Episode 12 : Summer Migration

In this episode of the Alaska Dub Chronicles, the narrator talks about their life in Juneau in the late summer of 1991. They were living in a boarding house, working as a baker and night auditor, and enjoying beach parties and time in the wilderness. They describe their friend who worked for the Juneau Parks and Rec and was known for riding his skateboard and picking up trash. The narrator explains that they were not a hippie, but they enjoyed relaxing and being around cool people. They also talk about the influx of tourists from cruise ships and the different types of travelers who visit Juneau. They mention a unique bar called the Alaskan that had hot tubs, showers, and saunas, and how it was an important place for them. They provide a detailed description of the basement of the Alaskan and mention other small destination towns in Alaska. The narrator also briefly mentions their time in Skagway and Haines, two communities located north of Juneau. Welcome back for episode 12 of the Alaska Dub Chronicles. Today we're picking up where we left off before the Google Map description from last episode. So, late summer of 1991, living in the boarding house, downtown Juneau, working as a baker and a night auditor in downtown establishments. And enjoying a lot of fun, fun time out in the, out in the wilderness. A lot of beach parties. Had friends who had some pretty cool homesteads in North Douglas. Sort of like, very communal. The chicken shack, which had a rotating occupancy of about four different residents at any time. One being the owner, who was quite the character. Super kind, hippy cat. I think he used to ride his, he worked for, I want to say he worked for the Juneau Parks and Rec. And he'd drive around all day in his green pickup. He'd pick up trash with one of those pokey, with a trash picker? Pick and stick? Whatever that's called. But if it's somewhere that had a sidebar, he'd ride his skateboard and just like be poking trash and sticking it in his bag. Everybody loved seeing him. Always had a hug. As one of our friends said, yeah, we're a real huggy bunch. And so, that's true. We were a hugged bunch. Which is surprising, seeing how I, myself, don't consider myself a hippy. Don't now, didn't then, really. I was a long-haired stoner. Metalhead. But, you know, I got along with everybody, pretty much. But especially this crowd. Also, I used to say, I'm not a hippy because I eat meat, I like guns, and I will fight you if you piss me off or something like that. I wasn't that assertive, but you get my drift. But did share, you know, the love of relaxing and finding chill environments and being around cool people. A super hippy with the drum circles, too. Got going in that groove. A friend gave me a conga, which was kind of awkward to lug around. Always wanted a djembe, which would give you all these different tones. That was pretty cool. But now, looking at drum circles, I kind of, I don't know, I can't quite feel it like I used to. But then, campfires on the beach were really the cool thing. Somewhere along the line, I got that Ford pickup, four-wheel drive, half-ton. So, mobility is good in this environment, for sure. A lot to keep you occupied downtown, but there's a lot of nature opportunities in close proximity. But, you know, as a young drinker, you find yourself in the bars and your money goes pretty quick there. You can spend a lot less picking something up and taking it out and having fun with your friends. So, that's a basic description of my work time and my recreational time. I wasn't much of a romantic. You know, I just got out of that situation, a very complicated, sort of a serial monogamous kind of thing. And then, in my off times, well, at this point, I was just sort of the lonely heart guy, the fifth wheel. You know, it wasn't for lack of great ladies. Because, I mean, Juneau attracts a great migratory crowd. It warms up in the spring. People start arriving. A whole spectrum. It's a tourist destination, which is cool. I kind of, you're kind of on the right track in my, I am on the right track, or you're doing something right. If you're living in a place that people, like, that's their dream place to go. And they will put the effort into taking a vacation to your home. So, I've had the same feeling other places I've lived that are also destinations. So, with that set up, you have tourists getting off the, the largest influx of tourists would probably be from the cruise ships. But they're here very, it's a large inundation for kind of a short amount of time. Less than a day. But you can get four or five cruise ships each dumping at least a thousand people each. So, it kind of floods, definitely floods downtown with tourists. And a lot of locals avoid it during the whole tourist season. But, working in a hotel, you know, that was kind of my bread and butter. Front desk, occasionally, caught a tip. If you're humping somebody's suitcases up three flights of stairs, just out of the kindness of your heart, or some similar extraordinary act of service. Nothing like the, once you cross the line into the bar, and the whole tip culture there. But, aside from the day tourists, and then you have the travelers, which were much more chill paced. Often they'd come in on the ferry, you know, kind of travel around the cheap. Some would camp for a week, or hit up the hostels for the youth hostel, which was also downtown. A little bit off the main drag, which was prime real estate. Not much waterfront flat property available. It starts going uphill almost immediately. So, housing and space for building in general, especially in the downtown area. And, meanwhile, accommodating any historic areas. You know, historic buildings, areas, culturally significant places. It's tough. Just something to remember. But, these people would come in and be able to really catch more of the flavor of a place. And, what you'd see is they'd hit some place, such as a funky, historic, hippie, bluegrass, eccentric, eclectic bar. That had, such as the Alaskan, that not only had, you know, the usual bar amenities. You could also pay for a shower upstairs, or luxuriate downstairs in one of the hot tubs. You know, that's a great way. Friends pitch in, have a soak. The three rooms were private. The three tubs had private rooms, I should say. And, there was a shower in each one. So, for a little more than the cost of going upstairs and using a shower, you and your friends could have a soak and shower up. And, I don't know if all three had saunas, but I know some of them did. More than one of them did. And, I'm just now remembering, aside from the three hot tub sauna shower units in the basement, there was also a single one up on the