What to Wear in Juneau

United Way puts on a fashion show
By Courtney Nelson
For the Juneau Empire
An open invitation by the United Way’s campaign director Cachet Garrett for a philanthropist to “discuss significant giving” might pay off. Marlintini’s Lounge owner Ethan Billings read this and stepped up with an idea for a fundraising fashion show and live auction. “I read the article and started thinking about ideas and came up with something like Wearable Art, but different,” said Billings, who projects this event will raise $10,000 between ticket sales, liquor sales and donated live auction items.
The fashion show planning committee formed uniting Billings and Garrett and representatives from Shoefly, Choco, Gottshalks, Laisne, The Wedding Shoppe, and AK Dames, who donated their time and ideas. The result is an upscale, fashion show called “What to Wear in Juneau, AK” with VIP seats, swag bags and a live auction. The event, which begins with cocktails at 8, and the show from 9-11:30 p.m., will be hosted by Ben Brown and Collette Costa. There will be an intermission performance by Rumbalaska, a salsa dance team formed by salsa instructors Heather Haugland and Antonio Diaz.
Billings created a large catwalk that runs 60 feet across the club. If this event is a success, Billings will consider doing an annual spring and fall fashion show. “I think it will be great to promote local clothing stores and other local businesses as well as raise money for the United Way,” said Billings. Marlintini’s is donating 30% of liquor sales to the cause.
Travis McCain at AK Litho donated printing costs and Shyla Germain designed the tickets. Other contributing businesses are Sequence, Nugget Alaskan Outfitters, Night Moods and the Alaskan Brewing Company, which will be modeling their new barbeque apron. “It’s pretty spectacular, its got a bottle opener on it with a retractable chord, an insulated bottle holder, an oven mitt, and multiple pockets - it’s the perfect thing for spring” said Christy Virgilio-Ciambor, marketing coordinator for the Alaskan Brewing Company. The brewery will also model t-shirts and hats that will be auctioned off to benefit the cause they find important. “The United Way tackles a lot of issues here in Juneau - children’s causes, housing issues, they really give where they can,” said Virgilio-Ciambor.
Some of the 50 models scheduled to appear on the runway will have their hair styled by Gail E. Marvin of the Cutting Edge. “I might do a funky color like primary red on a model that will be a style and fashion statement,” said Marvin. In addition to wild hair, men and women’s sleepwear by Night Moods will be modeled including a satin pajama set for men and chemises, robes and pj’s for women, “things people will feel comfortable wearing in public,” said spokesperson Kathy Buell. They also think it’s an important cause. “The United Way helps a lot of causes here in Southeast Alaska so we want to give back,” said Buell.
The United Way supports 38 non-profit organizations in Juneau so many businesses said they were happy to help, especially since non-profit organizations have seen a decrease in donations lately. A complete list of their partners can be found at www.unitedwayseak.org.
In addition to the fashion show, clothes, shoes, purses, hand-made garters, gift certificates to Rejuvenation Salon and Spa, The Cutting Edge, Paradise Beach Travel and Tanning, Sunburst on the Wharf and Alaska Industrial will be auctioned off.
Seating is limited, there are 300 tickets and they are available at Shoefly, Choco, Alaska Dames and the United Way office. General Admission tickets are $20, VIP tickets are $30 and include a swag bag.

'Superman" breaks MMA record

Rookie Manacio V dispatches Johnson in record 11 seconds in Rough House fight

By Courtney Nelson | For the Juneau Empire

Anthony "Five" Manacio V, 23, a first-time fighter with a six-year wrestling career, stunned the crowd with his Rough House Boxing record breaking win over fellow first-time fighter Andrew "Anderson" Johnson, 21, just 11 seconds into the bout. With Superman tattoos on his arms, Manacio beat the previous MMA record of 17 seconds by using what he called his "Superman" punch.

"Basically you just use your legs as leverage and jump up and hit him in the face," Manacio said after the win.

