustard, KC Masterpiece BBQ sauce, hot chili-cheese and celery salt, all included if you want.

And then, of course, the spiced onions, Adam’s own recipe. When travelers walk by he always makes sure to crack the tin lid. “That’s the smell that gets people buying.”

Adam recommends getting “the works.” It’s best to just trust his toppings judgment, and these customers do.

“This guy is the Zen master,” a graying hipster tells his sweetheart wearing thick-rimmed square glasses.

Adam just smiles. “All the best.”

If you spend enough time with Adam you’ll hear that phrase a lot. It’s one of his personal mottos, not to mention the title of a book he’s writing for his 10-year-old son Tyler.

Adam fell in love with South City five years ago, but he’s lived in the St. Louis area since he was a baby. He’s 31 now. His dad used to be a Navy fighter pilot “kind of like in Top Gun.” They had a place out in Ballwin, and Adam went to catholic school. National Honors Society, Advanced Placement physics, he’s an Eagle Scout.

But by senior year, Adam started dropping balls. He failed honors calculus and didn’t graduate.

“I experienced a whole bunch of life,” Adam says. “I ended up taking the road less traveled.”

The road has been bumpy, especially on that day 3½ years ago when Adam got fired from a job and found out Tyler had ADHD.

Adam couldn’t sleep for days.

“It’s hereditary. I felt a fatherly responsibility.” Adam was diagnosed with the disorder himself in second grade.

Then he found a new sense of spirituality. God, he says, told him to grow a beard. When he went to shave at the end of that week, his “very dependable beard trimmer quit working.”

“At that point the message was clear.” So the beard, and his current moniker “Jesus,” remain.

He just had to do something different, make a different decision. To hear Adam talk is to hear just how important “3½ years ago” is.

“’To decide’ in its Latin root means to cut off from, to put all else to an end. There’s a finality to it. Whatever it takes,” he chokes up, but it’s not like Adam is afraid of the softer stuff. He writes poetry.

He focuses on personal growth now, finding his ADHD diagnosis ironic considering he’s a philosophy nerd who reads four books at a time. He likes to give recommendations, like the one he’s working through now, Deepak Chopra’s Super Brain.

And he’s quick to share a fact or two. All-beef dogs are a great source of protein. Did you know a potato has more potassium than a banana?

Hustling dogs isn’t so bad. It allows him to share a laugh with the people of St. Louis, who Adam says show a level of goodwill uncommon in the rest of the country.

“There’s a lot of joy you can get out of it.”

But Adam mainly freezes out in the cold for his son. “He’s the love of my life, why I do this,” he says. “He has a beautiful heart.”

Plus the gig has given Adam plenty of stories – like the time a woman tried to make out with him for a free hotdog.

Or even earlier tonight, when a tipsy blonde in bright pink pants only made it ten feet past his cart before spewing her dinner – not his dogs – on Delmar’s sidewalk. Without missing a beat, Adam strolled over to the group of twentysomethings with a bottle of water.

By 12:15 a.m., Adam throws on a few hopeful hotdogs in anticipation of the late-night rush. One of them is for him.

“I’ve been looking forward to this spicy mustard all night.”

That was his latest suggested ingredient and Joe’s most recent purchase. Adam dresses his dog up with the works and chomps it down.

“I’m going to miss these.”

Adam says this is his last weekend selling hotdogs.

He launched a new real estate wholesaling business called INRG and closed his first deal today. He stands to make $5,000. Meetings are in the morning.

But for now, he takes inventory. Only nine dogs sold by 1 a.m. “You do the math.”

That’s how it goes. Adam says you can spend an hour twiddling your thumbs before it comes like a wave. Either way, he likes to set up early enough so Loop-goers know he’s there when they stumble out of the bar.

Sure enough, by 1:15 a baker’s dozen worth of wanderers headed to Moonrise make a welcomed pit stop. A blustering Chicagoan doesn’t believe Loop Dogs could possibly be as good as his hometown benchmark. To his chagrin, they are. A gutsy customer in an orange puffy coat buys two.

The horde meanders, devouring dogs before skipping past Skinker, shouting a boozy, somewhat collective “thank-you Loop Dog guy” toward Adam.

“All the best.”