While tourists draped in ponchos meander down Lincoln Street, peering through the windows of Sitka’s gift shops and snapping pictures of the famous Russian Orthodox Cathedral, Melissa Lunas and Ariadne Will stand in the middle of a nearby alleyway to photograph a different site: a fairly large pothole.
“It looks like it’s been patched three times, if not four… that’s definitely Fat Pothole Week worthy,” remarked Lunas. Will agreed, remarking that it is “like a whole archipelago.”
As a lifelong Sitkan and a city planner, Will is no stranger to navigating Sitka’s potholes. But as the city began preparing its streets for the harsh winter months, Will noticed a parallel between the work the city does filling potholes and Katmai bears’ weight-gain journey she has followed along for years.
“My grandparents maintain a private driveway, and there’s always a lot of potholes there, and it’s always kind of a journey to get through them and get around them,” said Will. “And I think that felt a little similar to me is the journey of these bears gaining all this weight and eating all these fish and getting prepared for winter.”
After initially sharing the idea as a joke with her coworkers and friends, Will found it actually resonated with a lot of people. After pitching “Fat Pothole Week” to Lunas, the city’s public and government relations director, in late September, they called for community members to submit their best pothole pics. Then, much like Fat Bear Week, the potholes portraits will face off in a week-long bracket battle. The winner will be the first, but not only, pothole filled by the city’s public works crew.
Harry Greene is a city street superintendent. Given Sitka’s rainy climate and decades old streets, Greene says it’s an especially susceptible region for potholes.
“Well, the asphalt institute says there’s three enemies to asphalt and pavement,” said Greene. “The first one’s water, the second one’s water, and the third one’s water. So it’s the water we have, it’s these aging roads we have. We have to keep after the potholes that develop.”
When he heard about Fat Pothole Week, he hoped it would incentivize Sitkans to report them.
“We actually rely on people’s complaints to tell us that there’s a problem,” said Greene. “And because we can’t [hear from everybody], we don’t get it all. So [if Fat Pothole Week has] people tell us where there’s a pothole, I think it’s a good idea.”
As the submission deadline draws near, Will is optimistic that Fat Pothole Week will not only give Sitkans a laugh, but remind folks of the role they can play in preserving Sitka’s infrastructure.
“And I think that we’ve built a lot up in this town, and to be able to take care of it is really important,” said Will.
Lunas shares Will’s enthusiasm. She says that while the city often sends out surveys to gauge community interests, they have never done an initiative that connects their work to pop-culture events, and Fat Pothole Week is getting folks’ attention. Lunas is glad for that, especially because it spotlights the dedicated and often unseen work of Sitka’s streets crew.
“I would imagine that the community isn’t very familiar with our asset management and how Public Works has schedules for everything that they do, and so this is kind of a fun way to bring that to light a little bit,” said Lunas.
If it proves successful, Lunas believes that Fat Pothole Week could become a Sitka tradition for years to come. After all, street maintenance never ends, so there are plenty of Alley Archipelagos across Sitka for those with the eyes to see them.
The bracket voting for Fat Pothole Week begins on Sept. 30, and lasts until Oct. 4, with the winner announced on Oct. 5. To vote for your favorite potholes, check out the City of Sitka’s Facebook and Instagram.