These are the Chronicles of Famous Surf Writer Ben Marcus and his trip into the Wilds of the Alaskan Frontier.
Latest Update: October 5, 2000

3:20 AM ALASKA TIME DUGGAN'S BAR HOMER, ALASKA.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

When in Homer, do as the Homerians do.

Drink.

I am in Homer on a cold, rainy, blustery winter night in October. Ergo, I'm drinking. Yes, alcohol. I had a margarita for dinner with my lovely king crab, and I had an Irish coffee and two bloody marys and a lot of Cokes and water in Duggan's bar.

I don't like alcohol. Never have. But, I don't want to be rude. And I think that Bloody Mary's may be my drink. I like Worcestshire sauce, and the tomato juice is nutritive.

I also bought three of those bumper stickers:

HOMER, ALASKA
A quaint drinking village with a minor fishing problem.

I bought the bumper stickers at Duggan's Bar, left them behind when I went four-wheeling on the beach and scored some weed, then found them again when I came back to Duggan and sat and drank and talked with Linka, the one-eighth Choctaw girl who fishes Prince William Sound all summer and who did the flowers for the wedding of Jewell's brother.

It was a Homerian sort of evening. I enjoyed it.

So now it's 3:00 in the morning and I haven't yet set foot in the room in the Driftwood Inn which I'm paying $40 a night for. But there are a few things to talk about, so I'll write as I watch SportsCenter.

One of the many things buzzing around in my Gulliver on the way up here had to do with the singer, Jewell. I knew she was from Alaska, and as she was one of the few famous people I was aware of that was from Alaska, I wondered where she was from in Alaska, vaguely, in the back of my head. Tonight I found that out. She's from Homer, and it all makes sense.

Here's how I found that out.

After watching the Giants and Mets, and writing that long-winded dispatch which is now a little embarrassing, I watched the Yankees beat the A's in the afternoon, then went for dinner out on the Spit.

What makes Homer a little unique is a long, four-mile sandbar called The Spit which stretches out into Kacehmak Bay, similar to Dungeness Spit in Sequim, but with lots of restaurants and charter companies and other gift shops strung along it. It's kind of like the Pacific Garden Mall, on a sandbar, with glaciers all around it. Pretty cool.

There is a stocked salmon hole on the Spit called the Pit, where all Homerians can go to snag salmon. There are a lot of bald eagles out on the spit, almost as common in number as seagulls, but not common.

There is a restaurant out on the Spit called The Pescador, where I have eaten twice. It is clean and well-lighted, brand new apparently, with a lot of stylized fish on the walls: halibut and salmon, made of metal. There is a bar with a view looking. well I thought it was south but it's really straight west, across the spit and out into Cook Inlet. You have to check your compass frequently in this part of the world.

Tonight I went to The Pescador and ordered a pound of king crab, because I don't think I'd ever had king crab, and I thought there was a good chance that this would be fresh, as I was, after all, in Alaska.

The Waitress and The Cook both took my order. The Cook was a guy who reminded me a little of the actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman, a talkative, amiable chap who likes to meet the people he's cooking for. The Waitress was also amiable, but didn't really remind me of anyone, until later, at Duggan's Bar. People in Homer like to meet new people and talk and get input from the outside. I was the guy with the funny van with the California plates and the surfboard, so I got talked to.

The Cook was aware of the surfboard in my car, which lead into a conversation about his adventures on the Outer Banks and Huntington Beach and travel and surfing and tidal bores and fishing and North Hollywood and Huntington Beach and a whole bunch of other stuff. We talked about Homer and it was somewhere in there that I found out that Jewell was from Homer.

Jewell's parents have lived in Homer for a long time, and run some kind of hippie/commune/cooperative campground somewhere in town. Jewell's mother Charlotte is a Homer native, I think. She is a Carroll. Her dad Otto is a Kilcher. During the evening I would learn that there was some sort of friction between the Carroll and Kilcher families.

Jewel used to sing and yodel in the local bars, and was also a bit of a town tart for a while, according to The Cook. The Waitress said that she had listened to a little more Jewell yodeling in her day than she liked.

