Fairbanks is frightening. First of all, it is possibly the most
remote city in the world. I don't know where else on
Earth you'd find a city of 60,000 people with
nothing else for hundreds of miles around. No other towns, no farms, no
suburbs, no
industry, nothing. There's not even any
mountains. Its just flat and empty. The only other inhabitation in the North Star Borough is the string of isolated cabins running north from Fairbanks along the Elliot Highway (more on that later). Secondly, the desolate
downtown looks like it was some kind of
Soviet urban planner's
wet dream. The few buildings resemble guard towers in a
gulag, their drab facades presiding over the dusty streets and two bridges over the muddy Tanana River. There is a cylindrical
supermarket - that's right completely
round - and if that's not enough, their
city hall is also cylindrical, wooden, and without windows, and located within an
amusement park.
But scariest of all, everyone looks like they want to kill you. I'm serious about this. I never got so many terrifying looks from so many people in so short a time. Its all the more frightening when you consider that many of these people live in the afore mentioned cabins and have taken great pains to move as far away from civilization / other people / the law as possible and still be within the United States. There I would be, walking across a parking lot on their main drag, International Airport Blvd., minding my own business and hoping to purchase supplies and get the hell out of there, and someone, probably on their way back from the That Dog's a Bitch Saloon (such a place exists, I'm not making this up), would be giving me a less Mediterranean and more backwoods version of the evil eye - for no reason.
And in the summer there was no cover of night. Driving around at 11pm, it is still hazy twilight and you can still see them staring at you! I assume winter is the horrible reverse - shady figures lurking behind parking lot lamp posts in the 2pm dusk, everyone huddled in their layers to protect against the -88 degree cold.
Fairbanks does feature a strangely large proliferation of Mexican restaurants. I cannot explain this, nor can I possibly communicate the sheer ammount of lard that was in my refried beans. The one cool thing is Alaskakland, the amusement park with the city hall, which also features some buildings from the turn of the century era in which Fairbanks was a bawdy mining camp, as well as president Harding's train car that he used to inaugurate the Alaska Railroad. I would like to see what that train car looks like under black lights.
The University of Alaska is in the adjoining municipality of College, and is probably the largest employer in Fairbanks. Their campus is on a hill which overlooks Fairbanks/College and features a bunch of signposts giving the milage to various other places in the world. All of the distances are big.
Impressions garnered from a (mercifully) brief pass through of Fairbanks while driving from Anchorage north to the Arctic Circle in spring 2000. The author of this piece does not wish to portray all residents of Fairbanks in a negative light * - in fact his heartfelt sympathy goes out to most of them.
* the low angle of the sun actually takes care of that anyway