Lawbreakers caught with their pants down

Dozens of grainy clips picturing a parade of public piddlers have been piling up on the popular online video clearing-house for months, picking up hundreds of hits.

All that's causing a stir in a section of town struggling to shed a seedy image.

The videos are the work of Richard "Ziggy" Zeigler -- muralist, inventor, dog trainer, video documentarian, shoe-shine man and frequently indignant aging hippie who lives and works in his shop next to Avenue Bar, a recently-updated hot spot for 20-somethings. For the last few months, Zeigler has been posting footage from his surveillance camera of men clandestinely baptizing his front door. He's also put up a few clips of over-served young ladies swerving in to puke.

Zeigler says he turned to YouTube after police and politicians and the owners of the Avenue didn't do enough to stop the deposits of fluid.

"I can't deal with it any other way. I thought it'd be enough humiliation maybe they wouldn't be doing it anymore."

But he thought wrong.

GOTTA CLEAN IT UP

It happens pretty much the same every time. Around 2:30 or 3 a.m. after the bars have closed, there's a group of people standing around the Avenue waiting for cabs and smoking. That's when one of them -- a youngish man in a ball cap, or a hoodie, or a baggy pair of pants -- looks one way, then another, then unzips and saunters into Zeigler's alcove just out of sight of his friends. Or, maybe a little earlier-on, a young woman and her friend come out. She holds her head. She bends over. And, well, you know.

Sometimes the camera picks up the sound of liquid hitting pavement.

"This is called more of a health issue than anything else," Zeigler said, standing behind the counter of his shoe-repair business/Alaska Native trading post on a recent afternoon.

"I gotta clean it up. And then when it's frozen, I kind of chip it up and sweep it to their side of the street."

"Public excretion," which isn't just peeing by the way, is against city code, according to Dave Parker, spokesman for the Anchorage Police Department. Getting caught means a $75 fine and an embarrassing notation in court records. Vomiting in public is not illegal, he said. As far as biohazards go, vomit is more of a concern than urine, which is generally sterile.

GOTTA GO

Avenue owner John Pattee hadn't seen the videos until recently. Some of the offenders came from his bar, and he's not happy about it. But Zeigler's attitude hasn't made the situation any better, he said.

Pattee tangled with Zeigler several times over the last few months on a number of issues, from complaints about sidewalk smoke drifting into Zeigler's business to the late-night peeing. He says Zeigler has been unreasonable. At one point, he painted a "don't cross this" line on the side-walk outside the bar, Pattee said.

"I've tried to take steps. I offered to pay for some kind of good-looking type of barricade (to protect his business)."

Zeigler refused. He has an appetite for the public spotlight, Pattee said. He wants to draw traffic to YouTube.

"He wants anarchy. ... He doesn't want to try and solve it. He doesn't want to put a barrier up there because if he does, he's out of business."

Most of the videos were shot about the time the bar was letting out and people were waiting around for cabs. Pattee would rather people wait inside the bar, where they have access to the bathroom. He's hoping the Assembly will pass a rule to let patrons stay indoors once the bar stops serving alcohol. It would reduce all kinds of problems from public urination to sexual assaults, he said. There aren't enough cabs to accommodate everyone at once.

"Some of them are out there a half-hour, 45 minutes, and they gotta pee," he said.

TICKETS UP

Zeigler has a theory that rogue urination has increased citywide as well as on his block since implementation of the city's smoking ban, because more people are hanging around smoking outside.

Police did see a 46 percent increase in public excretion tickets, from 50 to 73, between 2006 and 2007, Parker said. So far in 2008, there have been 77 tickets issued. The number is so small compared to the overall population of bar-goers, it's hard to say whether the increase is a trend or just a statistical anomaly, Parker said.

It's a perennial problem in any neighborhood where there are a lot of bars, according to APD Sgt. Paul Padgett, who's been working Fourth Avenue for 15 years.

"I don't know if that's any worse or better," he said. " We find that it decreases with the temperature."

Pattee agreed that more people smoking outside might be adding to the problem. But, that's out of his hands. He lobbied against the ban but it passed anyway.

At the Army Navy Store, a retail anchor on the block, customer service supervisor Matt Marth said issues with bar patrons wax and wane over the years. Bar owners crack down and then get lax. Maybe lately, they've been lax.

"I don't think it's a new problem," he said.

At Rippie World, where a couple of regulars tried their luck at pull tabs on a recent afternoon, Thane Holm, who was manning the counter, recalled a recent incident.

"This one guy just whipped it out right there," he said, pointing out the window.

NOT DICEY ANYMORE

Some might say the dog-eared block between D and C, sandwiched between the Avenue and the Panhandle bars, is the last stretch of old Fourth Ave, the last vestige of a time when the street lived up to a wild reputation burnished by a rough-edged pipeline-era bar scene. Chris Schutte, executive director of Anchorage Downtown Partnership, said the Avenue has become a bright spot on the block. Once a sleepy dive, Pattee hired new managers, updated the interior and made it a destination for the vibrant crowd of young patrons.

"Those changes have really had a profound impact," he said.

The same demographic that's now going to the Avenue has been revitalizing the nighttime scene for years along the western part of the street, he said. Fourth Avenue has gone from a dicey, even scary, neighborhood to a place with healthy tourist traffic during the day and healthy bar traffic at night, he said.

"It's probably the best example of what a minor change in an establishment can have in the establishment of a neighborhood," he said.

As for Zeigler's problems, Schutte said they could likely be fixed with a barrier, some lighting and attention from bouncers at the Avenue.

"Do I think there is a troubling rash of public urination? No," he said.

It's bad behavior, but it's not unique to Fourth Avenue, he said.

"I can't tell you how many times I've walked out of Koot's and seen someone peeing on someone's car."

Find Julia O'Malley online at adn.com/contact/jomalley or call 257-4591.