Hot Dog! South Park Coney Island Gets a Boost From Series Premiere

The season opener of South Park on Comedy Central last week attracted plenty of attention with its brutal, no-holds-barred portrayal of President Donald Trump as a petty, vain, vindictive, lawsuit-filing man with a very small penis.

Hot dog!

"I finally watched it," says Jay Aigner, the owner of South Park Coney Island, the iconic hot-dog-shaped diner along Highway 285 in the town of Bailey, just a few miles from the area of South Park in Jefferson County (nope, there's no actual town with that name). Many other people had apparently caught the opener, too.

"Yeah, we were cranking this last weekend, one of the best weekends of the season so far," Aigner reports. "People were dressed up like Cartman, wearing the Cartman beanie. We also had people in inflatable South Park costumes. We definitely had a bunch of South Park fans coming through. Definitely."

Although South Park didn't debut a second episode in its 27th season on July 30, more are in the works. South Park Coney Island will be ready.
The history of Coney Island is as long as the giant, 42-foot wiener itself, dating back to 1966 when the original structure was built on West Colfax Avenue. In 1970 it was moved to Aspen Park; it became a legendary spot to visit on trips to the mountains. In 2006, then-owner Ron Aigner relocated the diner to its current home; he sold it in 2016.

When Jay Aigner was able to bring it back into the family, he added "South Park" to the Coney Island name four years ago, to take advantage of the show's notoriety. He and his wife, Annie, have also added South Park characters and decor.

He and Annie can always tell when South Park fans come in, Aigner explains, because they say something like, "Oh, wow, I didn't know this is real! I thought it was just something in the show!"

There's another way they can distinguish South Park fans from typical tourists. In the Comedy Central cartoon, the diner is called "DikinBaus" (say it slow) and the hot dog is served with a ketchup drawing of balls at one end of the bun with the dog sticking out, like a middle-school drawing of a penis. When a fan comes in and requests a DinkinBaus dog, Aigner takes the ketchup and draws testicles. "Yeah, well, we will serve that on special request," he admits.
The Aigners closely followed the 2022 purchase of Casa Bonita by South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who've celebrated that pink entertainment palace on their series. At one point, Aigner says, the couple was approached by an attorney who wanted to buy the place on behalf of an anonymous client, and Aigner says they almost signed a deal with a purchaser he "suspected were the South Park guys." That contract fell through, but he still wonders if the two would be interested.

"This would be money in their couch cushion," Aigner says. Chump change. Hot dog money!

South Park Coney Island is at 10 Old Stagecoach Road, Bailey; find hours and more information on its Facebook page.