Adrenaline-filled from the bell, Manacio, cheered on by his sparring partner brothers, rushed his opponent. Then, using his powerful leg muscles, he sprung up against his taller opponent, tagged him in the head and dropped him with the first punch. After five more hard shots to the head, referee Joe Isturis called the fight.

"I feel awesome," Manacio said after. "I wanted more, but I guess things just happen."

In the only other MMA fight of the night, Manacio's older brother Anthony "Four" Manacio IV, who served a year in Iraq as a gunner but now works for the Alaska Marine Highway System, lost a fight to Aaron "Bloody Red Baron" Tucker in a bout where the fighters spent most of the time on the ground exchanging power positions. The closest bout of the night, Tucker squeaked out the win by tiring Manacio out.

"He was just holding me down and I got too tired," Manacio explained.

In another close bout, Juneau's Cameron Mitchell, 2-0-0, remained perfect with his win over Hoonah's Mitchell Zarazua, who picked up his first loss bringing his record to 2-1-0. Zarazua, who studied Mitchell's fights, planned to block Mitchell's signature right uppercut by switching forward standing foot. Mitchell's stance, usually his right glove up around his head and left glove at his side with some jabs thrown with his southpaw, left Mitchell's head open. His corner yelled repeatedly, "Hands up, hands up." Both boxers traded hard blows in extended rounds but the close win went to Mitchell.

Shaun Guthrie, 27, defeated Ketchikan's TJ Jackson, 21, and dominated the first two rounds, tiring him out. Jackson, who'd never gone the distance in a bout, gassed out and retired before the third round.

Angoon's Alexa Elisoff, 24, with two losses, defeated first-time fighter Francine "Shorty" Brown, 22, of Angoon to grab her first win. To give her strength, Elisoff said she thinks about her deceased brother, Ryan Elisoff, right before her fights.

Round one was pretty even. Then Elisoff delivered Brown a standing eight-count in round two, and Brown answered by throwing punches after the bell. Elisoff dominated the last round, but both boxers were sucking air.

In a heavyweight bout featuring fighters from Angoon, 274-pound Thomas "Tommy Guns" Parkin, 22, a first-time fighter, defeated 288-pound Thomas Adam Jack, 25, by dominating from the start. Parkin exploded from the bell and tagged Jack in the temple. A barrage of punches got a standing eight-count delivered to Jack. Right before the bell, Parkin landed a right hook that dropped Jack to the mat. Joe Isturis stopped the fight before the second round.

In another heavyweight bout, 4-2-0 James "The Beast" Roberts, 24, of Klawock, defeated Clifford "Bad News" Brown, 19, with a record of 1-0-0, which started off strong for Brown. Adrenaline filled Brown dominated the first part of the round landing two big haymakers to Roberts head. Roberts answered with his own big right that left Brown looking a little dazed and the two remained pretty even.

Brown had a rocket-right uppercut that seemed to have minimal effect on the solid Roberts. Resembling the tortoise and the hare, Brown darted around the solid and steady Roberts who ended up with the win by crowd decision.

Charles Paul Bagoyo, 21, with a record of 2-2-0, defeated 18-year-old Michael Trull, 1-0-0, in a bout where both boxers traded hard head shots in round one, with Trull leading. Before the start of round two, Trull stood up to fight and collapsed to the mat with a concussion. Trull was carried out on a stretcher and taken to Bartlett Regional Hospital where he was treated and released. Trull's mother Carla Vulgamore reported the next day that he suffered a concussion but was doing better. Trull will not be boxing next month.

The main event featuring a rematch match with Ryan Wong and Inoke Topui was canceled when Topui scratched before the bout.

The Southeast Showdown is scheduled for May 8, and mixed martial arts will be held May 15.

Is Facebook replacing face time?

Juneau residents find old and new friends are just a click away

By Courtney Nelson | For the Juneau Empire

Whether people tend to avoid new technology or embrace it, the online social network Facebook can't be ignored. The world's largest networking Web site is slowly but surely replacing face-to-face interaction, especially in Juneau, where residents often live thousands of miles from family and friends.

With five million new users joining Facebook each week, its user demographic is shifting from college-age students to teenagers, 30-somethings and retired adults. As users become more connected to friends, family and the community through online networking, more people are replacing face time with Facebook.

