Russian Othordox Church in Unalaska, Alaska... (Dutch Harbor)
This little Church is so beautiful on the outside, I wish I had gone inside but never did... It was on the path to this bar... I went there in 1995.. when I was working on aboard a ship as Engineers second... Always loved Dutch Harbor the people and the terrain... Not a place for the soft like I am now though, back then some rough and tumble people work and lived there.
I got the job through a friend, a friend that I knew for most of my life... We had worked together in Alaska right after High-school, on a relatives fishing boat... two seasons... When I thought I was going to retire I asked him if he knew of any work I could pick up so I could go one last time and feel like a man again... It had changed from when I was a kid but still had It's moments.. great sense of being alive when you work and play in a hard place...
the following is from the PI in Seattle... gives a little taste of what the bar life was like in the rough and tumble days...
Alaska's wild, woolly bar scene has calmed in recent years
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
By MIKE LEWIS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
A DANGEROUS SEASON
DUTCH HARBOR, Alaska -- The bell had just tolled, and in this case it tolled for a crabber named Dave.
So Dave, who either didn't want to provide his last name or has an unusual, two-syllable surname ending in "you," ordered a Scotch. Everyone else ordered a beverage, too, because when someone rings the old ship's bell hanging over the bar in the Elbow Room, the crowd gets a drink, courtesy of the ringer.
But what the Elbow Room's customers didn't know as they stood shoulder to shoulder in the smoky haze is that the bell also is tolling for one of the West's most notorious bars. As Dutch Harbor has aged and mellowed over the years, so has the Elbow Room, once called the second-most-dangerous bar on the planet.
Next January, it goes up for sale. Its owner, Larry Shaishnikoff, 72, didn't reveal an asking price, although he did say that in its heyday, the bar pulled in $1 million a year.
"I've been here a long time," said the Dutch Harbor native, who bought the Elbow Room in 1966. "I'm too old. It's time for a change."
The sale, in a way, reflects the changes in Dutch Harbor, which officially is the city of Unalaska. For the past 20 years, the community has worked to shed its Wild West, outpost reputation. And generally it has, although on some nights it morphs back into the old Dutch like a werewolf.
A patron is shoved out the door after a fight breaks out in the Elbow Room in Unalaska, Alaska. The bar once had the reputation of being a dangerous place, and it still can be the scene of a certain amount of rowdiness.
On this night at the end of the 2003 king crab season, there has been one brief fistfight -- the loser left -- a handful of arrests and a couple of bell ringings by crabbers who this year struck it rich. But the bar, about the size of a doublewide trailer with a cheap linoleum floor, is half-filled, and the stage where Jimmy Buffett once played is stacked with boxes.
Former Mayor Frank Kelty, who has lived in Dutch Harbor since 1971, said he isn't surprised at the turn of events. He moved here during Dutch's wild years, when the Elbow Room was the only bar in town. The city had 400 year-round residents then -- a 10th of today's population.
During the crabbing seasons, which then stretched for months, the town's population swelled by hundreds and the tavern stayed open until 5 a.m. Playboy magazine came to town, not for a photo shoot, but to write about the Elbow Room. One look at the fights, the drugs and the wads of cash on display, and the men's magazine deemed the bar a novel threat.
Kelty worked for a seafood-processing company back then. The lines at the Elbow Room often stretched out the door and down the block -- for the entire night.
"The bad reputation we had in those days was warranted," Kelty said, laughing.
Crabber David Robinson, a crewman on the F/V Gun Mar out of Seattle, has been coming to Dutch for 28 years. He said on most nights nowadays, it is far different from the fishing village where "you could walk right out of the bar and bet on a dog fight in the street."
"I'd say it's mellowed," said Robinson, who was standing in Carl's holding a can of beer. Only about 300 yards down the street from the Elbow Room, Carl's is a newer, hipper and more popular bar. As Robinson spoke, a two-person band wrapped up a cover of Eminem's "Without Me." A handful of people danced.
"Civilized is the best word I can think of," he said. "They wanted to bring civilization to Dutch Harbor."
The evolution began in the 1980s shortly after the town defaulted on the municipal bonds it sold to build the new airport terminal. New state and federal legislation routed more of the fishing money back into Unalaska.
The town built schools, a new clinic, a sewage treatment plant and a recreation center. The World War II visitors center gleams with glossy brochures and a small movie theater. Much of the town's 30 miles of roads are paved, although those same roads get pummeled back into gravel during the harsh winters.
Then Carl's opened in the 1990s. It siphoned business away from the Elbow Room and turned it into a neighborhood bar, albeit one with an occasional attitude problem. And not long ago, all the bars -- there are four now -- agreed to close earlier. Town moralists even closed the pizza-parlor-turned-strip-bar that opened last year.
Once called the worst neighborhood in Ballard -- at one time almost all of the fleet hailed from there -- Dutch Harbor now is a town where the "t" word, tourism, can be discussed with a straight face, city leaders say.
Kelty, who was mayor throughout the 1990s, said the strip-bar owner missed his chance. "He should have opened it in the 1970s. It would have been huge."
Shaishnikoff said when he sells the bar that once was called the Blue Fox Cocktail Lounge, he's leaving town. "I want to see something new before I die."
P-I reporter Mike Lewis can be reached at 206-448-8140 or mikelewis@seattlepi.com
© 1998-2009 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
They threw a couple of guys out in the ally or street 4-5 degree weather I went out a hour later to get some air and one was still on the ground I thought he was dead but when I tried to help him up he punched me in the mouth... I went back in told the bartender and they called the cops to come and get him... I would have frozen to death out there like that... Walking back to the ship could be dangerous because you walked on the water front and many a drunk fell in only to be pulled out frozen stiff... 3-5 minutes could do you in with out a survival suit....
