Sewards Folly
Posted: Sun Feb 19, 2017 2:52 pm
I've had the opportunity to spend a lot of time in Anchorage this winter. For those who have never been there, the city has a much bigger feel to it than one would expect for a metro with ~450,000 people (about 100,000 of which are in a smattering of relatively distant exurban communities such as Wasilla - home of Sarah Pallin). The city has an urban downtown area and a semi-urban midtown area with a smattering of more suburban nodes to the south and northeast. I was really surprised how urban downtown is. There is a lot of life in the downtown area - restaurants, condos (albeit not immediately downtown), a lot of retail (sadly more than KC's downtown) and a startling number of homeless. The latter surprised me considering how brutally harsh winters are here.
Other than climate, there are some very different things about this city and what you would find in the lower 48 - an extremely transient population, a core of people with extreme viewpoints on life (at least they strike me as extreme) who are here because of the frontier setting and will never leave, and an oversized aviation industry. Despite dwarfing Texas in size, The state has probably (just guessing) far less road mileage than even Missouri. People get to the outlying communities by flying and Anchorage is the hub with two very busy airports and a Fedex hub. There's also an air force base housing F22's which are pretty active and loud. I've met a ton of pilots in my short time here. The city is full of hotels to accommodate the transient population (north slope oil fields and tourism are rotational/seasonal work) and the place is crawling with tourists in the summer. The neighborhoods are not particularly dense and there is no traditional semi urban "nice part of town". The neighborhoods in the city tend to be very mixed (and expensive - three quarters of a million will buy you a 1800 sq ft house or condo downtown). The rich tend to live high on the foothills of the Chugach Mountains where they can wake up to views of Denali every morning.
It's not a place I would want to stay for a long time. The winters are long, dark and brutal and it's an extremely expensive place to live. Even more expensive when you start buying the toys necessary for life (4WD, studded snow tires, snowblower, Gortex) and those you want for recreation (fat tire snow bikes at $3000 per pop, snowmobiles, fishing equipment) but even a trip to the grocery store or paying utilities is a painful experience financially. There is, however, a lot to do - ski, hike, snowmobile, bike, animal watching (here's a new term - urban Moose - I see them every day), fishing, hunting, etc... and there are actually a lot of good restaurants and other urban amenities as well.
Other than climate, there are some very different things about this city and what you would find in the lower 48 - an extremely transient population, a core of people with extreme viewpoints on life (at least they strike me as extreme) who are here because of the frontier setting and will never leave, and an oversized aviation industry. Despite dwarfing Texas in size, The state has probably (just guessing) far less road mileage than even Missouri. People get to the outlying communities by flying and Anchorage is the hub with two very busy airports and a Fedex hub. There's also an air force base housing F22's which are pretty active and loud. I've met a ton of pilots in my short time here. The city is full of hotels to accommodate the transient population (north slope oil fields and tourism are rotational/seasonal work) and the place is crawling with tourists in the summer. The neighborhoods are not particularly dense and there is no traditional semi urban "nice part of town". The neighborhoods in the city tend to be very mixed (and expensive - three quarters of a million will buy you a 1800 sq ft house or condo downtown). The rich tend to live high on the foothills of the Chugach Mountains where they can wake up to views of Denali every morning.
It's not a place I would want to stay for a long time. The winters are long, dark and brutal and it's an extremely expensive place to live. Even more expensive when you start buying the toys necessary for life (4WD, studded snow tires, snowblower, Gortex) and those you want for recreation (fat tire snow bikes at $3000 per pop, snowmobiles, fishing equipment) but even a trip to the grocery store or paying utilities is a painful experience financially. There is, however, a lot to do - ski, hike, snowmobile, bike, animal watching (here's a new term - urban Moose - I see them every day), fishing, hunting, etc... and there are actually a lot of good restaurants and other urban amenities as well.