Wow. It’s spooky how close that hits. Aside from the attitude to renting, that is spot on. I live in Anchorage, which is “the big city” in Alaska. The only other real city is Fairbanks, 200 miles away. I cannot travel out of state without flying (and the airline rates are ridiculous; they’ve got us by the curlies, and they know it) or making a grueling trek along the Alaska-Canadian Highway.
The political climate is rigidly conservative and the local culture is stagnant. The last time I saw a gay couple they seemed nervous to be out in public.
Thank you for the insightful comments about the local culture, AnneNeville.
FWIW, I can’t say that I’d be attending a BDSM street fair, but I’d be just tickled to know that one was being held in the city I was living in.
In California, you can travel out of state without flying, but it’s a long drive. Lake Tahoe, on the border with Nevada, is probably at least a 4 hour drive from San Francisco under most conditions. Crescent City, near the Oregon border, is 7 hours away.
Of course, I’m from the East Coast, and we’re used to being able to drive less than an hour and be in another state. Your standards may be different. One of the things that struck me when I moved to CA was how few out-of-state license plates I saw in the Bay Area. In Maryland, where I grew up, you see a lot of Virginia, DC, and New York license plates, among others. Part of this is the distances to the state line being greater in California, part of it is that California is eager to make out-of-state people register their cars in CA and get new license plates so California can collect car taxes from them. You don’t see as many out-of-state license plates in Berkeley or Santa Cruz as you do in college towns in other states.
I don’t know what real estate prices in Anchorage are like, but I do know that real estate prices in the Bay Area are only comparable to places like New York City. You’re going to get a lot less house or condo for your money in San Francisco than you would somewhere else, and that’s just the way it is.
The earthquakes will be smaller than you’re used to. California’s earthquakes are more famous than Alaska’s, and tend to do more property damage (just because the population in California is a lot denser), but they’re much smaller. Alaska’s earthquakes come from a subduction zone, and subduction zones create the largest earthquakes in the world. The 1960 Chile earthquake (magnitude 9.5), the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake (magnitude 9.1-9.3), and the 2011 Japanese earthquake (magnitude 9) originated in subduction zones. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake was a 7.9, the 1989 World Series earthquake was a 6.9. TV movies like 10.5 notwithstanding, the faults in California simply can’t generate earthquakes as large as the faults in Alaska can.
