I’m Mr. Rock & Roll, too, ya know....



A small glass quarter-filled with Wild Turkey to my right, a Diet Coke to my left and a keyboard center mass, I dedicate the remainder of this night to fleshing out my thoughts on Fairbanks. It’s been nearly three months since my arrival, and I’d like to get these opinions on the record before the dead of winter changes my perspective (followed by the midnight sun of summer changing it once more).

• The sun rose at 10:01 this morning. It was the first time I’ve seen it come up in a while, since my job keeps me up until 3 a.m. I actually get out around 12:30, but attempting to sleep directly afterward makes the stress from work carry over. I’ve actually spent a delusional half-conscious night worrying about something that I’d screwed up in a dream.
  Luckily, I am blessed to have a time zone in which live programs (Good Morning America, the Today Show, et. al.) come on at 2 or 3 a.m., while late-nite shows (Adult Swim, Craig Ferguson) run at the same time as they would out east. So pulling an all-nighter isn’t exactly a painful experience.

• Fairbanks is a city in Alaska. It would be a town in any other state, except maybe the northern Rocky Mountain region. Because of this, it recently got its first big-box stores (Wal-Mart, Lowe’s, etc.) And most of the longtime residents resent them.
  One letter to the editor suggested calling this part of town "Fanchorage," since anything that’s not a local mom ’n’ pop op is automatically labeled as a product of Anchorage. "When I go into a store with hundreds of people and I can’t recognize one of them, then it can’t be Fairbanks," she wrote.
  Plenty would disagree. Copy desk chief Julie and I were discussing this, and she said it’s long overdue that a megamart has come to Fairbanks. When she had a child four years ago, she had to wait in line outside of Sears to buy a crib like it was "The Empire Strikes Back" on opening day because that’s the only way to avoid the high prices of the handmade local shops.
  

• But the whole Fanchorage thing brings me to the strongest impression of Fairbanks: There’s a rabid natural rivalry with Anchorage. Since Anchorage is the biggest city in the state and Fairbanks is definitely a rural epicenter, there’s definitely a feeling of "we don’t need them dang big-city folk ’round here." I once heard a dealership promote that their trucks can stand the conditions "here in real Alaska."
  And of course, the college sports rivalry draws from this. Both colleges refer to themselves as the "University of Alaska" though Fairbanks had the first UA campus. Plus, Anchorage is usually the most recognizable team UAF has a decent shot of toppling in sports.
  

• Fairbanks is a town with a heavy tourist season when the temperatures are mild, so cheesy restaurants and gift shops are scattered across the town. Funny, could have sworn I’ve seen a place like this before.
  

• Every week, I try to set goals to explore and discover, but I always find myself lethargic, suffering from an abundance of stimuli and a lack of roads out of town. I drove north from the east side of town on Tuesday to Fox, a suburb of the ‘Banks (no one calls it that, by the way). It was what I expected: quaint town, a couple of homes where you can tell they take Dumpster diving to an extreme level and a nice restaurant... glad I visited, at least.
  The next day, I took a road which I thought was heading west. I really had no idea where I was headed. This is a bad decision to make by the way. Had the Kia stalled or slid on a slick hillside, not knowing where you are is a major setback.
  But none of that happened and I drove west, or so I thought. I came to a three-way stop and turned the direction which I thought was north. Five minutes later I was in Fox. Luckily, I got to see the oil pipeline on the way and stop at this scenic overlook of Fairbanks.

• I wanted to play a game of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" with a buddy. We then realized we had neither six degrees nor bacon. I wanted to call Kevin Truax just to compensate, but it was about 3 a.m. eastern time.
  

• If you cut Alaska in half, Texas would be the third biggest state behind both pieces of Alaska. There is only one area code for the whole state. Can’t make this up.
  

• Oh, and my Kia is now a "ghetto Prius."

'Nother post tomorrow, already written.

Power to the peas.