Boardwalk Boogie

I am so going to this next year.

A sunny May day perched on the edge of a deep, narrow fjord surrounded by steep, snowcapped mountains, eagles soar overhead and seven different bands play everything from country western to funk punk. Is this heaven, or is this just Pelican, Alaska, during the Boardwalk Boogie?

Pelican is a tiny, seaside village in Southeast Alaska, founded in 1938 by a Finnish fisherman, Kalle Rattikainen, who didn't want to haul his salmon all the way to Hoonah or Juneau to get paid. Most of the year the population of Pelican is 115. There are bear paw prints on the public trash bin and easy chairs in the bars, and it's the only Alaska town I've been in that doesn't have an airstrip-if you fly in, you land on floats. Pretty much everything in Pelican is on pilings: homes, school, library, two bars and one church, held up just out of reach of the 13-foot tides, all of them connected by a boardwalk. You can walk the length of the town in 10 minutes, if Rosie doesn't drag you into her bar, talk you into pinning a dollar bill to the ceiling and pants you.

The stories about Rosie are legion, including the one about a certain gubernatorial candidate but, well, no, this is a family magazine and, besides, "Nothing you do here follows you home," says Curtis Edwards, a guitar picker from Juneau. "That is the rule of Pelican," his wife, Sheela McLean, agrees. Sort of a Bangkok in Alaska, I guess.

"Pelican," Mayor Kathie Wasserman says, "is one of the old rubber-boot, working class communities." Fishing is Pelican's major industry-salmon, halibut and black cod. I'm here because John and Jan Straley, who live 35 minutes south of Pelican by float-plane, said incredulously last spring, "What? You've never heard of the Boardwalk Boogie?" and made immediate plans to correct this deficiency.

The Boardwalk Boogie "sort of started around this totem pole," Kathie says, pointing to the pole standing in front of City Hall. "Five years ago a carver from Klawock came and with the kids in the school built a unity pole. We had some Native dance groups come in for the pole raising. By the time of the pole raising we had a couple of bands, and by the second year it was the Boardwalk Boogie."

A button that costs $35 gets you into all the events. The $35 provides transportation, lodging and free beer for the musicians. "This boogie is so totally Pelican," Kathie says. "One big jam."

The music starts Thursday night in the Brown Bar (Rosie's only competitor) with Juneau band Dag Nabbit playing what Curtis calls punk funk. Everybody is dancing, and everyone who isn't dancing is next door at Rosie's jamming in a pickup band, unless they're taking turns sitting in with Dag Nabbit (banjo, mandolin, harmonica, everybody's welcome). I thought the pilings were going to melt out from beneath the Brown Bar, and it goes on until 3:30 a.m. "It started to get ugly, people started to fall down," Jay Caputo, Dag Nabbit lead guitar, says the next day, "so we packed it in."

Friday afternoon someone throws down a sheet of plywood over a couple of pallets, runs an extension cord into the mayor's office to light up the mikes and the amps. A band from Sitka called Belly Meat ("And there's nothing wrong with that," says Ernie the bass player), consisting of Ernie, Lee on guitar and Gary on the hottest harmonica in Southeast Alaska-accompanied by a fiddle and a banjo from Juneau band Sofa Kings-steps up to make the welkin ring with some acoustic blues. They play a couple of songs, then I read a story about my mom and Belly Meat plays a few more songs, and John Straley reads a great bit from one of his Cecil Younger novels involving Nike sneakers and a survival suit, and then Belly Meat plays some more. Eagles soaring overhead, hummingbirds darting around, the sun beating down, great stories, great music-it's just one of those perfect afternoons, you know? It is, to date, one of the best things my writing has ever brought me.

That evening it's a barn dance at the community center featuring Ruben's Old Time Band playing square dance, and rock and roll from Danny & the C-Notes at the Brown Bar and jazzy, swingy bluegrass from the Sofa Kings at Rosie's, and me and a hundred other people ping-ponging back and forth until the sun starts to come up.

On Saturday there's an arts and crafts show and a children's concert and the blessing of the fleet, and at 4 p.m. there is the Filthy Song Contest at the Brown Bar.

There are 16 entrants in the Filthy Song Contest, and there's no way Alaska magazine is going to let me tell you the lyrics even to one of them. Moving body parts are involved, as are various less organic items. Neptune's daughter makes an appearance. So does Bigfoot and Pelican's only virgin. I think the true test of a filthy song is how soon the audience starts singing along.

Ernie shows up at our apartment that evening with fresh rockfish fillets (not just a bass player but a god), and then it's back up the boardwalk to the Brown Bar to listen to Belly Meat. It's the best music I've heard all weekend and believe me when I tell you that's saying something. "This is why we come here," Bob Bell, a banjo picker from Fairbanks and a member of RayJen Cajun tells me. "We get to play with some of the best musicians in Alaska."

Belly Meat gives way to the Bobb Family band doing that country-western thing, while over at Rosie's Ray-Jen Cajun blasts off the world's tiniest stage into some kind of zydeco orbit.
And then comes Sunday. You can repent during Catholic mass at City Hall or the ecumenical mass at the church on the hill or, if you're aboard the Alien Marine charter heading back to Juneau, participate in the Bum Voyage, what you might call a lunar farewell salute.

I tell you true, I was of two minds whether to write this column. I don't want the Boardwalk Boogie to change, I don't want it to be ruined by too many people coming. Kathie says it won't happen. "We'll limit out at 200-250 people, because that's all the beds and campsites we've got." More than that "wouldn't be any fun because it would be just too crowded." She smiles. "No shops with two p's and an e has always been my goal."

Well I went to the doctor and he said to me
Your arteries are plugged you need some omega-3
I said Doc don't you worry, I got me a plan
Gonna throw me some salmon into a pan Come on baby love that belly meat.
-"BELLY MEAT," GOUKER AND ASNIN

DANA STABENOW is the author of 20 novels and a Belly Meat groupie. She can be contacted through her Web site at www.stabenow.com.

Copyright Morris Communications Sep 2003. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.