Juneau's Happiest Lodging: With Outdoor Dining!
Written: Sep 27 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: B&B atmosphere and service at 2-digit prices. Great staff and location.
Cons: The plastic-wrapped oranges hanging from the grapevines look a little forlorn
The Bottom Line: Unlike most of the "hospitality industry", this is true hospitality!
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| Urbanist's Full Review: Silverbow Inn |
There are plenty of reasons to be unhappy in Juneau (see separate review), but for a slice of happiness Silverbow Inn is the place. Run by a very enthusiastic couple, Silverbow is a small B&B in a historic downtown building attached to the town's most popular bagelry. (All bagels nonfat, even the cinnamon!) And if you come here off-season, you won't face the usual breakfast spread. They'll just tell you to go into the bagelry and have breakfast on the house. As a veteran of countless grim continental breakfasts, I found this an excellent deal. The bagelry can give you any imaginable sandwich on any imaginable bagel, and the staff seems, well, happy to be in Juneau.
Silverbow is so relentlessly upbeat that it often pokes fun at itself. Although it is usually raining (or worse) and it's almost never what a lower-48er would call warm, the Silverbow still offers an outdoor dining experience. Just outside the front door of the bagelry, a small garden with three tables invites you to dine in fresh, if cold, air. The "garden" consists of a struggling vine across the rooftop trellis, from which various fruits, each wrapped in plastic, dangle like christmas ornaments. Citrus seems to be the predominant theme ...
A tarp protects you from the rain, and side tarps break up the prevailing wind into little invigorating breezes. I've visited twice, once in August (50 degrees, raining) and again in September (50 degrees, raining). Both times people were actually dining out here.
I wouldn't recommend the Silverbow to dour conservatives, though I'm sure they'd welcome open-minded, whimsical conservatives. For example, though I was the only gay guest during my stay, they do advertise in gay-travel venues, which is what first led me to them. It was also election season, and unlike most hotels they weren't ashamed about posting prominent signs announcing their generally leftward favorites.
But the rooms? Oh, who spends time in the rooms? The wallpaper is a little kitsch for me, but at least it's specifically kitsch as opposed to the universal blah of carbon-copy hotels. Careful decorating has made the smallness of the rooms come across as coziness. Various oddities, such as a support pillar in the middle of the small room, remind you that you're in a building that's genuinely historic, and that's been many things in its 100+ years.
The shared spaces are designed in "salon" style, every vertical service covered with small photographs or artwork. You can trace the renovation of the building, the history of Juneau, and the various stages of the proprietors' marriage, or at least of their hair. An unusual preponderance of early 20c photos of young women in bathing suits is diverting, though in retrospect these displays made me wonder why, given how the beautiful outdoor dining garden, they hadn't managed to add a pool. This IS the Alaskan Riviera after all ...
So please, if you stay in Juneau, skip the grim cookie-cutter Goldbelt (see review) and spend about the same money on a place that actually cares, where the folks at the front desk are probably the owners, and where when they actually mean it when they say they hope they'll see you again.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Urbanist
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Location: San Francisco
Reviews written: 78
Trusted by: 72 members
About Me:
Streetwise, academically credentialed gay renaissance man. For real bio, click "more" in profile.
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