Doggie Diner was a small

fast food restaurant A fast-food restaurant, also known as a quick-service restaurant (QSR) within the industry, is a specific type of restaurant that serves fast-food cuisine and has minimal table service. The food served in fast-food restaurants is typically ...

chain serving hot dogs and hamburgers in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

and

Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...

, California that operated from 1948 to 1986, owned by Al Ross.

History

The first Doggie Diner was opened on Oakland's San Pablo Avenue in 1948 and grew in popularity. At one time there were 30 locations around the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

, mostly concentrated in San Francisco. The chain was sold to

Ogden Corporation Ogden may refer to: Places Canada *Ogden, Calgary, in Calgary, Alberta *Ogden, Quebec, a small municipality in the Eastern Townships *Ogdensville, British Columbia or Ogden City, alternate names for gold rush-era Seymour Arm, British Columbia *Ogd ...

around 1969. They sold french fries, hamburgers, hot dogs, and sodas. The chain's advertising jingle was: “Doggie diner, nothin’ finer. Doggie Diner, it’s doggone good!”. The Doggie Diner chain went out of business in 1986 after trying to compete with big chain restaurants, such as

McDonald's McDonald's Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational fast food chain store, chain, founded in 1940 as a restaurant operated by Richard and Maurice McDonald, in San Bernardino, California, United States. They rechri ...

and

Burger King Burger King (BK) is an American-based multinational chain store, chain of hamburger fast food restaurants. Headquartered in Miami-Dade County, Florida, the company was founded in 1953 as Insta-Burger King, a Jacksonville, Florida–based res ...

. Its founder Al Ross died in 2010, at age 93. The brand name has been revived for hot dog sales at

Oracle Park Oracle Park is a Major League Baseball stadium in the SoMa neighborhood of San Francisco, California. Since 2000, it has been the home of the San Francisco Giants. Previously named Pacific Bell Park, SBC Park, and AT&T Park, the stadium's curre ...

, home stadium of the

San Francisco Giants The San Francisco Giants are an American professional baseball team based in San Francisco, California. The Giants compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West division. Founded in 1883 as the New Yor ...

Doggie Diner heads

The most notable feature of the Doggie Diner chain was the sign: a rotating

fiberglass Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass (Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass cloth ...

head of a wide-eyed, grinning

dachshund The dachshund ( or ; German: "badger dog"), also known as the wiener dog, badger dog, and sausage dog, is a short-legged, long-bodied, hound-type dog breed. The dog may be smooth-haired, wire-haired, or long-haired, and comes in a variety of c ...

, wearing a bow tie and chef's hat. These famous dog head signs were designed in 1965 or 1966 by Bay Area billboard and ad layout designer Harold Bachman. Each dog head weighs 300 lbs. After the Doggie Diner went out of business, all the large dog head signs were taken down and many were resold to private parties. In 2001, one of the dog signs, restored and refurbished by the city of San Francisco, was installed on a median strip at

Sloat Boulevard State Route 35 (SR 35), generally known as Skyline Boulevard for most of its length, is a mostly two-lane state highway in the U.S. state of California. It runs along the ridge of the Santa Cruz Mountains from the high point of State Route 17 ...

and 45th Avenue, near San Francisco's Ocean Beach and the

San Francisco Zoo The San Francisco Zoo is a zoo located in the southwestern corner of San Francisco, California, between Lake Merced and the Pacific Ocean along the Great Highway. The SF Zoo is a public institution, managed by the non-profit San Francisco Zoologi ...

in the Outer

Sunset Sunset, also known as sundown, is the daily disappearance of the Sun below the horizon due to Earth's rotation. As viewed from everywhere on Earth (except the North and South poles), the equinox Sun sets due west at the moment of both the spring ...

neighborhood. The Doggie Diner dog head became San Francisco landmark No. 254 on August 11, 2006. In September of 2022, the non profit Illuminate.org installed 3 Doggie Diner Heads as part of their Golden Mile Project on the car-free section of JFK Promenade in Golden Gate Park.

Popular culture

In December 2000, the Doggie Diner head was featured in '' Zippy'' comics as "the doggie" in grassroots effort to save the heads. Zippy frequently participated in his long-running conversation with the giant fiberglass doggie mascot. In 2004,

Laughing Squid Laughing Squid is a blog featuring items of art, culture, and technology, as well as a web hosting company based out of New York City, New York. History Laughing Squid was founded on November 16, 1995 in San Francisco, California as a film an ...

, a website founded in San Francisco, sponsored three of the dog heads – named Manny, Moe & Jack – as the "Holy Dogminican Order" to take the dog heads on a cross-country trip, ending in a show by

Cyclecide Cyclecide is an American bicycle club based in San Francisco, California, composed of clowns, altered bikes, and a traveling show called "The Bike Rodeo", which is a public performance, and not a bicycle rodeo, a children's bicycle safety clinic ...

CBGB CBGB was a New York City music club opened in 1973 by Hilly Kristal in Manhattan's East Village. The club was previously a biker bar and before that was a dive bar. The letters ''CBGB'' were for '' Country'', '' BlueGrass'', and '' Blues'', Kri ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. The cross-country trip was documented in a movie called "Head Trip", released in 2008. In 2013, Yarn artist Olek crocheted bright colored yarn over three of the dog heads as an art piece. "Doggie diner!" was the battle cry of the Batwinged Hamburger Snatcher (BWHS) character from

Dan O'Neill Dan O'Neill (born April 21, 1942) is an American underground cartoonist, creator of the syndicated comic strip ''Odd Bodkins'' and founder of the underground comics collective the Air Pirates. Education O'Neill attended the University of Sa ...

's ''Odd Bodkins'' weekly newspaper comic strip.

References

External links

Doggie Diner Historical Archive
{{Coord, 37.735461, N, 122.502969, W, display=title Restaurants established in 1949 Food and drink in the San Francisco Bay Area Cuisine of the Western United States Culture of San Francisco 20th century in San Francisco Restaurants in San Francisco Landmarks in San Francisco Defunct restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area

History

Doggie Diner heads

Popular culture

See also

References

External links