A Work In Progress
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12/31/2007
When I first saw Anchorage, in 1975, it was still very much a frontier town. And isolated: we'd get Walter Chronkite a day or two later by videotape (this was before satellite TV). It was, and rightly so, famously expensive as pipeline construction was in full bloom and the big box stores had not come: meaning Safeway could (and did)charge whatever it wanted (that part perhaps has not changed). But Anchorage felt like the frontier town that it was. Anchorage was still part of the Alaska of legend. It was fun to live there and everyone felt a sort of camaraderie in being part of it all...it was special. It's not anymore. Anchorage has mushroomed in population to the point where it's well over a quarter million people. Unfortunately, a lot of the new people who came in did not come in to be part of Alaska.....I think a lot of them, seriously, came up because of the Permanent Fund Dividend (a kind of reverse income tax where the State sends everyone, even infants, a check every year sometimes approaching $2000 each) and liberal welfare laws. So, now there are drug dealers on the corners of certain areas of town; the denizens of these gang infested areas are not shy about driving to nicer areas of the city to have their shoot outs there. Certainly in some ways it's "better" now with the Wal-Mart, Costco, etc.; but Anchorage is no longer part of the Alaska of old. If it ever was...it's always been said by people outside the Anchorage Bowl that Anchorage is only 20 minutes from Alaska; it's referred to as "Los Anchorage." There's really little difference between living in Anchorage and living in Seattle. A longer, colder Winter, perhaps. It's a great town in many ways, but it's not the same town that it used to be and that personally makes me a little sad. But you won't even know this and you will probably love Anchorage....but watch your back just like you do in Seattle or Portland.
Patrick | Springfield, OR