Anchorage, AK

Combine Orange County superficiality, Santa Barbara blondness, Northern Californian outdoorsy-ness, and Midwestern religiosity, and you get the white, respectable, Church-attending suburbia known as Anchorage, Alaska. This city is great for sober, middle-aged couples who want to raise respectful, law-abiding, cross-country-running children, but not so great for young, liberal people who like big cities. Summer is warm and beautiful, winter is custom-built for skiing, and spring is straight-up nasty (melting snow + mud = shame for the tourism industry). If you live here, expect mooses and/or bears to invade your back yard at least several times a year.

Except for the stunning Chugash mountains (on the few days it isn't overcast) there isn't much worth seeing in Anchorage. About half the population of Alaska lives there, an odd combination of corporate (oil, banking) drones, military personel, and alcoholic natives. There are also lots of tourists passing through to more scenic parts of Alaska, and oil/fishery workers for whom Anchorage looks like Manhattan after months working in isolated outposts on the North Slope and other frozen backwaters. The climate is more moderate than elsewhere in Alaska, but the winter lasts eight months. Lots of tourist trap shops and bad/overpriced restaurants. If you have to spend a day or two there, there's a very good Indian restaurant (Bombay Deluxe), the largest bookstore in Alska (Title Wave Books), and the state museum. However, if you're visiting Alaska, you won't miss anything by skipping Anchorage.

Anchorage is a very functional city that was established during the turn of the century and rebuilt in the 1960's after a large earthquake ripped through the area. Alaska is an extremely scenic place, but there's nothing in Anchorage to write home about. Lots of major oil companies have their region al offices in town. It's a fairly compact city that you can see in no time flat. Basically its just a stopover point. As for living up there, it seems to me that most of the people I talked while I was up there seemed to want to get out. Common complaints included long winters, unfriendly locals, and lack of career opportunities. Overall, I would say that Alaska is a nice state to visit but not so great to live in.

Anchorage? Yawn !! Not that I expect an urban playground up here but wow , this is the perfect example of what a city built in the 60's and 70's looks like (not exactly a flattering time in archetecture). My impression is it's just a place to live and work and as my aunt would say the best thing about Anchorage is it's 10 minutes from the rest of Alaska.

Going to Alaska, I expected the scenery to be jaw dropping and Anchorage to be a jewel city. The scenery prediction proved true. But Anchorage was a big waste of space. Overrun with poor and unemployed people because they move to the city because they are paid by the government to live in Alaska. But because there are so few jobs in Alaska for unqualified bums, they sit around and live of inflated welfare checks. The city is a desolate and ugly eyesore in the Alaskan wilderness.

Let's see; a city with clean, crisp air, very little crime, on the rise in every category used to measure the over-all growth and health of a city. What's it all mean? It's means that Anchorage is a great place to live, work, and raise a family. Good wages, great people and pristine scenery and economic well being too boot! The only down sides are the weather in the winter, although winters on the east coast and mid west can be just as bad, if not sometimes worse due to the moderating affects the ocean has on the cities weather, the distance you need to travel to go to other US destinations, it's s minimum 10 hour trip to get anywhere on the east coast and 5-8 hours for west coast destinations and lastly, no pro sports teams and no chance in he11 of ever getting one. Overall, I'd move back to Anchorage if the situation ever presented itself.