second floor. That was like the super surprise treat place. I think that one also had a commode. The others didn't, but there was a bathroom, a shared bathroom downstairs. Just to round out the description, since, as you may have gathered, the Alaskan was a very important place to me. I guess you could say, if you laid out a map of Juneau, and basically I would stick the sharp end of a compass on the Alaskan hotel and start drawing larger and larger circles with the compass from the Alaskans. So, basically that's my ground zero. Yeah, for a very, very long time. Even if I wasn't working there, or living there, it's still very important. Anyhow, due to its importance, that kind of explains my extra thoroughness with describing the basement. So, we've got two sets of stairs leading down. One practically off the main entrance. The other one being by the back door, which is also like the back door to the bar. So, like the service entrance, you could consider. Down the public entrance is where you'd have that single bathroom and the three hot tub sauna units. That's also where the washer and dryer was, because you can imagine the amount of towels that such an arrangement would go through in a day. Basically half your job as a front desk would be staying awake, staying alert, and then doing laundry. Just towels all day. The other half of the basement was taken up with, part of it was storeroom storage, and the other half was the shop. As well as the guts of the hotel. It had a massive heating unit, as you can imagine, and plumbing. The requirements of a rustic three plus story hotel. It had the main hotel, but it's built on such a hill that you kind of walk out of the third floor exit and it's still ground floor, if that makes any sense. There's apartments built up and set back slightly, which takes advantage of this steep hillside. You have another level of apartments. You know, there's a half floor. I forgot about this. So everything is as I have just described, but if you picture the roof of, say, the original structure, above the third floor is a little, it's like a little apartment is sticking its head up and looking out. It's almost like a top hat on a big square snowman. Poor description, but that was this special apartment kind of built in the middle that allowed other things to be arranged as they were. Anyhow, it was a super cool, funky little apartment that was up a half flight of stairs from the third floor. So that's an overly thorough description of the Alaska Dome. But as I was saying, the travelers would pass through and sometimes they would end up really clicking with the place. And not just here. There's sort of the similar things going on in other small destination towns. I'm not so familiar with places further down the Panhandle, closer to the, like the BC border. I've got Ketchikan and Wrangell, and nor am I very familiar with Sitka, which it sounds like a real jewel. It's more towards the further west. Open water, Mount Edgecombe, pretty much a little group of islands built near a dormant volcano, which isn't always so dormant. And so rich in history. I mean to do more justice to the other communities. But I'm, aside from the Juneau main residence, I've also spent vacation type time in Skagway and Haines. And those are both communities, I think about 50 miles north. So you can fly. There's a, especially in summer, there's an active float plane. Business, culture, community. Struggling for the right word there. Small planes as well as medium sized planes. But no jets, I believe. Maybe to Haines. Maybe Haines is big enough. So there is, these communities are, as the crow flies, separated by maybe 20 miles. But that 20 miles is a mountain, a ridge of mountains. So it basically splits the communities. They're more quickly accessed by a ferry or a boat. They're more quickly accessed by some means on the water. Just doing a little hop. Hop between them. Rather than driving, which you got to, you have to take long access highways from each town up north to where they connect to the Alakan Highway. If I'm correct. With Haines being in the U.S. And that access road quickly leaves U.S. and enters Canada. Leaving Skagway. And so both of those you got to drive quite a ways just to hit the highway. And then you would have to drive the intersecting section of the highway. And then drive down the respective access road to the other community you wanted to go to. So you kind of see my, it's odd that they're, I don't know. It's Alaska. That's how things are set up. But both these small communities, Skagway kind of suffered in a sense from like water front wise. Like the historic area is kind of cramped. But there's a little more flat land. And then as you go inland from Skagway, there's a little more flat and building opportunities. Everything's done. Much smaller community and land at not as, at such a severe premium as in Juneau. And Haines, that is, things broaden out even further. And a lot of building opportunities to the point where there's, there have been homestead lotteries in that area. So what I found is a lot of financially responsible Juneau residents. Which I think the official word is Juneauite. Which I, which to me feels like something that fell into Juneau. I prefer a term I picked up from one of these people I met. A friend of ours from the hippie house from my first month here. He refers to people from Juneau as Junucians. Which I like because it does, it feels like we're on another planet sometimes. So being so isolated. But, so that's part of the description. A lot of people I knew who lived in Juneau also had homesteads there in Haines. And they would spend their time back and forth. Mainly homestead time in the better weather. Or when they could get, or when they could get there. A lot of people do really earn their bread and butter in the summer by one means or another. And then kind of take the winter as chill. But aside from the other migratory people. You've got the summer jewelry store, tourist shop workers. And there's a lot of six month here, six month in the Caribbean type migrations going on there. You've got the kids who grew up in Juneau. And are say attending college and then come back for the summer. Sometimes to work, sometimes to play. I'd say Juneau overall has got a pretty strong work ethic. So a lot of them do come back and work for the summer. The cost of living is high so that's kind of ingrained to earn your keep. And then you've got the people who moved down for the season from other parts of Alaska. And those are some of the most interesting people. I meant to talk about them more this episode. But I think leaving you curious is the best way to pause. So until next time, be good folks.