So Long, Little Dipper Diner
What’s left is just another darkened diner and a reminder that “owning the libs” doesn’t pay the rent.
I'm not an expert, but nine years seems like a good run for any Anchorage diner. But this week, Little Dipper Diner, which made headlines in 2020 for challenging the city’s pandemic health orders, announced it’s closing for good.
In a farewell Facebook post, the owners thanked loyal customers for their “unwavering support” and cited the usual suspects - pandemic aftershocks and runaway costs - although curiously, they made no direct correlation between increased costs and the disastrous Trump regime in their post.
It’s hard not to feel a little conflicted reading the news of the closing of an establishment that helped fuel the COVID culture wars in Anchorage and pitted neighbor against neighbor. As I've said numerous times over the years, I know Anchorage has a short-term memory when it comes to politics, but it's good to remember that it was Little Dipper Diner who decided the municipality's emergency orders didn’t apply to them. When they asked the Alaska Supreme Court to intervene, the justices politely declined.
It is, perhaps, worth noting that the diner closed nearly five years to the day after the Alaska Supreme Court denied their petition for review.
Anchorage has always had a strange relationship with defiance. The story of Little Dipper was never just about needing to sell unhealthy fried foods. It was about that uniquely Alaskan mix of stubborn libertarian independence and selective law-and-order outrage. Like Kriner's Diner, Little Dipper Diner reflected the frustration and fatigue of a city fraying at the edges, where every debate somehow turned into a freedom fight.
Now, the diner’s lights are off for good, even after a GoFundMe failed to raise the $7,500 it claimed was needed to keep the once-flashpoint open. The same crowd that once rallied behind “freedom fries” apparently had better things to do when the check came due.
In the end, the Little Dipper didn’t fall to government overreach. It fell to the slow fade of a movement that mistook manufactured outrage and defiance for purpose...a culture war built on performative victimhood that burned hot, loud, and short as the crowds moved on to the next imagined tyranny. What’s left is just another darkened diner and a reminder that “owning the libs” doesn’t pay the rent.
