A recent transplant to Juneau from Iowa, Tripp J Crouse has more than 13 years of journalism and newspaper experience, and was previously the social media editor for the Quad-City Times of Davenport, Iowa, from April 2013 to July 2016.
Capital City Fire/Rescue were called to the scene of a vehicle fire Monday afternoon on Mill Street.
About 2:30 p.m. the owner of a 1998 Honda Accord was attempting to drain the gas out when the gas ignited and burned up the rear of the vehicle, according to Assistant Chief Tod Chambers.
Chambers said the vehicle was totaled.
There were no other threats of exposure, and nothing else was at risk, he said.
No injuries were reported.
Juneau Police Department also responded to the call.
By a margin of six votes, residents of Barrow have voted to change the name of their city back to its Inupiaq name: Utqiagvik.
City council member Qaiyaan Harcharek started the process this summer.
There are still several steps that must be taken, including the city communicating with state officials, before the name change will come to fruition.
Alaska Public Media’s Lori Townsend discussed the name change with Harcharek.
Here’s a video of Gabe Tegoseak pronouncing the new name:
A 14-year-old boy is injured after apparently being struck by a vehicle Friday on Glacier Highway near Western Auto Marine.
According to a Juneau Police Department news release, multiple 911 callers reported a pedestrian struck by a vehicle at about noon.
The injured juvenile was transported to Bartlett Regional Hospital. Juneau police Lt. David Campbell said the boy didn’t have life-threatening injuries.
The release says a 65-year-old man was driving the 2003 silver Infinity in the incident.
Police estimated the roadway in the immediate area would be closed for about two hours.
The investigation is ongoing.
Juneau police are investigating the death of a 55-year-old man who was found Thursday morning partially submerged in a pond.
Police have identified the man as Gary D. Brummitt of Juneau.
There were no signs of foul play.
Brummitt’s body will be sent to the Medical Examiner’s Office in Anchorage for an autopsy.
According to a JPD news release, a caller saw the body while walking on the bike path, and walked to Fred Meyer to call police.
Police, medics and Capital City Fire/Rescue were called to the pond located on the eastern side of Mendenhall Loop Road at the intersection with Egan Drive.
A wheelchair was found nearby.
Authorities shut down the bike path in the area. Vehicular traffic is still open.
The investigation is ongoing.
Juneau police recovered some stolen items linked to recent burglaries including items from Observatory Books in early September.
The police served a search warrant Wednesday afternoon on a property in the 300 block of Village Street in downtown Juneau.
Police searched inside the house and several vehicles on the property.
“They did recover some items that had been listed in previous burglaries,” Lt. David Campbell said. “They listed off several different possibilities. They’re currently doing follow up trying to establish whose property is what and I know they’re still interviewing people and doing investigative work today and probably tomorrow.”
Police are investigating further to determine the rightful owners of the stolen property, Campbell said. No arrests have been made.
Police officers “got a couple of maps that they recovered that they believe came from The Observatory,” Campbell said. “There’s a few other burglaries as well that they believe they have items from. The one burglary that I was told about was the Observatory, because the maps were fairly distinctive.”
Campbell did not know how many people were living on the property.
On the night of Sept. 2, The Observatory was broken into and a pile of maps, charts and other items were stolen.
The store, located at 299 N. Franklin St., specializes in antiquarian books, maps and prints particularly pertaining to Alaska and other polar regions.
The Observatory has been closed since April because the owner Dee Longenbaugh, 82, is ill and unable to work.
Longenbaugh’s daughter Betsy Longenbaugh said police called her mother about 4:30 p.m. and left a message.
“I responded to it because of my mother’s health,” she said. “They said they were in the middle of doing a search warrant in a home and had found some maps and pictures that they thought might be connected to my mother’s book store.”
Betsy Longenbaugh met with police officers in the area off Willoughby Avenue to identify some of the items recovered in the search.
“It certainly appears that the maps and prints they found — and I didn’t see everything that they found, they said they had a number of items — but they had my mother’s very distinctive handwriting on them,” she said. “It appears that they recovered at least a portion of the stock that was stolen.”
Dee Longenbaugh was pleased to know that at least some of the stolen property had been found, her daughter said.
“She was very happy to hear about this,” Betsy Longenbaugh said. “She was very happy to hear that they had at least recovered some of the items. She’s just really happy.”
