Thursday, we had an even more exciting trip to Walakpa, which really messed up my back, so I was pretty much flat on my back when not actually working. I was going to do a post about that this morning, but when I woke up, there was very sad news. Pepe’s North of the Border burned to the ground last night.
There was some damage to the Top of the World Hotel, including the destruction of the entrance. As you can see, the bank building nearly caught fire as well. It’s charred and a lot of windows are broken, but the North Slope Borough Fire Department managed to save it. Much credit to them.
Fran Tate, who started and owns Pepe’s is quite ill, and in Anchorage for medical treatment. She’s donated a lot to her adopted hometown (free meals for school sports teams, food for bereaved families, fund-raising for children’s hospitals, just for starters) and here’s hoping some way can be found to help resurrect Pepe’s. We are going to be hurting for restaurant seats and catering here in Barrow if not.
Out of Ice and Time 
What a tragedy! The end of an era and an institution. My heart felt sympathies to Fran and Joe. And to the citizens of Barrow.
Good luck on recreating Pepe’s! A restaurant that has been around for a long time becomes so much more than JUST a restaurant.
Oh goodness! Sending healing thoughts to Fran and prayers to her and Joe. I can’t imagine Barrow without Pepe’s!
What an awesome effort by the NSBFD! This could have been so much worse given the close proximity of the downtown buildings….the photos indicate they kept it very enclosed, so assume the winds were in their favor, instead of the usual this time of year. Wow, what a trained team.
Oh no! I really hope that it can come back soon.
Fran says it will happen.
People have started leaving flowers by the Pepe’s location, like they do at the scene of a fatal accident. It really was more than a restaurant.
So Sad to hear this, I worked there as a cook in ’88, still have fond memories of the place and Fran.
I would really appreciate you giving me credit for these photographs given I’m the one who took them.
Unless you had my iPhone around midday on August 31, 2013, you didn’t take THESE pictures. I’m sure you took pictures, and no doubt they look very much the same since we were photographing the same thing, but I have these pictures in my iCloud account, with the auto labels sequentially between a picture of Perrier in a vending machine at the airport, and a picture of my late cat, so I took them.
I have them on my FB account and the SD card I used when snapping the photos. I made the front and back page of the print edition of ADN and the front page of their website. I know my own pictures.
Apparently you don’t know your own pictures. I very rarely use anyone else’s pictures and I always give credit when i do. The ones on WP have the same metadata (filename, timestamp, etc) as the ones in my iCloud. They were taken on an iPhone 5 (no SD card involved.) Unless you stole my iPhone, took the pictures, downloaded copies to your SD card somehow and used them, and then got my phone back to me so I could photograph my cat, these are CANNOT BE the pictures you took. I’m sure they look very similar because not much cleanup happened that day. There are probably 50 other people in town with similar pictures. However, I took these, and that’s a fact. End of discussion.