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PINELLAS PARK — It’s a late summer afternoon in Valerie Workman’s Pinellas Park living room. TMZ flickers on mute as her five dogs howl. Sitting crisscross on her couch, she unzips a duffel bag stuffed with 30-year-old stripper thongs.

It’s been years since Valerie, now 55, has seen some of these items. By the time she gets to the bottom of the bag, her couch is covered in ancient bedazzled panties. But she hasn’t unearthed what she was actually looking for. There are plenty of relics from her nights as a dancer, but nothing from her stint as a hot dog girl.

Valerie Workman goes through costumes from her time working as a dancer, at her home on June 3, 2019 in Pinellas Park, Florida. [ MONICA HERNDON | Times ]

In the early 1990s, roads in St. Petersburg, Pinellas Park and Largo were peppered with hot dog carts staffed by women in T-backs — thong bikinis. Valerie, who left dancing to peddle Italian sausages and sodas, claims she was the first.

It’s been decades since she packed up her cart and went back to dancing, but Valerie still wonders: What happened to the hot dog girls?

Once upon a time, the hot dog girls ruled the streets. Baking in the hot Florida sun, they made bank selling sausages on the side of busy industrial roads.

The controversial phenomenon lasted just a few years in Tampa Bay, but it was packed with action.

Some say the T-backs were so distracting that they triggered car crashes across Pinellas. Turf wars erupted. Police arrested girls for throwing fists and spraying mace. Later, Valerie would watch as a local radio station hosted a mud wrestling battle over a contested piece of territory.

In 1990, a time when the big-haired tackiness of the ’80s still lingered, Valerie first set up her hot dog cart on the side of the road.

Back then, Valerie was a single mom raising three small children. She was proud to have figured out how to use her strong physique, carved from years as a third-degree black belt, to support her family. She had worked as an exotic dancer at Pinellas clubs ever since she won an amateur dance contest at Jerry’s Rockin’ Disco, and could make almost $1,000 a night dancing at bars like The Office Lounge, Show Girls and Fountain Blue.

Valerie Workman shows off key chains with her photo on them, from her time working at Office Lounge, at her home on June 3, 2019 in Pinellas Park, Florida. [ MONICA HERNDON | Times ]

The clubs were fun, but she wanted to be her own boss and have her own space. When her sister’s boyfriend floated the idea to sell hot dogs on the side of the road, she shopped for carts.

“I could have gone on state welfare, but I chose to work,” she said.

Valerie stocked up on Sabrett all-beef hot dogs, napkins, chips and condiments at Sam’s Club. She got a license and boiled her dogs right in the cart, underneath a Sabrett-branded yellow and blue umbrella.

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Thong-clad hot dog girls once ruled Florida streets. Where did they go?