I was walking through an alley in downtown Anchorage that, I have learned on my recent visit from my home in a very small, remote town in Southeast Alaska, serves as the smoking section for restaurant workers when they have a break. I once saw Ol’ Half Term while dining in one of the restaurants fronting that alley, but I digress.
And, yes, Anchorage does have a downtown. It’s not huge, but is the only place in the city that has any sort of street level human interaction, and is safe to transport oneself as a pedestrian or on a bicycle. The rest of the city, population approximately 300,000, is primarily strip development and designed for cars rather than people. On the flip side, it does have an abundance of parks, many quite large, within the city, and some exceptional recreational bicycle trails. Only for the lucky few who live and work near the trail system is it useful for transportation, unfortunately.
Anchorage is also a surprisingly diverse city, with about 62% non-Hispanic White composition, about 8% each Hispanic, Asian, mixed, and Native American (called Alaska Natives in Alaska), 6% Black and 2% Pacific Islander. That is probably surprising to some. I think it’s pretty cool. I used to live in Anchorage and worked in a school that had no more than about 15-20% of any racial group. Where I live now is probably 99% white. It’s a great place, an amazing community that happens to be a bright blue spot on a deep red map, but not an ethnically diverse one.
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