The Press is celebrating its 21st birthday this year and because every special occasion deserves a new outfit we’re looking for a fresh, wearable graphic. Think you can help us out? Why not enter our T-shirt design contest! The winning art will be featured on the official 2013 Anchorage Press T-shirt and the designer will get five of them keep, as well as critical acclaim, high fives from Press staff and whatever else we can dig out of our basement as a prize.

The theme is Celebration and designs must include these words: Anchorage Press 2013 Design can include a maximum of two colors (including black/white). To enter, send us a high resolution digital image of your design.

You can email your design to contest@anchoragepress.com or mail/ drop off a thumb drive or disc at our office. Entry fee is $5 per illustration (cash or check)

540 E. 5th Avenue Anchorage, Alaska 99501

Deadline is June 12

The best part though, aside from working in a room full of hilarious weirdos who fight about comma usage, is the random emails I get from PR professionals and record labels about bands from Outside. Sometimes they’re hilarious and so poorly written it’s sad, but occasionally it affords me the opportunity to learn about some random band from a little town across the country. Who knows, maybe I’ll fall in love with them now and can be indignant when they headline Coachella in three years and they’re “sooo, mainstream.”

Anyway, here is a list of bands that have introduced themselves to my overflowing inbox.

A Grave With No Name — Excellent band name. Seriously. Top notch. Caught my eye right away. The music is dreamy, sort of synthy gloom rock. Just my style. The band is releasing their third album, Whirlpool, on July 2. Here is what their email had to say about the new release:

Whirlpool completes a narrative trilogy for A Grave With No Name – a trilogy that began in 2009 with the release of Mountain Debris (Lefse/No Pain In Pop), and continued with 2011’s Lower (Boiled Egg). It’s a narrative that confronts the theme of loss, something which could be considered a well trodden path within popular music, but Alex Shields has managed to mine his own distinctive voice , tracing a delicate fissure in the emotional radiography of longing to spellbinding effect.

Hey Anna

Hey Anna — This New York based group is three sisters and two of their friends, who make what their BandCamp page describes as “Intimate vocals perched atop harmonious poppy melodies that meet soaring, atmospheric alt rock.” I don’t know about “intimate” vocals, but it is pretty poppy and not so much soaring as slightly uplifting. If you like local rockers The Modern Savage but wish they were a teeny bit less “edgy”, you’ll probably dig Hey Anna. They recently released Pompette, a four song EP available for streaming or download for the ubiquitous ”name your own price.” Pro tip: don’t be a jerk, if you buy it toss the band a few bones at least.

Netherfriends — This project is kind of interesting. Netherfriends aka Shawn Rosenblatt endeavored to write and perform a song in each US state. The first few states are already available on his interactive map/album thing. The website says that the project was completed over a year in 2010-2011 and he visited all 50 states. Alaska isn’t live on the map yet, but it’s there—right where it belongs, next to Hawaii in the floating ether that exists south of New Mexico. I  listened to the first few songs, they’re sort of Best Coast meets Coconut Records. I don’t really know what that makes them, but those are the first two bands that came to mind. Maybe a little Passion Pit-y? It’s a sort of navel gazing, electronic bedroom pop that has become progressively prevalent in the indie scene. The interactive map is cool and I look forward to hearing what lyrical insights about Alaska he’ll share. If you’re looking for the track, click on Alabama first. He sort of explains the concept in that song.

The Uncluded — Aesop Rock and Kimya Dawson (yeah, I know they’ve been friends for a while but still, really?) recently released Hokey Fright , an 18 song album with a lot of red “explicit” tags next to the song titles. The album is exactly what you would expect a collaboration between jangly and quirky Kimya Dawson and straight to the point lyricist Aesop Rock to be. Dawsons signature guitar coupled with Aesop’s rhymes make for an interesting and engaging listen. The $11.99 sticker price is worth having the illustration of Kimya and Aesop pop up on your iPod while you’re listening to it if nothing else. Though the album itself is pretty great too, “Alligator” is my favorite.

I owe my life to a street named Spenard and a rowdy pickup bar called Chilkoot Charlie’s.

Our story takes place in January of 1979, two weeks before Super Bowl XIII, where the Pittsburg Steelers will inevitably squeak out a victory over the Dallas Cowboys 35-31.

