BERKELEY, Calif. – This morning, Berkeley’s hottest wiener franchise, Top Dog Hotdogs, announced its first rebranding since its founding in 1966 to support the city’s growing LGBT+ community.
“After seeing El Burrito’s flag decorations for LGBT+ History Month, we realized that we could be the first restaurant in Berkeley that accepts both tops and bottoms. Beyond the name change, we’ll also be introducing two new menu items, the Bottom Dog and the Vers Dog, to position us favorably with gays of all positions. With recent boycotts against eateries homophobically advertising “bottomless” brunch, we hope to capitalize on this opening to become a staple in the gay diet. Our goal is to break into the competitive space currently occupied by iced coffee and pineapple juice.”
However, this change didn’t go without criticism from the toppest of dogs in the non-ally straight community.
“As a distinguished alumni brother of KA — which, if you didn’t know, is a top house — I’m personally offended by the diminished standards of what a top dog is. I didn’t run around butt-naked on Piedmont Circle at 3AM for a month for my reputation to be tarnished by another Berkeley social justice bandwagon. Also, what the hell is a bottom dog?”
Straight boy Johnny from the Top D1-Dog Cal Football team bench also had strong opinions.
“This is a really stressful situation for me because our seasonal team photo is still on their corkboard, so we’re basically the figureheads for the entire restaurant. It’s almost like we have to hide our identities to be accepted. Like, how will they know that I’m a top dog now? The only bottoms I’ve ever eaten came from my anonymous Grindr profile.”
While it seems as though Top/Bottom Dog may be a hit or miss for Berkeley’s current audience, the franchise has high hopes to attract a more diverse customer base, and perhaps the critics will leave their stomping grounds for the next competitor, Artichoke-me-harder-daddy.