After the initial burglary, Betsy Longenbaugh said the family removed items of serious value from the property, but are waiting to decide what to do.
“There’s still a bookstore there and we are still as a family trying to decide what happens next.”
The investigation into the burglaries is ongoing.
Drag shows in Juneau have become a major, annual fundraiser for the nonprofit Alaskan AIDS Assistance Association.
Attendance topped 200 after two nights of Femme Fatale shows in Juneau on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1.
At the Rendezvous bar in downtown Juneau, a few people are sipping drinks and early birds are trickling in.
The drag queens and kings aren’t set to take the stage for another hour and a half.
But backstage — a bar store room — it’s cramped.
Makeup palettes, shoes, clothes and mannequin heads with colorful wigs litter the tables.
Five queens and seven kings, each over-the-top representations from either side of the gender spectrum, do their makeup in front of mirrors.
Stephanie Davis’ hair is dyed blue and she has it pulled back into a bun.
And she’s a little nervous.
“Yep, that’s kind of an understatement,” Davis said. “I’m kinda just trying to put on, like, my beard and without shaking too much and making squiggly lines, which I guess would be kind of more organic, but yeah, a little nervous.”
She’s turning into her drag king persona, Stevie Smalls, an extremely confident frat boy.
“I’m kind of like a insecure, shy person, so I chose something completely opposite of that to do,” she said.
The transformation from Stephanie Davis to Stevie Smalls takes patience and practice. Her eyes switch intently between small handheld and large vanity mirrors.
With makeup, Davis stipples on a beard, like the kind teen-heartthrobs grow without shaving for a few days.
Stevie’s beard takes just a few minutes.
It’s a fraction of the preparation the king needs before taking the stage.
“Um, you have to like bind and stuff, just flatten down your chest area and try not to make yourself look too hippy, because I’m naturally super hippy and boys are not often super hippy so I’m trying to straighten it out,” Davis said.
To help mask curves, drag kings use multiple sports bras, Ace bandages and kinesiology tape — the kind athletes use to ease muscle pain.
This is Davis’ first solo performance, though it is her second as a drag king.
“It was really fun. I did the boy band – we were the four D’s – We did One Direction and Backstreet Boys – and you really can’t go wrong with either of those,” she said. “It was fun to choreograph and stuff. But this is a little bit different, because you can’t choreograph too much stuff alone because it just looks weird. Know what I mean? But yeah, it was a lot of fun the first time. And I’m still with Ryder here, so it’s not, not too bad.”
She’s referring to Ryder Strong, another drag king portrayed by Cate Ross.
At a crowded makeup table, Ross, Davis and another king take turns applying highlights and lowlights, using a technique called contouring.
Chiseled jawlines and wider noses emerge from their soft, feminine facial features.
“I’m terrible at contouring, but I want to try and look like a boy, so I’m actually trying my hardest to ‘Oh let me try to make my face less soft, and let me try and flatten my chest as much as possible,’” she said. “So it’s no pain, no gain, but it’s fun to try and make that silhouette look right even though I haven’t mastered it yet.”
Later, it’s Stevie who comes through the curtain and lip-syncs to Zayn’s “TiO (or Take It Off).”
Stevie gyrates with a steamy, masculine charisma while making eyes with the women at the show.
His beard moves as he mouths the words: “I just wanna watch you when you take it off.”
Stevie works the crowd, pausing to dance with some audience members.
“With that attitude, making those scrunchy, smooshy faces and like kind of being super into myself? I have to go above and beyond with the confidence thing because I have zero, so if I’m just way too confident, I think that that’s why I chose that persona,” Davis said.
Each king or queen embodies different personality types and looks. There’s high fashion with glitz and glamour, to flamboyant camp through extravagant makeup and props.
Davis partially credits the rise of drag to reality TV.
“I think that drag in general just got more accepted, and I think that that whole ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ thing had really big play in it,” Davis said.
She says the mainstreaming of LGBTQ culture has helped, too.
“Not all drag people are queer, but that whole lifestyle has become more accepted so I think that more and more things are getting accepted,” Davis said. “More drag queens are all over TV and everything like that.”
Davis originally wanted to perform in bio-femme drag, in which female participants perform as drag queens. But bio-femme drag isn’t as recognized as other forms, so Davis works instead toward performing as a drag king.
Between tickets and tips to the performers, the organizers estimate the two-day event raised more than $10,000 for the Alaskan AIDS Assistance Association.