I’m speaking to my father in the present day; I ask him about koots, he talks with a kind of calm bewilderment: as if with each sentence he starts by putting down his whittling stick while lifting the brim of his cowboy hat.

“Well, ya know it (wasn’t) nearly as big as it is now, because at that time there was like a fire side bar on the far North end of the building with Hog Bros Café in the middle.” I’m imagining the main bar at Koots connected to a Café that specializes in food cooked on a radiator. “It was a Saturday night, Me, Michael Callahan, and Michael Velasquez were sittin’ in Chilkoots and then I see this beautiful red-headed women come into the bar with a slight blonde lady. It was pretty crowded but we had two seats so we flagged them over (to) come sit with us… She had overalls on, I think I had a thing for overalls.” I get a little queasy.

My Mom has a slightly high pitched maternal voice, it was like interviewing a kiss to the forehead. “Your father at that time had his hair permed, it was quite goofy actually.” Mom and Dad have a back and forth on which celebrity Dad looked like. After a half minute of deliberation they settle on Greg the oldest brother from The Brady Bunch.   Mom starts up again with her story, “Anyway, so we sat down and we’re talking and your dad spilled a drink on me.” I ask why, “Well, I think he was drunk.”

My Dad’s counter to the apparent party foul only helps my Mom’s intoxication theory, “You know, having one of those really good times and (you) kind of get excited and talk with your arms flailing, mine hit the beer and it splashed right in her lap.”

Mother chirps, “And then he spilt another one!”

“Well I was thinking it was probably twice, you know once just isn’t enough. *he laughs with acceptance* Yeah, I think I spilt two beers on her. But she came in (to Koots) the next Saturday night and she saw me, I saw her, so we kind of got together and laughed and I don’t think I spilt anything on her that night.”

In a sweetly sincere tone Mom says, “I thought he was just funny and goofy.”

Joyce Yvonne Talley and Andrew Lynn Collins were married in a courthouse before a small gathering of family and friends, July 4^th of 1981. This will be their 32^nd wedding anniversary, and my younger sister and I owe it all to a cruddy bar on Spenard, and beer soaked overalls.

“I just think that Chilkoots was a wild and wooly place back then, and Dad and I aren’t horribly wild and wooly anymore.” They keep each other happy by stocking the freezer with non-diet ice cream, visits from their children, and the television show Mad Men.

The Birdhouse at Chilkoot Charlie’s (photo courtesy Chilkoot Charlie’s)

By Regina McConkey

One evening my aunt was in town visiting from Seattle. We sometimes stop off for a glass of wine when she’s in town, so I called my mother to see what the game plan was. Mom casually dropped that she and her sister were off to visit Chilkoot Charlie’s and have a drink. I was welcome to come if I wished.

My mother is one of the classiest souls I know. I took a moment to imagine this “mom goes to Koot’s” event in my mind. My petite mother would cross through the fog of cigarette smoke and a metal detector. She’d fork up a cover charge and likely show ID [maybe she’d throw a wink to the bartender? That would be entirely uncharacteristic, but at this point I’m just letting my imagination carry me through this mom at Koot’s thing]. She would belly up to the ice bar and order a cheap beer. Or maybe shots? Her usual glass of wine seems weird in this scenario. None of this computed. My imagination simply couldn’t extend to the possibility that mom would go to Koot’s. Surely she had no idea what Koot’s was.

It was my opportunity to offer daughterly advice. I suspected moms went to places like Crush, Ginger and classy restaurant bars. On a wild night, maybe they end up at SubZero before heading home when the clock strikes Jay Leno.

“Interesting. Mom, are you sure about that? How’d you come up with that idea, anyway? There’s a nice farmer’s market at their parking lot on Saturdays. You may like that?”

I earnestly waited for her to ask me for other suggestions.

After a long pause, something along these lines came out in a surprisingly harsh tone for such a gentle woman. In that tone where only a parent can put you in your place, she scoffed, “So because you’re young, you must think you know more about Anchorage nightlife. You do realize I was living in Spenard during the ‘70’s when I was your age? You didn’t visit Koots then, did you? Oh, no. You didn’t. I take offense to this. You can’t even imagine the things we saw in Spenard in the ’70′s!”

