Opinions on ANC as a domicile??

[Gulfstream 200]

Is living in Southen Alaska in terms of the amount of daylight different then ANC?

psy, you off the meds again?





http://encarta.msn.com/media_701500905/Hours_of_Daylight_by_Latitude.html

 

[psysicx]

Thanks for that sight. According to that sight ANC gets just over six and a half hrs of daylight in January.

 

[scoreboard]

You had better like winter and winter type activities or ANC will be really bad. Elswise, second best place I've been.

 

[Formula1]

No sales tax in ANC, I think that Wasilla has it though. No state income tax and they pay you a dividend check once a year to be a resident. Not too bad of a deal if you can deal with the winters. I believe that the dividend checks are not what they used to be though- anyone care to comment on what they are paying now days? My last one in 2000 was around $1,900 which is alot of money especially if you had a family of 5.

Summers are great with all of the extra daylight- it just does not last long enough though. If you are into the great outdoors and hunting and fishing then Alaska is the place to be.

I grew up there (lived there for 20 years) and was not a big outdoorsman so I could not wait to leave to go live somewhere else that had longer summers and milder winters but I met alot of people that moved up there from the lower 48 states and swore that they were never gonna leave.

I guess it all depends on what you are into.

 

[malterf15]

Twice Skunk'd Beat Me To It !?! sts

I was looking for the perfect opportunity for a "brokeback" joke....there it was....and there it went. Nice.

Anchorage has everything a modern mid sized American city has - good and bad. Plus it's close to Alaska as they say.

I've never met someone who didn't love it there, but you do have to love the outdoors. The Winter is long, but not as "arctic" as you might think. The nice thing is that the temperature doesn't change drastically like lots of places in the lower 48, so you get used to it. I hate 70 one day and 20 the next. Give me 20 +- 10 all the time and I'll get used to it.

The days get shorter quickly, then they get longer quickly. There's only about 6 weeks when it's noticeably darker than "normal". My March it's 12 hours of daylight...then you have all Summer to get as much sunshine as you want.

Really, you don't want to go there. Memphis is much better: the fresh waters of the Mississippi, pleasant summers, overwhelming natural beauty...

 

[Formula1]

I worked on the north slpoe as a laborer/roustabout for a few summers. Worked nightshift and actually got to watch the sun move across the horizon going from west to east- it was really wierd! Of course the North Slope is much further North than Anchgorage is.

 

[Murdawg5]

I'm just an outside observer who commutes to ANC, but I have to say that ANC has the worst zoning I've ever seen... No kidding, a guy living in an old school bus right next to a $500,000 house... WTFO???
Other than that, and having very limited acceess to the lower 48, (airlines are cutting their service more frequently) I think it would be OK (until my wife sees the "interesting personality types" that tend to freqent the area).. Then all bets would be off...
Take Care,
Murdawg5

 

[Falconjet]

I'm just an outside observer who commutes to ANC, but I have to say that ANC has the worst zoning I've ever seen... No kidding, a guy living in an old school bus right next to a $500,000 house... WTFO???
Other than that, and having very limited acceess to the lower 48, (airlines are cutting their service more frequently) I think it would be OK (until my wife sees the "interesting personality types" that tend to freqent the area).. Then all bets would be off...
Take Care,
Murdawg5

That is precisely why the people up there who love it went up there in the first place. They probably don't have any zoning. You go to Alaska to get away from everybody else and do things the way YOU want to do them.

My brother has lived in AK (mostly Juneau) since 1980 and he is pretty anti- social and definitely intolerant of the BS that living in "normal" neighborhoods or cities in the lower 48 entails. If you want to paint your house purple, leave a bus in the front yard, and put elk antlers over the front door there is nobody to tell you that it isn't allowed under the bylaws of the neighborhood, because there probably aren't any.

Its not necessarily a bad thing, its just different.

FJ

 

[mar]

The Last Resort

Anyone remember that Eagle's song, The Last Resort?

"Call someplace paradise and kiss it goodbye."

Anchorage is Hell frozen over. Stay very far away.

 

[FedEx1]

ANC isn't so bad. It doesn't get THAT cold in the winter, and the winds kinda die down then too. The Fedex flying out of ANC is awesome- mostly asia and around the world- there is a little domestic stuff, so you might end up in an MD-10.

The man to woman ratio is about average in the cities. It's when you add in all those guys out in log cabins, mines, and stuff like that, that the men's numbers climb up.

But there is a high alcoholic rate- maybe due to lack of sunlight? Some drugs, and sooo many tourists in the summer. Reserve tends to go senior.