Skippy’s Hot Dogs is a beloved Staten Island institution that locals revere as one of the best places to get a dog in the five boroughs. Started by Robert “Skippy” Bellach and his wife, Jane, the truck has been headed up by their granddaughter, Dawn LaVigne, since 1983 and celebrating its golden anniversary in 2012. Not much has changed since the early days. Dawn still drives the cheery red-and-white 1956 Harvester International Metro van her grandfather spent two years outfitting by hand. She still serves virtually the same menu as when the truck opened: snappy Sabrett® natural casing all-beef hot dogs on fluffy buns with your choice of toppings that range from the standard ketchup, mustard, onions, and sauerkraut to melted Velveeta cheese and Skippy’s famous homemade onion sauce and chili. “I don’t sell anything else,” Dawn says. “My grandfather taught me if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.”
Adventurous eaters pick the “everything”—loaded with cheese, sauerkraut, cooked onions, raw onions, and chili—while purists can go for the “plain,” which is just a tube steak in a bun. The most popular order, however, is the chili cheese dog served mild. Everything is done according to Dawn’s grandmother’s top-secret recipes, though she’ll admit, “I changed the chili just a little. ‘So sorry, grandma!’” she says, looking skyward. Nobody’s noticed, and in fact, these days it’s the chili that’s a big draw. “When my grandfather ran the truck, it was all about the onions.… Now I sell more chili than I do onions—thank the Lord because I cut a hundred pounds of onions by hand.” Dawn won’t reveal how many hot dogs she sells in a day, except that she “drives home alone.”
Dawn is a real dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, and her family has been here longer than the Statue of Liberty. She can trace her Staten Island roots back to 1873, when her great-great-great-grandparents Wilhelm and Wilhemina Bellach immigrated to New York. The truck parks on a surprisingly tranquil and grassy spot just off of busy Hylan Boulevard between Seaver and Stobe Avenues, which once was part of the Bellach farm before large pieces of land were sold off during the Great Depression. Dawn lives in the family home, a house her grandfather built, just five blocks away. It’s a short commute for the trusty truck, but as the years have gone by, traffic’s gotten worse. Says Dawn, “One day it took me twenty minutes to get to work!” Still, the truck rolls on. “I have an awesome mechanic, my cousin, and he actually makes parts. He takes parts off of his ’55 Chevy and converts them to fit on here because you can’t find parts anymore. That’s the only reason I’m still running.”
The truck itself is covered with stories. Every year it gets a paint job on the Fourth of July. “Everybody laughs at me and says Rust-Oleum® is holding the truck together. I’d like to do a Rust-Oleum® commercial. That’s all I want to do, a Rust-Oleum® commercial, ’cause I have thirty years’ worth of paint on here.” The front right window has an etching of her grandparents that Dawn commissioned. Her grandfather’s reaction? “Well, you know your grandmother’s on there, I guess it’s okay.” The back door sports the names Devin and Vinny, along with a heart and their anniversary date. Devin is one of Dawn’s cousins, and Vinny worked at the beer distributor down the block. Dawn did a little matchmaking, and now they’re married with beautiful twins, a boy and a girl. “See that table out there?” Dawn says, pointing to an enormous blue-and-yellow picnic table. “I built that when I was twelve. Me and my grandfather built it. I was going to take it down two years ago ’cause it was in really bad shape, and one of my customers, his name was Danny Schnell, said to me, ‘You aren’t taking that table down. I’ve been sitting on that table since I’m in preschool.’ And him and his friends came and fixed it.”
A peek in the back reveals a tiny 1960s stove and steam table and an antique cash register dating back to 1901 that Dawn purchased from a customer. The space is tight, but Dawn is used to it. Watching her expertly whirl around, pivoting to add chili and a stripe of cheese, is mesmerizing. She can knock out a dozen dogs in no time flat, while catching up with her regulars and never losing her rhythm. The truck operates Monday through Saturday, unless it’s raining. Monday through Wednesday, she usually finishes up around 3:00 or 3:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, she tries to stay until 4:00 pm or until she sells out. It’s the customers who keep things interesting. “Everybody talks about the way people are. People are the way you treat them. I never have a bad customer.… I know everyone who comes here, and if I don’t know them, I want to know them. They become a part of my family.”
“Who’s got a better job than me? I’ve got people telling me they love me all day long.”
Most patrons are longtimers, some since childhood. Dawn’s easy way with people makes you want to be a regular. She has a ready laugh and a smile and a “hi, baby” for everyone. While she might not remember everyone’s name, she remembers their orders. “I’ve been working here since I was eleven years old. I used to work with my grandfather. I don’t even know what else to tell you. Every day is fun. Every day somebody new comes by, it’s a new story.”
Her grandfather started the truck as a business for her grandmother. “They came out here, and on the first day they didn’t sell a hot dog—not one. So when they pulled in the yard, they were like, ‘hot dogs for dinner!’ They were raising nine kids at the time. That’s the big joke in the family. And, no, we don’t eat hot dogs for dinner,” says Dawn. Rocky beginnings aside, Skippy’s soon grew into a thriving business. “My grandmother worked for the first five years, and then he fired her. That was a huge fight, but she had a heart problem, and he didn’t want her working. But she did all of the behind-the-scenes work—she did all the cooking.” Dawn’s grandmother passed away when she was a young girl, but she enjoyed a close relationship with her grandfather growing up. “Before she died, my grandfather never did any of the cooking, or the serving, by the way. And when she died, in his suit—she knew she was sick, she knew, she had a heart attack, she wouldn’t go for the operation—she had the onion and chili recipe in the pocket of his suit.”
With twenty-seven grandchildren, Skippy had an army of helpers. “Everybody got a shot working the truck,” Dawn explains. “I shouldn’t say this but my cousin—and I’m gonna to say it—used to sit up there and read her book while he worked, and it drove him crazy.” Still with Dawn it seemed fated. “I knew from the minute that I stepped on this truck that this was going to be my purpose. I knew this was why I’m here.” As much as food brings people to the truck, it’s more than that; Dawn brings people together. “Everything on this island has changed.… I’m the only thing left from way back when that hasn’t changed. I know someday I’m going to have to, but common courtesy, respect, you know, that’s all part of it, and you get that when you’re here. There could be a bunch of strangers that come here, and when they eat they sit on that one table—I won’t put another table—and they’re friends when they leave.”