Many Facebook members say the Web site is addicting. Online networking can create a sensation of time and space collapsing when in the same day a person can connect with their second-grade crush, old employers, high school and college classmates, and professional colleagues.

According to the marketing research company Comscore, the average user is on Facebook 169 minutes each month. Some refer to the program as "crackbook."

Facebook's mission appears benign, claiming the sharing of information intends "to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected." Many Juneau residents, who live in relative isolation from friends and family Outside, have become well-versed in the benefits of Facebook.

Meilani Schijvens, a busy Juneau mom with two small children, said she absolutely loves Facebook. It allows her to use any extra minutes to catch up on people she cares about, Schijvens said.

"It's such an easy way to get in touch with people - no looking for lost e-mail addresses. It's an easy way to share pictures of my growing little kids. I'm in touch with all of my cousins for the first time ever and I'm in touch with people from all the different stages and ages of my life," Schijvens said.

Some people say they've learned much more about their friends' similarities by seeing what others are doing. This sparks new conversations and connections, thus deepening relationships.

But as millions of people flock to the site to reunite, share, learn and reminisce, those who don't join for various reasons often feel left out. Julie Johnson, a self-proclaimed "techno-phobe," is one Juneau resident who hasn't been ensnared in the Web.

Johnson has historically resisted technology. She doesn't have a cell phone, rarely sends e-mails and is resentful of pressure to join Facebook. Call her old-fashioned, she said, but she likes to send and receive meaningful pictures and packages through the U.S. Postal Service and receive life news over a cup of coffee.

Johnson is not alone but is quickly becoming the minority - a fact that frustrates her. She recently went on vacation with family. By the time she returned home, developed her film and was ready to mail her letters, the vacation was old news. Her family had posted their photos on Facebook during their first day back. Friends already were commenting on the great photos of Johnson on her vacation - photos she hadn't seen yet and probably wasn't going to unless she joined Facebook.

If Johnson had joined Facebook, her family could have "tagged" her in the photo, and she would have been notified automatically via e-mail. If people haven't posted anything more embarrassing than had a big hair portrait from the '80s, photo taggings can be fun; for others, they're a source of anxiety.

Gone are the days of tearing up or deleting a bad bathingsuit shot for posterity. "It's fun to have people post old photos. It's like looking through an old photo album with an old friend," said Kristin Cox, adding "and anyone else who is interested can see too."

Schijvens echoed this sentiment, saying she looks forward to seeing older photos. "Good thing for me, I looked better then than I do now."

Another busy mom, Tiffany Smith, said she wasn't afraid of photos because she "doesn't tend to work very hard to hide things that people may find unflattering. I just don't much care. I am who I am."

Others expressed a desire to keep the past in the past. Some people said they came to Juneau from another town where they had a reputation they would like to forget. They didn't want the past haunting them in their new life. Others expressed similar worries about a college concert photo or something similar resurfacing for their children to see.

Some college-age people who have grown up with Facebook are posting images of drinking and partying that might haunt them in the future - such as when a prospective employer is researching them on the Internet, or after they've just won eight gold medals. A good rule of thumb for Facebook: Don't post anything that couldn't be a newspaper headline. That brings up another issue: authenticity.

Some users say Facebook is like being invited to a party where you can only be nice, because you can only "like" a comment someone posts. Some users tend to share too much information, but there are others who tend to reveal very little. Many Juneau users don't want to be Facebook friends with co-workers in order to keep their work and personal lives separate and avoid awkward situations.

Christy Virgilio-Ciambor of Juneau has had awkward experiences with past romantic relationships and sharing on Facebook.

"Ghosts of boyfriends and girlfriends past can be odd because even though we're all friends now, there's a limit to how much I want them to know about my life and vice versa," she said.

With 175 million users networking on Facebook, it's become a target for nasty viruses that can crash computers. Facebook applications can plant cookies that are tracked down by hackers who access log-in information to target other Facebook users.