"Yodeling can be annoying," I said.

"Yes indeed," she said.

The Cook said Homer was famous for two things, although I think it's three. "Homer is famous for Jewell and killer herb," said The Cook, although I don't think he said herb. Can't remember what word he used. Wasn't bud. Wasn't crip. Whatever. He made it clear that Homer was known for growing good marijuana.

"All indoors," I ventured.

"Hey, what else are you going to do in winter?" he said.

I asked, "So what is the going price for this hemp. And is it still illegal in Alaska?"

The Cook said, "It's about $300 an ounce, and it's still illegal."

I said, "Oh. Isn't Homer also famous for Tom Bodette and his radio show, End of the Road?"

"That too," said The Cook. Then he returned to the kitchen, and flowed me a nice bowl of fresh-made clam chowder which was very good, and then a pound of King Crab, with rice and trimmings.

"Must be nice to work with fresh ingredients," I said during another appearance by The Cook.

"It's nice," said The Cook.

It was nice. After dinner, I made arrangement with The Cook and The Waitress-I didn't yet know their names-to meet at Duggan's Bar, across the street from where I was staying at the Driftwood Inn and RV Park.

After a quick e-mail check at the Driftwood Inn, and an embarrassed read of my long-winded last Giants/Gore e-mail-sorry about that-I walked over to Duggan's Bar, thinking, "Hey, I've been to Ireland."

Duggan's Bar was smokey and noisy and not all that clean or well-lighted. It seemed to be a semi-serious, semi-social drinking bar. The Cook was there hanging out, and at that point I learned his name, but I do not remember it, because I drank and I did not write it down. Sorry about that. Very rude.

I ordered an Irish Coffee, because I didn't want to drink the Guinness. Not that I'm much of an authority on alcohol and drinking, but after you've drunk Guinness in Ireland, you won't drink it anywhere else. That sounds snobby, but it's true. Ask anyone.

The Cook was playing pool with a friend, and then he proposed we go four-wheeling on Bishop's Beach, so he could let his dogs go for a run. We did that, motoring through a gloomy, rainy night to Bishop's Beach. He four-wheeled over sand and big rocks, then let his dogs out for a run, as we talked about this and that.

At that point we made the trade, an eighth of an ounce of Homer Hysteria for $40. I bought it for research purposes. I like pot about as much as I like alcohol, which is not much. All of that stuff makes me nervous, and that's all I need.

Please don't tell anyone. It's still illegal in Alaska.

After we made the trade, we drove back to Duggan's Bar, through the wind and the rain and the gloom, and I understood why people might get into a little drinking around here. It is very dark and gloomy here at night, and that makes people pretty aggressively social. Duggan's Bar was aggressively social.

"In the thick of winter, how early does it get this dark?" I asked.

"Oh, the sun will be down by 6:00 in the evening," The Waitress said. "And then won't come up again until 10:00 the next morning."

"That's not too bad," I said.

"No, it's tolerable," The Cook said. "Homer is an okay place to get through the winter. The weather never gets too horrible, and there's enough sun to keep from going nuts. I like Homer. Homer has it going on."

"I've seen much worse places than Homer," I agreed.

Back in the bar, The Waitress was there and in a mood to talk, so we did. AT some point she kind of reminded me of Brooke Johnson, in the way she talked and in her manner. That is, she was talkative and opinionated and nice and not afraid a nuthin'. We talked, and tried to find common ground.

I asked if she was Irish, trying to find a link with Brooke. She was indeed Irish, and other things.

The Waitress came from an oil family. She has lived all over the world, chasing around her oil-drilling father: Singapore, Scotland, the Middle East-a bunch of different places. She was from Oklahoma originally and is part Irish and part Native American.

"I've got one-eighth Choctaw, which qualifies me for medical benefits," she said. "My name is Linka, by the way."

Her name was Linka Blake. She wrote it down on a piece of paper with her phone number and e-mail address, which is why I remember it now.

We talked and talked and talked about this and that and the other and she noticed that I was a little nervous and fidgety. I showed her the Surfer's Journal column which described me as a "borderline complete neurotic" and she agreed.

