Anchorage Daily News

From the mod kids with their skinny jeans and black hair to the gangster-cool ones in oversized pants and backward baseball caps, the teens crowd the tables and food lines. Some stand sipping sodas while greeting friends with snappy handshakes. One kid eats by himself, a math book open on the table with a graphing calculator next to it.

The smell of baking food surfs the air.

This might be any high school cafeteria in Anchorage. But it's not. It's Costco, the East Anchorage big-box store invaded by dozens of students every school day.

Across the city, when lunch bells ring, thousands of high school kids hit the streets on foot or in cars headed for their own mini-cafeterias at fast food restaurants, grocery stores and gas station convenience stores.

It's a tradition that has been repeated around the United States for decades: Escaping school grounds -- driven by food or a taste of freedom -- and stretching their boundaries toward adulthood. In Anchorage, schools allow this because every public high school is an open campus, meaning kids can come and go.

"This is just one more step to help them become independent and prepare them for life outside of school," said Heidi Embley, district spokeswoman.

On the east side of town, high schoolers break into quick steps along Bragaw Street just after 10:25 a.m. That's a time of day when some locals might still be eating breakfast, but it's lunch time for these East High teens, who start classes at 7:30. The stream of kids transform the normally empty sidewalk to what looks like a crowded school hallway. They clutch notebooks or hold bookbags, in groups or alone. Most are headed to the Holiday Stationstore several blocks away. Others will venture further to Costco. They don't dawdle. They have 45 minutes to get out, get fed and get back to class.

Around the same time, Muldoon Road becomes crowded with cars packed with Bartlett High School students on their way to fast-food restaurants on the strip -- McDonald's, Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Across town, West High teens cross Northern Lights Boulevard to a Carrs store, where they join lines at the grocery's Chinese-food counter or load up on energy drinks, soda and donuts.

CROWDED CAFETERIAS

Recently, one freshman who was at Carrs standing in front of the cold sodas while holding gummy worms, a Mountain Dew and a Ruby Red Squirt, said he doesn't really eat lunch. "This is what we normally do."

Krystal Beers, 16, held a Monster Energy caffeine-loaded soda and a premade sandwich, as she was waiting with a friend in the Starbucks line in Carrs. She comes here a lot, she said. "It gets us out of school," she explained.

To kids on the verge of adulthood, there can be a euphoria to off-campus lunch, especially to the juniors and seniors with driver's licenses, said Mary DuHoux, a school psychologist at East High. "It's their first time at freedom. They have a car. They have a friend," she said. "They get to go anywhere they want."

The downside is some drive too fast to get back to campus, or are tardy or skip afternoon classes altogether. "There's no way to monitor them," DuHoux said.

When kids leave campus for lunch, they also relieve what can be crowded school cafeterias, said East principal Michael Graham. If all 2,200 students stayed at his school, there wouldn't be room in the food hall, he said. Already, the multiple lines for the different eating options -- the prepared meal, Papa John's pizza, Subway or the salad bar -- can stretch 30 people deep.

"It would take the whole lunch to stand in line," said Jack Hanrahan, an East student, who was recently at the Holiday gas station picking out a meatloaf sandwich and a cheeseburger from under the orange glow of a heat lamp.

FULL HOUSE

Stephanie Dickerson, a Holiday manager, estimates more than 50 East kids visit the gas station on the weekdays. She said they spend about $5 each, with most buying at least one energy soda. "The rush is wild," she said.

When they show up, she mans the entrance and makes the kids wait in line outside. Backpacks are left at the door.

"Hey guys, as soon as they check out, I'll let you in," she recently told about six anxious looking teens shifting back and forth, standing outside the glass door, eyeing the goodies on the other side.

Two cashiers at the register worked the machines. One kid bought a six-pack of orange-flavored Sunkist.

Kendra Charles, who just started at East, said she first came to the gas station for lunch when an older friend introduced her to it. She visits a couple of times a week even though she is eligible for a free lunch at school. "They don't have soda and chips at school," said the teen, fumbling for singles crumpled in her coat pocket.

Charles is one of the estimated 700 kids entitled to free or reduced cost lunch at East who regularly doesn't take it. Principal Graham says that of the 1,100 who qualify, only about 400 teens take full advantage of the federal program.

ROAD TRIP

The kids who eat at the nearby Costco usually pack into cars together for the trip to what they say is cheaper, better tasting food.

Some kids come practically every day. Like Jarrell Daniel, 16, who recently sat with five friends, all eating big pizza slices. As he talked enthusiastically about the food, his gold chain swung back and forth across his chest. He said he comes with "the dudes I kick it with in school" because, "the pizza is bomb."

Moises Martin, a 19-year-old senior at Bartlett High, said he usually decides where he and his friends will eat because he's the one with a car, and this day the destination was Costco because he loves the Chicken Bake roll.

"It's kind of cool over here," said his younger brother, 17-year-old Angel. "There's people from East, West, everywhere. They come over here. ... It's different schools. It's whoever wants to come."

He said he usually gets two sandwiches "because I'm a big guy. ... You gotta get food when you go to class."

His friend, a 17-year-old who calls himself Little, said, "We just come over here to be chilling. ... To get out of school."

The store can resemble a school cafeteria so much, that Costco manager Bob Ripley said there are times that he or his staff have to "scurry in there and calm things down."

"It's kind of like a school cafeteria, it doesn't change that they are in here."

The students are good business for his store, though. Food Court supervisor Marilyn Rubio said every school day she has to rev up for the rush and bake extra pizzas.

Find Megan Holland online at adn.com/contact/mholland or call 257-4343.

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