Using Facebook as a tool for community connection takes discipline and an awareness of what one might be disconnecting from when they log on. It takes work to not discriminate against non-users and make the effort to maintain connections with people who aren't using Facebook. Cox confessed, "It does eat up a lot of time when I could be doing something else, like writing a snail mail to my grandma who isn't my Facebook friend."

• Courtney Nelson is a writer living in Juneau.

Juneau to be featured in Discovery Channel special

By Courtney Nelson | For the Juneau Empire

Avalanches, bear encounters, moose collisions, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are some of the topics featured in a new Discovery Channel special, "Alaska: Most Extreme." Premiering April 16, the show will air in the middle of a week of programming called "Alaska Week," which begins April 12 and runs through April 17.

The one-hour special features Juneau in an opening piece about avalanches and what it's like living in their shadow.

"The first story is about avalanches and features Juneau's position as the large urban avalanche danger-zone, in essence," said David Huntley, executive producer of Moore Huntley Productions who produced the show for the Discovery Channel.

"Juneau's focus is as an urban area at risk of having avalanches hit in different ways, by threatening neighborhoods but also the dependence on transmission lines coming up from Snettisham Power House. This is such an amazing story to tell because I don't think many people in the lower 48 know that. They might know that Juneau is not connected to the outside with a road, but I don't think they know the history of avalanche danger," said Huntley.

After producing and working on many shows about Alaska subjects and topics over the last 20 years, and intensively for five or six years now, Huntley wanted to look closer at people and their daily interactions with nature.

"Moore Huntley Productions has been producing programs for the History Channel, National Geographic and now for the Discovery Channel, and what I keep finding is there are more and more interesting stories about the people and the environment in Alaska that I don't have a chance to tell" Huntley said. "So we proposed this to the Discovery Channel as a highlight show looking at the many ways the environment affects life and work in Alaska, and surprisingly how many superlatives or extremes exist and affect daily life."

Huntley, who is drawn to the north because of its history and layers, was introduced to Alaska in 1991 while working in the Aleutians on the PBS science magazine show "Scientific American Frontiers" with Alan Alda.

"I went out to the story in the Aleutian Islands about the ancient technology of the baidarka and got stuck on Adak Island for a week because of fog - the plane couldn't get in. It was your typical Alaska experience, and right then I was just kind of hooked with the land and the people and the interaction between the two."

While Moore Huntley Productions acknowledge their home base in Massachussettes is about as far away as you can get from their subject, Huntley Moore embeds themselves in different communities for months at a time, which creates ties to different entities.

"We created close relationships with people from past documentaries with Alaska Light and Power (AEL&P), the Department of Transportation, Alaska State Troopers, the Coast Guard, and different organizations, and we kept in touch," Huntley explained.

It was these relationships that led to the story about the avalanche in Juneau.

"Last April when the transmission towers were knocked down, we went and filmed and it was one of the stories we suggested we should follow up on - and it unfortunately happened again this winter, so we were able to go out with the AEL&P crews when they were starting to work on repairing it," he said.

Huntley and his crew also rely on headlines from the Juneau Empire and other newspapers to lend authenticity to the segments. Some of the headlines are from the downed power lines, bear attacks in Anchorage and Mount Redoubt erupting.

"One thing we really try to do in our programs is relate to topical events, news and stories that affect everyone's lives, so throughout this show we have a number of stories that were newsworthy. We cite a lot of past events and news stories to make the case stronger that these are not isolated incidents but things that happen over and over again."

It is these conditions that sparked the idea for a show focusing just on the extreme environment and the challenges they pose.

"Having the highest mountains in North America, some of the coldest and harshest winters - the most snowfall ever in one place is Thompson Pass outside of Valdez - so having spent so much time in Alaska and learning so much about it and spending so much time with the people there, I started finding that all these extremes really speak to the challenges of living and working in Alaska," Huntley said. "The number of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and all those kinds of things sparked the idea of doing a show about the different extremes and the ways in which people have to deal with keeping the roads open and keeping the electricity on."

For more information about the show, visit www.discovery.com/alaskaweek.