Nostalgia is a powerful drug. It can make us recall high school as fun, dating as romantic and the food at the Original Hot Dog Shop as the city's best meal. Or at least it tasted that way when we were young, up late and drinking. The bustling fast food joint at the corner of Bouquet Street and Oakland Avenue has been featured in documentary films, national magazines and placed on the tour itineraries of countless visitors to our city, but now it's slated to be sold to a new owner. Not that the Original's trademark french fries and grilled hot dogs aren't a welcome distraction in our carbohydrate-phobic, waistline-obsessed society. The restaurant's simple-but-filling fare is affordable and substantive enough to carry many a broke university student through entire fall terms. Like most Pittsburghers, however, I wasn't brave enough to try living solely on food from "The O." Instead, it became a routine out of necessity -- it was the only joint open when I finished my bouncer's shift at a nearby bar at 3 a.m. Our motley security detail filed into the place surrounded by stoned coeds, bleary-eyed cops doing overnight shifts and other seedy-looking denizens of Pittsburgh's overnight economy. The food was hot, cheap and served in portions that could have King Kong voluntarily submitting to a cardiogram. In memory, the taste was incredible, better even than the food our wives would later serve us at home, and better, for some reason, than those rare, $100 steak house splurges we enjoyed on vacation. That we'd each had at least a six pack before ordering from the Original menu never played into memory. Until going back as middle-aged adults, that is. Stone cold sober on a weekday afternoon, the Original's much-ballyhooed french fries are downright startling. Piled nearly a foot tall on a plastic tray, who, one wonders, this side of a steroid-charged NFL lineman, eats this much fried food• The cheese sauce sold a la carte could be used to spackle plumbing, and both were so hot, they left my mouth full of more heat blisters than marathon runner's feet. Try washing this meal down with a few pints as was the custom years ago, and you'll lose an afternoon to some very uncomfortable sleep. Which I guess is where the Original may be headed after 45 years in business. I just hope there's plenty of beer wherever they're going.

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