Anyone hoping to pick up a last minute costume will only have Monday, Oct. 31 at 8 pm to pick up a costume at Dooley’s Costume and Tuxedo store in Anchorage. The local shop will close its doors for good after decades of existence in Alaska.
44-year-old Starla Heim is the owner of Dooley’s Tuxedos and Costumes in Anchorage. She’s been working at the store since she was 18 years old and helped run the business with her mother Rose Heim, and Doris Dooley, the original owner. But Ms. Dooley passed away in the early 90s and Rose passed four years ago. That took away much of the passion Starla Heim had for the business.
“And it hasn’t been the same without my mother,” Heim said. “It just hasn’t been the same at all. We were a great team. We did a lot of amazing things with this business and I’ve tried my best to continue that. And I’ve continued it as much as I can, but my passion is just gone.”
Heim said she’d originally tried to sell the business, but didn’t have any bites.
“We had it on the market for quite a while, and realized if no one wants to take it, we’re ready to be done and figured the best way to do it is to go out with a bang on Halloween Day,” Heim said.
While Dooley’s had some tuxedos on display, it was obvious the main attraction for the blowout was costumes. The store’s walls were covered with everything from children’s Marvel superhero costumes to adult Starflower hippie and sexy pirate costumes.
Heim said the store originally opened in Fairbanks in the mid 1940s, but it has been an Anchorage staple for so long, even she doesn’t know when the business migrated to Southcentral.
T”hat’s where it’s a little fuzzy for me because I don’t have the documented history,” Heim said. “I just know the stories that Doris Dooley would tell me and there was never an actual date, but she talked about the great flood in Fairbanks that brought her from Fairbanks, and from what I understand that was the mid to late 60s. And so it’s been in Anchorage since the mid to late 60s.”
Heim said that being a small mom and pop store in Alaska created challenges throughout the years. The emergence of online shopping in recent years is a large problem small family owned Alaska businesses face.
“Especially with the new age and the new times and everything on the Internet and all the big-box stores,” Heim explained. “It’s a battle to be a mom and pop store anymore. It’s a fight. And it’s just not a fight that we want to fight anymore.”
Heim said, the community response to the closing of the store has been positive, something she attributes, in part, to Dooley’s support for events for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the Special Olympics and the American Diabetes Association, among others. Heim said she’s happy she’s ending the business while she still feels attached to the community.
“It was this last prom season that I was able to help somebody and they were so extremely happy and I was so extremely happy. And I loved every minute of it,” Heim said. “But I still, when I was done, thought, ‘I don’t wanna do this anymore.’ Even though I was still happy and even though that used to make me think I loved doing this and this is something I wanna always do. That’s when I knew I was done, was when I still loved doing it, but knew I was still done.”
To any last minute Halloween shoppers, you’ll have until 8 p.m. tonight to stop by and grab a costume before Dooley’s closes for good.
Wesley Early covers Anchorage life and city politics for Alaska Public Media. Reach him at wearly@alaskapublic.org and follow him on X at @wesley_early. Read more about Wesley here.
