Ten Bars, One Roof, Zero Chill: The Case for Chilkoot Charlie's

Some venues you review. Chilkoot Charlie's you survive, fondly, and then tell stories about for the rest of your life. Out on Spenard Road at 2435, "Koot's" has been Anchorage's great sawdust-floored nightlife cathedral since 1970 — long enough that it isn't really a bar anymore so much as a local institution that happens to serve drinks.

The pitch is right there on the marquee: "10 bars under one roof." It sounds like hyperbole. It is not. Koot's is a rambling warren of rooms, each with its own personality and its own crowd, connected by hallways engineered — I am convinced — to separate you from anyone you arrived with. There is, famously, an ice bar, where the counter is actual ice and the correct move is to keep your coat on. There is sawdust on the floors, the way there has been for half a century. And there is, on any given weekend, live music bouncing around the place, because that's what Koot's has always been for.

What Koot's understands better than anyone in town is the theme night. This is a venue that commits. Case in point: July 18–19, it's throwing "Halloween in July: Ghouls Gone Wild," a full costume-contest, multi-stage bacchanal with bands The Robotz, Dreamcat, Natural High and Epic! plus DJs Akira, Juba, Dev and Militant working the rooms. Halloween. In July. In a town where it's still bright out at midnight. If you need a single sentence to explain the Spenard sense of humor, that's the one.

That's the other thing about Koot's: geography. Spenard has long been Anchorage's slightly-off-center nightlife district — a little grittier, a little weirder, a little more itself than downtown — and Koot's is its anchor tenant. A night here isn't a stop; it's a destination. You don't swing by Chilkoot Charlie's on the way to somewhere. Somewhere is where you go to recover from Chilkoot Charlie's.

Is it slick? No. Is the sound in every one of those ten rooms pristine? Also no — this is a dive with the confidence of a legend, not a purpose-built concert hall, and that's exactly the appeal. You come to Koot's for the density of it: the sense that behind the next doorway is a different band, a different bar, a different version of the night. It's a choose-your-own-adventure written in beer and sawdust and, occasionally, ice.

Fifty-six years in, Koot's endures because it never confused itself with anything trendier. Downtown got its shiny outdoor lots and its national headliners this summer, and good for downtown. But the soul of Anchorage nightlife still lives out on Spenard, in a ten-bar labyrinth that throws Halloween parties in the middle of July and dares you to keep up.

Wear layers. Lose your friends. Find them at the ice bar. That's the assignment.

Sources: Chilkoot Charlie's; Anchorage Weekender 7/16