Day 3

Wednesday, September 2, 2025

Devil Dawgs

Devil Dawgs. This hot dog chain has meant a lot to me and it has seemingly followed me through my time living here in Chicago. I can’t quite remember my first visit, although I can accurately deduce that it was a late night one of the first weeks that I moved into the Seton Hall dorm on Sheffield Avenue. After that, it quickly became a go-to spot for weekend cravings and the tie-breaker of endless, “Where do you want to go?” debates.

While the original Sheffield Ave. location was the usual place, there was another location on State Street in the loop that holds memories of my DePaul and Columbia friends and me, stopping by as a afterthought to plans made elsewhere. And in the moment when the original DePaul campus location closed in 2020 and it seemed that Devil Dawgs and I had finally broken our ties, a brand new location opened about two blocks away from the apartment where my boyfriend and I moved in together.

Yeah, I know. It’s just a hot dog chain. It’s just buns and toppings and fries and milkshakes and a tiny little shack, but to me it holds a lot of memories and there is something about it that feels familiar in this city that I’ve adopted as home.