Then came a list of things she’d seen in Spenard in the 70’s. Things you can’t imagine your sweet-dispositioned mother seeing. For the first time I realized that mom has more street cred than I do, for simply being exposed to an environment that I can’t possibly imagine. She finished her lecture with, “Now we’re going for that drink and you can come if you want, but I honestly suspect it’s too much for you.”

And that’s how I wound up hearing about Mom’s lovely trip to the Birdhouse while sipping my Sunday morning tea.

It was late May and the ice had just come off Lake Spenard. The day was sunny and clear so I took a spin on my mountain bike. At the northeast corner of the lake where out of town float planes tie up I came upon a police car. There were several uniformed men standing over a man lying on the ground. As I approached I could see the man was dead. I listened in to what the cops were saying and learned the dead man was a local small-time drug dealer who’d disappeared the previous October, just before the lake froze. He’d spent the winter on the bottom and with the ice off had risen to the surface.

At that point I noticed his watch. It was a Timex Indiglo Triathlon model and looked brand now. Sparkling and shiny, the six months on the bottom had obviously been good to it.

I checked the time against my Rolex. It was right on! What an advertisement for Timex! Their watch spends the winter strapped to the wrist of a drowned drug dealer, 40 feet down on the bottom of a frozen Alaskan lake. After six months the watch is still right on time!

I reached into my bag for the little camera I carry and was getting ready to make a snap when a guy to my right, also on a bicycle spoke up.

“Officer, would you mind if I’d take his watch?”

The cop turned to us and snarled “Would you two weirdos please get lost! Every time we find a body a couple like you two show up and start acting strange. Now beat it!”

When my Grandpa, Hunter Lee Fisher (really. His name was Hunter Fisher.) moved his family up the Alcan to Alaska in 1962, they settled in a ramshackle house on 26^th Ave in not quite, but almost, the heart of Spenard.  Grandpa Fish worked as a Civil Service Investigator, but he was also an artist, a poet, and above all, a fisherman. It was while living in Spenard the Fisher Family weathered the 1964 earthquake. Grandpa Fish was actually down in Kodiak on government business, and it was days before anyone heard from him.  Grandma calmly held down the fort with the kids. My mom Mindy was in the basement during the quake, and recalls the washer and dryer banging together loudly, seemingly marching around the room; a terrifying sight for any child.  It was also on this stretch of road, between a laundromat and a bar, that Grandpa Fish started to hone his taxidermy skills. Hunter never intended to create fish mounts commercially, but the talent was there, clients were pleased, word of mouth spread, and all the sudden there was fish in the bathtub and ice chest, and even on the roof in winter.  Spenard was where the Fishers made their home, started their business, went fishing, and grew up.

Fast forward a couple decades…

When I started shopping for condos in my early twenties, there was only one neighborhood I seriously considered: the heart of Spenard. Sure, it might be a hard road to “ho” but, the extra charm-or is that grit-mixed with nostalgia and family history lured me in. I finally settled into a little place off, yup, you guessed it, 26^th Ave-not even a block from where my mom grew up back in the 60’s. The Laundromat is now a tattoo parlor and the bar is now another bar.  The Fisher house was torn down years ago and turned into a parking lot. Still, there is something comforting about living on the same stretch of road as my grade school mom did-just a couple decades apart.  The bigger Anchorage gets, the smaller it seems sometimes.

My mom just finished up her 49^th year in the 49^th state. While I still have twenty-two more years to go to meet that benchmark, I like to imagine I’ll still be in Spenard.  I could tell you stories about the wild nights, the best people watching locations, the sounds of sirens and ice cream trucks, or those friendly ladies on the corner. But, really, Spenard is mostly the story of ordinary folks and long time Alaskan families growing up, growing old, and trying to live well.

Everyone wants to be a little gangsta

By Lucas Rowley

It was a summer day in the early nineties.  Dr Dre’s album was out, everyone wanted to be a gangster, and Anchorage was blowing up with crime. I was hanging out with my crazy friends.  Some of my memory is cloudy from this day, but I remember certain things clearly.

We got a hold of some extremely powerful crystal meth. During our binge we ambled down from our headquarters in Spenard to the Valley of the Moon Park.  A branch of State employees was having a company picnic at the park.  There were lots of white State trucks.  My friend Travis started going crazy.  He walked up to an older woman sunbathing in a bikini and started talking crazy.  It was embarrassing, but funny.  The meth kicked in high gear and my paranoia began.  Travis got crazier, and we all saw a rainbow in the sky.  He said there was money at the end of it and walked off towards it.  He came back an hour later with $200 saying that he walked into a house and found it.  We believed him.

