Puppies, Banana Boys and John Lautner

Things have been going great up here this week. After having Sunday and Monday off, we were back to work Tuesday night. While we don't expect a big crowd during the week, we were surprised that we had a pretty full room. Seems like the weeknight crowds are the serious ones, as they can party pretty hard. Michelle, the managing bartender, told us that by the end of the night, she had pretty much "cut-off" the entire room- HAHA! I'll take that as a compliment to the band. If we're there to entertain and sell alcohol, I would say we're doing an excellent job at both!

This weekend will be a little different in the schedule as there are other events going on at Chilkoots. Tonight, a pretty popular Australian band called "Sick Puppies" is playing our stage until about midnight after which we'll finish out the night. On the other stage in another room, the American Hunks male dancers are donning their "banana hammocks" for a Chippendale's type meat-fest (They then will use our stage for earlier shows over the weekend). From what I hear, these guys are the ones who didn't make the Chippendales audition though and are more like the "D-list" strippers. I met one of them the other day when he came by to swap cars with us. He was a bulky meat house with a pony-tail. Nice guy though; his name was Jason! Somehow, I don't imagine I'll be hanging out at this show- I mean I like to see skin as much as anyone, but I don't get the attraction to this type of show...icky.

As an aside, up until the car swap last weekend- we had this giant old two tone blue van which would stall at any given moment- usually in traffic. With a little patience, we could always get it going again, but it was always nervewracking. Not only that, but it smelled on the inside, like wet garbage, dogs and fish. Well, banana boy gave us a nice sporty Ford Focus or something like that- and drove off with big blue (van) to go pick up the rest of the meat dancers at the airport. What I wouldn't give to have a photo of all these baby oilers pushing the stink van down the highway!

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John Launter!

One of the benefits of my trip to Alaska is the fact that my favorite architect, the late John Launter of LA has a house in Anchorage- designed in the late 60's for the Harpels, who had moved to AK from LA. His work is truly space oriented with disregard for historical styles. His homes are unique and exotic; if you saw the movie 'Ironman' recently, Tony's swoopy house was based on Lautners architecture, although it was fictional and designed as a set. His work has been used in other films

I didn't know if I would be able to visit the house or not as I had no connection to the current owners, but I was able to find it's location on Lake Otis in Anchorage via Google Earth and figured I would write a letter to Occupants to asked for a visit. So Monday afternoon, I decided to take a drive over to the house to confirm the address for my letter. Well, just as I pulled up to the house, two women pulled into the driveway on bicycles. I got out of the car and politely asked if they were the owners of the house. One of them kindly answered "Yes, would you like to see it?"- Stunned, I muttered yes, of course, and introduced myself and gave my brief story. It's hard to describe such an amazing building, but here's a photo I found on the web of the living room (I didn't get photos as I wasn't expecting to get in that day!)-



The owners were amazing and generous people- they gave me a quick tour and then let me explore as I wished for as long as I wanted. This certainly was a highlight of my time in Anchorage.