The Alaskan Hotel & Bar sits on Juneau’s historic downtown main drag. Beyond the row of pioneer-era storefronts looms Mount Roberts, and the other side of that ridge guards a nearly endless expanse of wilderness, continuing on to the ice field, and then, not far past that, is British Columbia. Which is to say: You can imagine the sense of magnitude that the hotel’s first owners felt when the building was constructed in 1913. They were two miners and an entrepreneur who had made a fortune, so confident in their establishment that they famously tied the hotel’s keys to a helium balloon and released it into the sky as a declaration that it would never close. The key is now lodged in a tree branch somewhere, or overgrown by Sitka spruce, devil’s club and moss. The doors to the hotel are still open.
When people talk about the history of The Alaskan, it is not a chronological narrative of the place, nor is it definitive. Instead, there are more questions than answers. Where did the streetlamp come from? What was going on with those hot tubs in the basement? And who, dear God, takes all the coins from the urinal?
There is a mythic nature to the stories, and a ubiquitous shrugging of shoulders. It’s all true, or none of it. Well, the hot tubs were definitely there. And the bear. At least there’s footage. Supposedly.
Walking into the place, it is evocative of a pioneer roadhouse. The long bar, a Victorian reproduction from the early 1980s, stretches the length of the room. A curl of stairs leads to the balcony. Yellowed wallpaper, once white, reveals longtime nicotine use. A red tin ceiling is marked with divots above the second level, from the period when there used to be a pool table. A streetlamp guards the stairs, its red bulbs casting a tempered light. One regular muses that the bar produces the saddest known rendition of “Singing in the Rain.” And there is a sort of off-Broadway (off-off Broadway?) quality imbued in the room, like a play might unfold at any moment. The story changes, the cast and characters, but the venue has remained a loyal stage.
Though the hotel—and its dingy, windowless basement bar, the Golden Idol—had endured Prohibition, in 1975 it was shut down and set to be condemned. Its current owners, Mike and Bettye Adams, bought and rescued the place, maintaining the promise of that helium balloon almost 50 years later. They built the bar on the main floor in a traditional Victorian style, creating a space that alluded to a grander history. Over the years, The Alaskan became “the nerve center of the bar scene,” says Pat Race, whose father managed the space for a time in the ’80s, and whose great-grandfather, of Race Drugs, would sometimes deliver packages of medicine to women in what was once an active red-light district.
These days, cruise ships loom like floating cities, dwarfing downtown. Sometimes as many as five in a day unload up to 16,000 passengers into the city of 30,000, more than doubling the downtown population. This can make Juneau cramped and inefficient, its spirit obscured, as visitors wander slack-jawed and aimless, shopping bags in tow. But once the last ship boards, typically by 9 p.m., the streets return to the locals. The Alaskan slowly fills with seasonal tour guides bedecked in their rain gear, service industry workers finishing an early shift or fishermen in between sets. In the winter months, it’s young staffers from the state legislature, and in spring, during Folk Fest, every room and the downstairs stage becomes flooded with musicians. There’s a full bar, though the orders tend to be simple: draft beer, whiskey on the rocks, vodka-soda. On a rowdier night, the floor bounces with the weight of dancing. Or when the weather is too nice to be in a dark space, the bar hosts just a few of its most dedicated.
And while the crowd trends younger, generations of Juneauites and tourists have called The Alaskan home in one form or another. Even, famously, a bear, who once made his way through the door and sidled up to the bar, where the bartender shooed him away. While many ghosts have been reported in the upstairs rooms, the living who haunt the downstairs are just as fabled. David Woody, an artist and retired commercial fisherman, tells of a man who became abruptly possessed by rage and attempted to start a fight: “A few of us had to drag him out, and I sat on him till the cops came. He suddenly became completely subdued, introduced himself, and asked, ‘So what do you do for a living?’”—all under Woody’s weight, as if whatever clandestine indignation that had entered him remained contained in the building, without a host.
Almost anyone asked about The Alaskan, unbidden, brings up the hot tubs in the basement, which emerged some time after the Golden Idol closed. Some, like Steve Nelson, a local musician, considered them to be a great reprieve after a long gig. Others, like one regular, say, “It was creepy, it was gross, it was a weird thing. In the evening it was known for things. Things, just all kinds of things.” Suffice it to say, the hot tub room didn’t last, and was closed in 1998 following a tragedy. Another regular, Jamie Karnik, says, “I don’t think there are even stairs anymore. If you go down there, it’ll just be that bear, and it’s really old, and it’s sitting in a hot tub.”
Other lore emerges. Karnik recalls a time when those patronizing the men’s bathroom had inexplicably started throwing coins into the single urinal, creating a wishing well of sorts. Every so often, the urinal would be emptied of coins, and he assumed that someone at the bar was tasked with taking care of the mess. But once, Karnik reports, he was sitting at the bar when he “saw someone emerge from the back with a suspicious pile of coins trying to buy a drink.” The bartender gave the person a free beer in exchange for clearing the money away.
When Woody considers his tenure visiting The Alaskan, he recounts a period when he had to stay in an upstairs room because his house was under repair. “Every drunk plumber in Juneau since 1913 has had a whack at this place,” he says, “and I remember sitting at the bar one time, when a waterfall came down from the ceiling of gray water, and came down on everyone at the bar.” Asked what happened next, he says, simply, “Well, we left.”
Over the years, several local and visiting acts have played the small stage, and a weekly open mic still lays claim to Thursday evenings. Nelson’s band has played there for years. One time, he recalls, “it’s shoulder to shoulder, we get a conga line going, and everyone in the bar joins [in].” The line was so long that the parade of people left the bar and started dancing down Franklin Street, stopping traffic. “They’re gone for 10 minutes in the street, and it’s just us playing for the bartender and a couple of waitresses.”
In its renaissance, “The Alaskan filled in this missing piece. Young people wanted a place to hang that was more theirs, not one of these old dive bars where the old alcoholics were congregating,” Nelson notes. “The pipeline was in full bloom, money was just flowing into the state, and it was an exciting time to be here. There was a lot of energy, and creativity; the possibilities seemed endless in those days.”
These days, The Alaskan continues to have quiet nights and boisterous ones in staccato. And still, some have a less sentimental understanding of the role that The Alaskan plays in Juneau’s social history. Despite the music, the ghosts and the urinal wishes to be made, for some, like Woody, the bar is simply the closest one to home. “Convenient,” he says.
