Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
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Bad Girls
FAITHFUL READERS OF THIS COLUMN
will know that I am no shopper. Give me a catalogue
or a website and a credit card and I'm good to go on everything from blue jeans to floor
lamps.
This unashamed anti-American uncapitalism extends to holiday bazaars, of which there
have to be at least 439,572 in Anchorage alone. I mean, really, how many crocheted jam jar
covers, moose turd tree ornaments and painted gold pans is one woman supposed to buy?
But there is one bazaar I never miss. When I tell you it's called the Bad Girls of the
North, you begin to understand. The brain child of artisans Carol Green and Vickie Potter,
who, Carol says, “wanted to create a craft show with an atmosphere that was top notch.”
Vickie's husband, inspired by a famous Alaskan photograph of two polar bears titled
“Bad Boys of the Arctic,” named the bazaar, and Carol and Vickie started jurying vendors.
Even the most cursory look will tell you that only the very best artists and craftsmen make
the cut. Now in its sixth year, Bad Girls started out at the Northern Lights Inn with
“twenty-one or twenty-two vendors,” Carol says. The following year they moved down-
town to the Fourth Avenue Theater, and this year they've got forty-one vendors, plus
they've added two more bazaars, one in the Matanuska Valley and one in Fairbanks.
Traditionally Bad Girls opens Fridays from 4-9 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5
p.m. I've never been to a Friday night Bad Girls opening that doesn't make a salmon
spawning stream in July look positively roomy. It might have something to do with the fact
that they serve wine and hors d'oeuvres opening night, and that there is music, Denise
Martin on hammer dulcimer and Jim Kerr on acoustic guitar. And did I mention? Admis-
sion is free. I was still short Christmas gifts for my Aunty Pat and my cousin Deb, so my
friend Rhonda and I were first in the door of this year's Bad Girls, followed by literally
