Dressed up dogs get all the toppings

One year ago, Tim Tobitsch was showing police officers tax documents to get behind wired fences… One year ago, Tim Tobitsch was showing police officers tax documents to get behind wired fences and into his Downtown hot dog shop, Franktuary.

The security zone set up for the G-20 Summit made it almost unbearable for him to get to his business, let alone for the customers to work their way into it.

To blow off a little steam, Tobitsch and his business partner, Megan Lindsey, will host a G-20 Plummet this week.  From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday, the shop at 325 Oliver St. will serve hot dogs drowned in 20 toppings.

Ketchup, mustard and relish will lace the dogs, as well as less conventional items like artichoke hearts, mango salsa and pierogies.

“The suffocated pierogi symbolizes our city’s immobilized economy,” Frida Marquetza, a publicist for the shop, said.

Tobitsch, like many other Downtown business owners, said he lost money during the Summit. He estimates that he and Lindsey lost about 75-80 percent of their projected sales for the week of the Summit events, or about $1,500.

“It was billed to us that we were going to get a lot of extra business, so we increased our hours,” he said. “We had great expectations from sound bites heard about big sales that never came. Leaders weren’t even seen, so no one extra was supporting us and at the same time our usual customers were kept away.”

In hopes that Pittsburghers won’t forget, Franktuary will sell the 20-topping hot dogs with a T-shirt for $20.09, to mark the year the Summit invaded.

“The Plummet is intended to be a fun way to kind of vent. Hopefully, some people will buy these shirts in the meantime and think it’s funny with us,” Tobitsch said.

It’s not the first time Tobitsch has tried to release some Summit-related frustration.

“After the Summit, I sent a letter to President Obama asking him to purchase a Franktuary sweatshirt for each of the foreign representatives in attendance at the Summit at $25 each to total about $500, which would help make up for lost revenue,” Tobitsch said.

The President declined, but the attempt to gain recognition did earn Franktuary a spot on the KDKA evening news, and called attention to the economic difficulties small businesses experienced.

“We intend to hold future Plummets whenever a Summit needlessly interrupts the lives of peaceful urban dwellers somewhere in the world. Like-minded businesses in Pittsburgh and elsewhere are invited to join the movement,” Marquetza said in a news release.

Tobitsch chimed in, “I’d like to stress that we are really doing this to have some good-natured fun and aren’t trying at all to be spiteful, so hopefully it doesn’t come across that way. We just want to show the creativity and resiliency of Pittsburgh that everyone was supposed to see during the G-20.”