By now the State employees were on to our shenanigans and began honing in on us.  Suddenly the people in white trucks turned into DEA officers and we fled the park in a panic.  I headed towards the water and found myself walking the train tracks.  Up ahead I saw a huge UFO flying towards me, with strobing lights circling it’s dome shape.  The loud horn made me realize just in time that it was actually a train coming towards me, and I leapt off of the tracks.  I turned to find State employees following me.  I ran into the marshes near Westchester lagoon and climbed a tree.  I was at least thirty feet up, and began talking to the leaves, who had turned  into tree people.  I was so near the top of the large cottonwood tree that the wind was blowing me back and forth.  Finally the branches gave out and I fell at least thirty feet to the ground.  I’m not sure what kept my spine from cracking. Maybe it was the fact I was clawing at branches on the way down, or that I was engulfed in a methamphetamine fueled adrenalin surge.  I landed flat on my back, knocking the wind from me and I lay there incapacitated.

My pursuers then found me.  The Stat employee’s ended up being concerned citizens instead of DEA officers. They drove me to a friends house in the Turnagain neighborhood.  I hid in their crawlspace for the next 15 hours.  In the morning I walked home, shirtless with torn jeans and my tongue was covered in dry bumps.  My mother screamed but accepted me into the house where I was nursed back to health over the next 24 hours with water, food and sleep.

Today I have been sober for eight years and have my own family.  I still vividly remember those tree people, although I cannot recall what they were saying to me.

By Shoshawnna O’Kelly

My Spenard story starts at 6am on a Tuesday, back in the day when AKdigitel was still around turning people’s phones off at midnight. Because that’s a totally appropriate time to disconnect a phone.

So I wake up, still slightly drunk from the night before, to find that, no I wasn’t too sloshed to work my phone, it had been turned off.

I had a big kid job at the time and NEEDED my phone and to be at work with a paint brush in hand by 8am.

As I leave my basement apartment on the corner of 15th and E heading to the closest prepaid phone card dealer that would be open at that time I’m struck with how odd the city looks in summer at 6am on a Tuesday. Deserted for the most part but full of bright noontime sunshine.

Williams (what was once mapco and is now holiday) on Spenard and Minnesota, I run in grab my phone card and run back out.

I now find a pregnant, dirty looking hooker leaning against my truck. She asks me if I can take her to the Paradise Inn.. (This will be my only occasion ever that leads me to the Paradise Inn)

This young girl I recognize from my days as a wayward youth hanging out with the bums at Taku lake. She gets in my truck and it immediately starts reeking of something I can only now describe as what the downstairs men’s bathroom of the Kodiak bar smelled like.

In my center console I have the remnants of an old toaster strudel wrapped up in a ziploc baggie.

The hooker grabs it, very excitedly. I laugh, explain that it was only pastry frosting she was looking at and turn into the paradise inn.

She gets out slowly, as if waiting for something.. Still not entirely sure what, and I drive off and make it to work on time.. Only to discover I was sold the wrong phone card. And no, I couldn’t get a refund or exchange.

Thanks Spenard hooker for a great story but a totally ruined day.

Editors note: today is the last day to win the two free tickets to Spenard Prom. Pre-sale tickets for the event are sold out, so if you want a guaranteed in we are it! Just send us your Spenard story by 5 p.m. tonight for your chance to win. 

One of the funniest things that has ever happened to me; although it wasn’t at all funny when it occurred…

My first day ever, in Anchorage in September of 1996, after a summer working at Denali National Park, I was staying with my friend, Shari, and we decided to take a walk and get a bite to eat.  After a nice snack at the Middleway Café, we were walking back through Spenard to her cute log house rental, and Shari was talking animatedly as usual, and not paying attention to where she was walking.  I kept telling her she was going to get arrested for jaywalking.  Well, next thing you know, a cruiser pulls up, and we are confronted by a police officer!