Linka had some good stories about life in Homer and Alaska. In the summer, Linka fishes. She goes out for months at a time on salmon boats into Prince William Sound, and she makes it sound like a good time. "Prince William Sound is protected and the weather is good most of the time. Nothing rough. It's a big area and we cover a lot of it, throwing out a quarter-mile-wdie purse seine for salmon. I'm the 'corker.' I collect the cork floats as they come in and stack them. That's my job. I make about 10 cents a pound for every salmon we bring in, and there's another two-cent dividend they pay on top of that in January. I enjoy fishing. It's four months out of the year, I get to see places, I make good money and it frees up the winter. That dividend is going to come in handy in January, because I'm going to Brazil to meet a friend in Brazilia."

Linka made it sound like a lot of fun, cruising Prince William Sound all summer, fishing for salmon, making good dough and not really putting life or limb at risk.

Linka also runs a flower shop in Homer, but she doesn't really enjoy it, I don't think. Earlier this year she was asked to provide the flowers for the wedding of Jewel's brother, whose name is also Otto, I think. The wedding was held on the other side of the bay from Homer, and Linka received numerous repeat phone calls from a lady who worked for Jewel.

"They were making real sure I could deliver the flowers across the bay and wouldn't flake out," Linka said.

"That was one of Jewel's 'people' doing all the phone calling," I guessed.

"It would be nice to have people. It would be nice to be a people. I'm organized. I get things done," Linka said. Then she talked about the wedding.

"Jewel was there with a famous bull-rider," Linka said. "I asked for his autograph."

Linka liked to talk and was full of information and I sometimes wish I would record those conversations, to remember all the details that drink and sleep erase. But that would be rude, and illegal, so memory has to serve.

We talked about all kinds of stuff, listened to the juke box (No Jewell songs. No yodeling), watched the people come and go, speaking of Michelangelo. And when I looked up, it was three o'clock in the AM. Time to go.

I told Linka I was a famous writer and gave her the sacklunch.com address, and if she's reading this right now, hello.

Anyway, we busted out of there around 3:00. I showed Linka the van and Mr. Walther an where I hid Mr. Walther when I came through customs at Victoria. She thought I was a little sketchy, but that's okay.

I was lucky to find the Driftwood Inn unlocked. I worked on this a little and then fell asleep on the couch watching C-SPAN, where a bunch of EPA people were squabbling over this and that. Squabble, squabble, squabble.

11:48 AM ALASKA TIME THE TV ROOM OF THE DRIFTWOOD INN, HOMER ALASKA

So, I did a little drinking last night, but I feel okay today. I woke up around 10:00 and had to cancel that float trip on the Kenai for today, because Cooper Landing is a two and a half hour drive away, and I was supposed to be there at 10:00. The lady at Alaska Troutfitters said the weather was good, and she would have a fishing report for me this evening. I'll call during the Giants game, which I looking forward to as the cap for another nice day in Homer.

Now it's noon and change. I'm watching CSPAN again, and need to figure out what to do with the remains of the day.

The weather is better, and I'm going to take advantage of it.

Today I'm going to finish that Jeff Clark interview once and for all, but I may call him to filter in some comments on the shark attack, and also to ask him if he's going to sue Matt Warshaw and Chronicle Books for using the word Mavericks in the title of Matt's book.

And I might go do some steelhead fishing a little later, because the weather is nice.

Tonight I'm gonna watch Shawn Estes shut down the Mets in Game Two, and I'm looking forward to that.

Last night was fun. I learned more than a little bit about Homer, and hopefully I have passed the savings on to you.

I just looked at a map of Homer to get the name of Kachemak Bay, and remembered Linka mentioning something about the Homer News needing a writer. I may go talk to them. I need a job.

Hopefully this has erased all the blather of the previous dispatch.

Sorry again. And I'm really sorry I can't remember the name of The Cook.

But that's what the demon drink will do to you.

Ruin your memory.

Wreck your manners.

The tsunami warning alarm just went off. They test it every Thursday.

Time to go fishing and maybe go get a job.