Anchorage

In Fairview, abandoned couches and an affection for the unremarkable

Near an apartment building at 14th Avenue and Ingra Street in Anchorage, Adan Hernandez knelt, took out his phone and snapped a photo of a beige, sagging couch sitting in the front yard.

"It's just out of place, this couch shouldn't be here," Hernandez said before he took the shot. "That's what I like about it."

Snow was pelting down, burying most of the couch. Hernandez posted the picture later to his Instagram account, @ataritacos. He included the hashtag "#day57," to mark how many consecutive days he'd taken a photo of that couch.

Hernandez, 37, is a Fairview resident, new dad and bicycle enthusiast who spends most of his time working at his family's taco business. But in between, he affectionately chronicles Fairview's abandoned couches and misplaced furniture, along with what he calls "everyday stuff."

Some examples: A washing machine in front of a tri-colored warehouse with a tilted roof. Fog blurring the lights in a movie theater parking lot. A smiley face traced in snow on a chain-link fence. Jeans, dirty, frayed and rumpled, on the street.

In his photos there are RVs and tire marks.  

Hernandez isn't a professional photographer. But he's spent his entire life here and he wants to capture the Anchorage that isn't shown in postcards.

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"I feel like there's plenty of pictures of northern lights and moose," Hernandez said. "This is just kind of the everyday stuff you might step on and miss it."

His Instagram photos show slivers of personal life. In one, his wife skates on Potter Marsh with their infant daughter in a stroller. In another, their cat sleeps with its paws on a stack of dollar bills.

But for the past three years, Hernandez has honed in on couches. Couches are personal, in a way, Hernandez said — like somebody's roommate.

"They lived with this thing for years sometimes, and now it's just kind of out on the street."

He thinks it was a comment on an Instagram photo of the Ingra couch that gave him the idea to take the same picture every day. He frames it so the front range of the Chugach Mountains is visible on a clear day. Houses and a coffee stand are closer in the background.

He usually photographs the couch on his way to and from work, he said. Now it's like a ritual, "like watching the ocean."

Every day, the couch is a little bit different, he said.

#ingracouchdiaryproject #couchblog #day14 #thepeoplesrepublikoffairview #alaska

A photo posted by @ataritacos on

Hernandez grew up in Anchorage. He and his dad and his brother run a small taco trailer on Third Avenue and Post Road near downtown Anchorage — Oscar's Taco Grande, after Hernandez's dad. It's a small place, cash only. They serve up tacos, burritos and chile rellenos.  

Hernandez's dad is originally from Mexico City and moved to Anchorage in 1964, right after the Good Friday earthquake. He started the taco business in 1978; Hernandez was born the next year.

The family lived in Midtown Anchorage, though it was still part of Spenard back then, he said.

More than a decade ago, Hernandez bought a house in Fairview. In 2007, he listed the "People's Republic of Fairview" as his place of residence on MySpace.

Fairview is one of the city's oldest neighborhoods, a sometimes-jarring mix of cozy single-family homes, colonnade-style apartment buildings and auto-repair shops stuck into side streets. Hernandez sees a long-discussed road project to build a highway through the neighborhood as a big uncertainty for potential investors.

Fairview, he said, is a neighborhood eternally "on the verge." But he hasn't seen dramatic changes since he moved in.

Like his daily photos of the Ingra couch, the changes are subtle. In the past two years, a liquor store near 13th Avenue and Gambell Street closed. A surgery center opened a few blocks away.

At the same time, it's never occurred to Hernandez to move somewhere else in town. Maybe Spenard, he said. But he maintains Spenard has lost some of its "edge."

"Maybe when you leave yoga and like, you know, there was a candy wrapper on the way to your car, that was an edgy day in Spenard," Hernandez said, laughing. "I feel like Fairview definitely still has it."

Walking in the alleys behind the Carrs grocery store, Hernandez pointed out what he calls the "Fairview Thrift Store," where recycling bins are often filled with junk from people's houses — couches, mattress, workout equipment, TVs. He picked up a filing cabinet there one time.

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Nearby was a pair of chairs, one with a footrest, the other without. Hernandez snapped a photo.

"Glad to see these two are still together," he wrote later on Instagram.

There's always a chance the Ingra couch will suddenly vanish as mysteriously as it arrived, ending his photo ritual. If that happens, Hernandez has some ideas for what he'll do next, though he won't say what those are.

But Hernandez isn't too concerned.

"It's been here for 56 days now, and at this point, I don't think it's going anywhere," Hernandez said.

As a proud Fairview resident, neither is he.

Devin Kelly

Devin Kelly was an ADN staff reporter.

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