Summer has hit Alaska at last; can the Black Tape Project be far behind?

Think global warming. Then think Anchorage Duct Tape Ball with a lot less duct tape and a lot more exposed flesh.

What, you haven’t heard about the Black Tape Project, or caught the titillating online news stories about the latest “trend” sweeping the nation?

Forget the big hoopla about President Donald Trump giving the Russians classified information that CNN, the cable news service, claims it kept secret because to do otherwise would “endanger lives and destroy intelligence-gathering methods used to keep an eye on terrorist groups.”

There’s much more important news than the president letting the Russians in on secrets known only to the upper echelons of the U.S. government and CNN. Here’s what’s important:

“Naked women are going clubbing wearing nothing but tape”/Kansas City Star

“These vixens hit the club in nothing but electrical tape”/New York Post

Not so hot news

Spun as the hot trend of the day, Miami artist Joel Alvarez’s Black Tape project actually dates back almost a decade and has been slowly gaining attention. The Black Tape Project was at Jimmy’s Club Monaco in May 2014 and later the year popped up in Jamaica before spreading even more.

Clearly the trend was not a trend to start with but Alvarez stuck with it (take note all internet entrepreneurs) and worked it, worked it, worked it on social media. The Black Tape Projects Facebook page now has almost 480,000 followers. 

The project seems mainly about business. Alvarez puts on shows at clubs around the globe featuring black-taped models. Could Anchorage, the home of  the now 14-year-old Duct Tape Ball,  be next? According to the Post, it only costs about $55,000 to host a Black Tape event, although given the attention of late the price could be going up.

The Post reported that the project went “viral” after “a recent collaboration with the Jack Brewer Foundation and photographer, Michael Malone.”

The Post and the Daily Mail seem to have played key roles in spreading the virus. They were among the first mainstream media outlets to hype Black Tape this week, and it was subsequently picked by up websites around the globe.

“It’s certainly an eye-catching look,” Becky Pemberton at the Australian Sun reported today, adding that “the tape art movement has certainly not gone unnoticed online.”

It is the nature of the internet that all things go unnoticed until they are somehow elevated to a status that makes them impossible to go unnoticed.

Black Tape might be close to that status now. You can almost see the headline on the Alaska photos, can’t you?

“Women embrace Alaska midnight sun clothed in nothing but tape”

Just think, that could be a chance for the Alaska Travel Industry Association to put the final nail in the coffin of that old idea that glacier-laden Alaska is “Seward’s Icebox,” and replace it with the idea, Alaska is now “Obama’s Hotbox.”