Utqiagvik, Alaska: Beefcake in the Most Isolated Town in the U.S.

Utqiagvik, Alaska (previously Barrow) is the most isolated town in the U.S.  You can't drive in or out.  Everything has to be flown in from Fairbanks (a 3 1/2 hour flight). so everything is frightfully expensive ($16 for a chicken sandwich at Artic Pizza.)

4,500 residents, 60% Inupiat (but only a few speak the Inupiaq language).  Although the town hosted the first same-sex wedding in the state, there are only four open lesbian residents and no gay men.

There's not a lot going on. The Inupiat Heritage Center has some exhibits, the Pluraagvik Recreation Center has a gym, and you can go on a tour of the tundra..And you can go physique watching.

There are only 226 students at Barrow High School, home of the Whales, but they are eager to take off their shirts whenever feasible.

When wrestling.

Or at the beach (for looking, not swimming -- the water is below 32 degrees and quite dangerous)

But there are always intrepid tourists who attempt a "Polar Plunge."

Back to the high school.  Powerlifting.

Winning a "school spirit" award.

But, strangely enough, not on a vacation in Hawaii.  Too hot to go shirtless!

Kotzebue: The Land without Beefcake

Talk about isolation: Kotzebue, Alaska is farther north than Nome, 30 miles above the Arctic Circle, a 2 hour flight from Anchorage (you have to go by plane).

There are 3,200 people, 70% Native American; 22%  speak an Eskimo-Aleut language at home.  In the winter, the temperature hovers around 0; in the summer, it can get as high as 60.

There are 5 restaurants in town, which is not very many for 3,000  people:  Bayside, Little Louie's, Nullagvik, Empress Chinese, and Uutuku.  No fast food?

Kotzebue is not really tourist friendly; in fact, it's been named as the most toxic town in the United States, due to the Red Dog Mine releasing 700 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the air every year.

But surely there's some beefcake to be seen.

Kotzebue Middle/High School, home of the Huskies, naturally, offers volleyball, wrestling, crosscountry, and basketball.  But no photographs of the wrestlers, the crosscountry runners run wearing shirts,  the volleyball team seems to be all girls, and the basketball team...well.

They don't even offer bodybuilding, like the rest of Alaska high schools.  Key word searches on Kotzebue "dating men," "shirtless," "muscle," "powerlifting,"  and "crossfit" yielded only a black and white photo of two guys at a birthday party in Nome.

And former president Obama, for some reason.

The top photo shows two guys from Mississippi, and below, Mesa, Arizona,.

Two takeaway points:

1. Always look for the beefcake photos before you research the town, not after.

2. Stick to the Sun Belt.

The Orange Bodybuilders of Alaska High Schools

Bodybuilding is not a popular sport among adolescents, who generally lack the time for two 3-hour long workouts per day and the funds for the expensive protein powders and vitamin supplements. And I've never heard of it being offered as a sport in high schools, although sometimes you can practice weightlifting or powerlifting.

Then I heard about Alaska.

I guess when it's dark throughout the school year, there aren't many outdoor sports to engage in, so Alaska high schoolers pump iron.  Bodybuilding is not exactly a sport, more of a club, but it's very popular, with annual exhibitions and all-state contests.

Anchorage is especially active, with bodybuilding clubs at North, South, West, and Chugiak High Schools.  But high schools in Fairbanks, Juneau, Bethel, Homer, and Ketchikan participate.














Bodybuilding in Alaska seems to be a white man's (and white woman's) game.  This is the only Alaskan native I saw among the competitors, Mr. South High.

Although it's not easy to distinguish racial groups when everyone has a creepy orange painted-on tan.

Oranger and oranger.  But to be fair, they probably don't know what a natural tan looks like.

I never thought I'd say this, but I'm getting tired of looking at orange bodybuilders.  How about a nice wrestler from Bethel, Alaska?

The Bygone Boys of Lake City, Tennessee

I was interested in this photograph from the Bygone Boys tumblr blog, originally from the Tennessee State Library Department of Conservation: two boys with nearly identical faces, one shirtless, facing each other.

The caption says that they are Frank and Bill Burton of Lake City, Tennessee, with their pet deer Bucky, July 1952.

Here's another picture of Bill Burton and Bucky.

There's another picture in the archive of Mrs. William Charles Burton outside her cabin near Norris Dam, with her sons Dan Ray (age 6) and Joe Mack (age 3) and their pet deer "Bucky."  Photo taken in June 1952.

I'm guessing they're Frank and Bill's cousins (not brothers -- Dan Ray's obituary doesn't mention them).

That deer really got around.

Lake City, Tennesee, about 25 miles north of Knoxville, was originally named Coal Creek.  It became Lake City in 1936, after the construction of the Norris Dam created Norris Lake.  In 2014 it changed its name to Rocky Top, to take advantage of the popular country-western song which glamorizes moonshine, wild sex, and shooting outsiders (also used as the University of Tennessee fight song).

William Burton is a very common name, so the only other likely piece of information I could find about him was from the Lakeville Town Crier in 1956: he had been transferred from Fairbanks to Nome, Alaska.

He was about 20 years old.  There was no U.S. military base in Nome in 1956, so what job did he have that got him a transfer?

After that, the leads dry up.

But I did find Joe Mack Burton, Bill's "cousin," living in Moose Pass, Alaska, a town of 200 on the Kenai Peninsula, consisting of a few lodges,  restaurants, and a "Trading Post."

In those days you often moved to where you had relatives to stay with.  So apparently when Joe Mack grew up, after his older brother died, he followed his older cousin Bill to Alaska, where they went camping, hiking, hunting, and fishing, and maybe opened a hunting lodge.

No wives are listed for either of them.  Doubtless they preferred the world of men.