In Ketchikan, Alaska, you can acquire an Omega Seamaster wristwatch on a stainless steel bracelet with the coaxial escapement. The 41mm version of the quintessential dive watch retails for around $6,000. The population of Ketchikan is a few ticks over 8,000. None of this made any sense to me as I stood baffled in one of the town’s umpteen jewelry boutiques.
It was May 2018 and I had boarded the Alaska Marine Highway ferry in Bellingham, Washington. The charming two-day voyage through the Inside Passage anchored up in Ketchikan where I disembarked. The ferry ride itself is worthy of its own blog post, which I will pen at some point in the future. But first, Ketchikan.
After dropping my bags at my room at the Inn at Creek Street, I hit the town. First stop was breakfast at the restaurant on the ground floor of the New York Hotel. After two days of munching on crumbling granola bars and the standard bland fare aboard the ferry, a proper meal sounded like the cure. Apparently, I was not alone in my reasoning as I spotted other ferry riders taking a seat in the restaurant; we acknowledged each other with a modest smile and a nod. Nothing like the creamy goodness and stick-to-your-ribs heartiness of eggs benedict on a chilly morning accompanied by a hot cup of strong coffee. The meal satisfied and provided fuel for my Ketchikan walkabout.
Next to the hotel and restaurant was the Creek Street historic district. An elevated wooden boardwalk hovering above Ketchikan Creek, the attraction was in turns quirky and cliched. There were the usual tourist junk shops selling umbrellas, cheesy t-shirts, and every piece of plastic ephemera imaginable branded with the word “Alaska” and appended by an image of either a bald eagle, salmon, or bear. But there were also bars, restaurants, and the seemingly quaint Dolly’s House, a museum of sorts celebrating the area’s sordid past. Until 1954, prostitution was tolerated in this corner of Ketchikan and a suite of brothels sat perched upon stilts above the creek. There was even a sign marking the “Married Man’s Trail,” a clandestine path that discretely delivered trekkers to the red light district’s many houses of ill fame.
After exploring the Creek Street scene, I wandered into the heart of town. After strolling a few blocks, I started noticing something a little odd: there was at least one jewelry store on nearly every street. Sure, some were small affairs selling locally made bead earrings, mood rings, dental floss-thin chains plated in 10 karat gold, and the like. But others were serious outfits—four- and five-figure type places—that were peddling more than just mass produced, die cut detritus. After noticing the pattern and quizzically glancing into a number of glitzy display windows I finally came upon a location emblazoned with the corporate logos of the Swiss semi-haute horology icons.
What the hell? My interests piqued, I popped inside to take a look. I guess I half expected to find cases full of fugazi Rolleks watches and Taiwanese-made Cartiers. After all, why in the world would there be an Omega authorized dealer in Ketchikan?
To my astonishment, the place was legit. I chatted up a slick-haired salesman who showed me a collection of Seamasters: blue dial, black dial, grey dial, Diver 300’s—this one is worn by James Bond!—Aqua Terras, and Planet Oceans. He was ready to deal. What can I do to have you walk out with this on your wrist today?
Dumbstruck, I continued ambling on. More shops, more rubies, emeralds, platinum, rose gold, rings, brooches, chains, and various other blinged-out accoutrements. Yes, there were also emporiums selling paintings by local artists, snacks, XtraTuf rain boots, and so forth. But every corner I turned seemed to reveal another treasure trove of gilded ornamentation just a few steps beyond a common glass door.
It was also hard not to notice that the folks working the counters at these shops appeared to represent a vast array of global ethnicities. I saw women wearing hijabs, heard either Russian or some Eastern European dialect being spoken, and most definitely recognized the sound of banda music emanating from a shop with diamonds in the window. With a tuba pumping away in the background, I casually browsed the cases of goods and said hello to a dark haired man with a mustache. He seemed friendly enough and thus I asked him the question that had been brewing in my mind for the past hour.
“What’s going on here in Ketchikan? Why are there so many jewelry stores?”
“So many jewelry stores?”
“Yeah, why are there so many jewelry stores? I mean, I see one or two on almost every block. Seems weird in this small town to have so many.”
“Well, it’s for the tourists. Lots of cruise ships stop in Ketchikan. It’s for them.”
“So, people get off the cruise ships in Ketchikan for the day and spend thousands of dollars on jewelry and watches? Really?”
“Yeah, you know, it’s their wife’s birthday or their anniversary and to celebrate or remember the trip they buy a gold necklace or some diamond earrings or something.”
“Hmm, interesting, I would not have guessed that, but I suppose that makes sense. I also noticed the people running the stores don’t appear to be locals. It looks like it’s people from all over the world.”
“Oh yeah, lots of people from all over come for the season and then go back home. Like me and my family own a jewelry store back home in Mexico City. We come to Alaska for cruise season in the summer and then go back to Mexico. We have the two stores. When I am in Alaska my brother runs our store in Mexico.”
And thus, my two-minute education in the Ketchikan jewelry industry. In a way, it should have been more obvious to me. Ketchikan is most definitely a major port-of-call on the Alaska cruise circuit. Every day I was there, starting around 9am and lasting until about 4pm, the town was flooded with thousands of tourists who had just stepped on dry land for the first time in 12 or 24 hours. You know the crowd: white gym socks with sandals, floppy bucket hats, poofy grandma hairdos, huddled in groups of four and six, Madge from Milwaukee and Hank from Tulsa, cracking grumpy jokes, complaining about perceived inconveniences, worrying about what time to head back to the ship lest they be left behind.
Whenever I chatted with waiters at restaurants or baristas in coffee shops and mentioned I had just arrived in Ketchikan they always asked if I had travelled via cruise ship. “No, I rode the ferry up from Bellingham.” After a couple of days, I realized this line was often greeted with a surprised “oh!” and seemed to garner me a shred of Alaskan street cred. Yep, just roughin’ it with the regular folk on the ferry, not one of those damn city slickers who voyaged in on the “Alaskan Princess” 12-story-tall mega city with a rudder that’s docked out front. Nope, a real man of the people, a true old war-horse.
Ketchikan was a neato little town, if a bit scattered. I ate fairly well, drank some local beer, and read the historical marker signs about the area’s pioneering Filipino population. People were generally warm and the keeper of the Inn at Creek Street was a pretty cool lady. The museum housing some impressive totem poles was very much worth the visit. Although small, the town managed to feel a bit sprawly and discombobulated. While definitely Alaska, it also managed to emit a slight vibe of Any-Tourist-Town USA. But with logging and fishing not what they once were, the folks in this outpost at the southeast tip of “The Last Frontier” still had to make a living. I suppose if you aren’t trolling for salmon or chopping down the Tongass National Forest, then selling Seamasters to Midwestern 70-somethings is a sensible route to go.