This guy struts over and starts an inquest.  “Where are you ladies going?” he asks.  Shari says something like, “Walking to my house.”  “And where are you coming from?” he asks.  Shari told him where we’d been.  “And what were you doing there?” he asks.  Shari responds, “Having some food.”  Okay by this time, I’m getting curious, so I inquire, “Excuse me, but did we do something wrong?”  He replies, “Well, when I see two ladies walking in this neighborhood unescorted….” Finally a light bulb moment – he thinks we’re prostitutes!

Are you kidding me?  We were wearing jeans and hiking boots.  Shari had on a bulky fleece top, that went down to her knees, and I was wearing a huge puffy down coat.  The only skin we were showing was on our faces and hands!  The neighborhood of Spenard is a trendy area with some great stores and restaurants and we were totally unaware of it’s seedier side.

I say sarcastically, “Nice town, Shari.”  I look at the officer and say, “Listen, I used to work in law enforcement, and this is really bogus.”  I think it finally dawned on him that he may have made a mistake, and he started backpedaling.

Meanwhile, Shari has fire in her eyes, and steam coming out of her ears, and explodes with, “Unescorted?” She stomps her foot.  “UNESCORTED?”  We were both thinking, “Where are we?” and “What year is this?”  Is there a law in Anchorage declaring women cannot walk down the sidewalk in the middle of the day without a man?

Shari was still spouting off, and not calming down any, and I thought we ought to end this whole bizarre encounter, so I asked, “Is it okay if we leave now?”  He agreed, and as we started to walk away, Shari spins around, and shouts, “Besides, there are too many people in this town that give it away, to make that line of business profitable!”

I pulled her away and we continued on our walk.  Shari says, ”It’s 4:30 in the afternoon!  What does he think we are, the businessman’s special?”  I joked that maybe he was trying to harass us into giving him a freebee!

We arrived back at her place, where a few of our Denali Park friends were visiting.  We were still shocked and appalled and fuming as we told everyone what had just happened to us.  I said I felt like writing a letter to the editor, or to the police department and I wish I’d noticed the officer’s name.  Shari has an amazing photographic memory, and said, ”Officer TIMMONS!  T-I-M-M-O-N-S, TIMMONS!”

She just couldn’t stop expressing her amazement at his “unescorted” comment.  The funniest part was that it seemed to be lost on her that we should also be offended that he thought we could be prostitutes!

Editors note: We now have two instances of mistaken identity in Spenard, on either end of the “ladies on street corners” coin. We wonder if anyone has a non prostitute related story? Thank you Carol for your story, we hope Officer Timmons learned his lesson about making assumptions on sidewalks in Spenard. 

A few months after moving up to Anchorage from South Carolina, I began taking some vocal lessons from a woman in an arts studio off of Spenard. I was in a new place and decided I was ready to pursue music a little more. After an hour of singing scales and pushing from my diaphragm, I got in my little truck to go home. It was about 8:00 pm. As I approached a stop sign on the corner of Spenard and Turnagain, I noticed a lady on the sidewalk. Where I grew up, if a lady was on the sidewalk in the cold at night, it was because she was on her way somewhere. I decided I should let her cross the street in front of me, since that is what my mother would want me to do. I waved her on and she proceeded to cross the street in front of my truck. I looked the other way at traffic, so I could pull out as soon as the nice lady had safely made it to the other sidewalk. All of the sudden, I heard my passenger door open, and she was sitting comfortably in my passenger seat. What the hell? “Can I help you?” I say. She says nothing and looks puzzled. “Do you need a ride somewhere?” I ask trying to understand why a strange lady would just hop in your car at an intersection. Finally, the words that make it all click for me: “Are you a cop?” she asked. Her teeth were grinding fervently. I looked down to see high heeled pleather boots. Then fishnet stockings. A tiny skirt. It’s 20 degrees outside. A leopard fur-lined coat. It hit me like a ton of bricks: I had just picked up a prostitute. I told her she should probably get going, trying not to offend her. I figured, why let a situation like this make you forget your manners. I looked around to make sure there were no cops who might have seen me summon a hooker, tried to figure out how I would explain it if I had to, and got the hell out of Spenard as fast as I could.

I want to thank Spenard for toughening me up a bit. For expanding my horizons, and wising me up to the world. I’m proud to say that since then, I haven’t picked up a single prostitute.

Editors note: This just made our news room erupt in laughter. The good kind, the “aww, bless his heart” kind. Thanks Carlyle! Dear everyone else: keep the Spenard stories comin’!