I got the job through a friend, a friend that I knew for most of my life... We had worked together in Alaska right after High-school, on a relatives fishing boat... two seasons... When I thought I was going to retire I asked him if he knew of any work I could pick up so I could go one last time and feel like a man again... It had changed from when I was a kid but still had It's moments.. great sense of being alive when you work and play in a hard place...
the following is from the PI in Seattle... gives a little taste of what the bar life was like in the rough and tumble days...
Alaska's wild, woolly bar scene has calmed in recent years
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
By MIKE LEWIS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
A DANGEROUS SEASON
DUTCH HARBOR, Alaska -- The bell had just tolled, and in this case it tolled for a crabber named Dave.
So Dave, who either didn't want to provide his last name or has an unusual, two-syllable surname ending in "you," ordered a Scotch. Everyone else ordered a beverage, too, because when someone rings the old ship's bell hanging over the bar in the Elbow Room, the crowd gets a drink, courtesy of the ringer.
But what the Elbow Room's customers didn't know as they stood shoulder to shoulder in the smoky haze is that the bell also is tolling for one of the West's most notorious bars. As Dutch Harbor has aged and mellowed over the years, so has the Elbow Room, once called the second-most-dangerous bar on the planet.
Next January, it goes up for sale. Its owner, Larry Shaishnikoff, 72, didn't reveal an asking price, although he did say that in its heyday, the bar pulled in $1 million a year.
"I've been here a long time," said the Dutch Harbor native, who bought the Elbow Room in 1966. "I'm too old. It's time for a change."
The sale, in a way, reflects the changes in Dutch Harbor, which officially is the city of Unalaska. For the past 20 years, the community has worked to shed its Wild West, outpost reputation. And generally it has, although on some nights it morphs back into the old Dutch like a werewolf.
A patron is shoved out the door after a fight breaks out in the Elbow Room in Unalaska, Alaska. The bar once had the reputation of being a dangerous place, and it still can be the scene of a certain amount of rowdiness.
On this night at the end of the 2003 king crab season, there has been one brief fistfight -- the loser left -- a handful of arrests and a couple of bell ringings by crabbers who this year struck it rich. But the bar, about the size of a doublewide trailer with a cheap linoleum floor, is half-filled, and the stage where Jimmy Buffett once played is stacked with boxes.
Former Mayor Frank Kelty, who has lived in Dutch Harbor since 1971, said he isn't surprised at the turn of events. He moved here during Dutch's wild years, when the Elbow Room was the only bar in town. The city had 400 year-round residents then -- a 10th of today's population.
During the crabbing seasons, which then stretched for months, the town's population swelled by hundreds and the tavern stayed open until 5 a.m. Playboy magazine came to town, not for a photo shoot, but to write about the Elbow Room. One look at the fights, the drugs and the wads of cash on display, and the men's magazine deemed the bar a novel threat.
Kelty worked for a seafood-processing company back then. The lines at the Elbow Room often stretched out the door and down the block -- for the entire night.
"The bad reputation we had in those days was warranted," Kelty said, laughing.
Crabber David Robinson, a crewman on the F/V Gun Mar out of Seattle, has been coming to Dutch for 28 years. He said on most nights nowadays, it is far different from the fishing village where "you could walk right out of the bar and bet on a dog fight in the street."
"I'd say it's mellowed," said Robinson, who was standing in Carl's holding a can of beer. Only about 300 yards down the street from the Elbow Room, Carl's is a newer, hipper and more popular bar. As Robinson spoke, a two-person band wrapped up a cover of Eminem's "Without Me." A handful of people danced.
"Civilized is the best word I can think of," he said. "They wanted to bring civilization to Dutch Harbor."
The evolution began in the 1980s shortly after the town defaulted on the municipal bonds it sold to build the new airport terminal. New state and federal legislation routed more of the fishing money back into Unalaska.
The town built schools, a new clinic, a sewage treatment plant and a recreation center. The World War II visitors center gleams with glossy brochures and a small movie theater. Much of the town's 30 miles of roads are paved, although those same roads get pummeled back into gravel during the harsh winters.
Then Carl's opened in the 1990s. It siphoned business away from the Elbow Room and turned it into a neighborhood bar, albeit one with an occasional attitude problem. And not long ago, all the bars -- there are four now -- agreed to close earlier. Town moralists even closed the pizza-parlor-turned-strip-bar that opened last year.
Once called the worst neighborhood in Ballard -- at one time almost all of the fleet hailed from there -- Dutch Harbor now is a town where the "t" word, tourism, can be discussed with a straight face, city leaders say.
Kelty, who was mayor throughout the 1990s, said the strip-bar owner missed his chance. "He should have opened it in the 1970s. It would have been huge."
Shaishnikoff said when he sells the bar that once was called the Blue Fox Cocktail Lounge, he's leaving town. "I want to see something new before I die."
P-I reporter Mike Lewis can be reached at 206-448-8140 or mikelewis@seattlepi.com
© 1998-2009 Seattle Post-Intelligencer
They threw a couple of guys out in the ally or street 4-5 degree weather I went out a hour later to get some air and one was still on the ground I thought he was dead but when I tried to help him up he punched me in the mouth... I went back in told the bartender and they called the cops to come and get him... I would have frozen to death out there like that... Walking back to the ship could be dangerous because you walked on the water front and many a drunk fell in only to be pulled out frozen stiff... 3-5 minutes could do you in with out a survival suit....
Advertisement
