Gold, booze and strippers.

"The gold is on the floor and the booze is in the safe."

This is how one tourist described Alaska back in the early part of the last century. After spending some of the day downtown, going to the Museum, and learning a little more about the history of the place, I get the whole frontier thing a little better.

Alaska shares some of the same features that helped to build my two favorite 'historical cities', San Francisco and New Orleans; they are geographically limited, and were 'melting pot' port cities where a large and varied cast of peoples all contributed to their becoming what they are.

Ofcourse, it doesn't snow in SF or NO. Which is big, as far as I'm concerned.

A related story is from breakfast, where we fell into a conversation with a guy at the next table. Phil was talking about the guys who work for his company that fly North for three weeks of work in the remote, frozen arctic. Three weeks on three weeks off. There's nothing up there but work and sleep. Phil talked about what he called the "Chamber of Commerce flight schedule", where the workers, flush with three weeks worth of pay, lonely and thirsty, arrive via chartered 737 at 9:00AM, but  there aren't any flights out of Anchorage until 1:30AM, so the men have about 15 hours to get everything out of their system (or, I guess, into their systems) before heading to their homes in the lower 48. Apparently, Anchorage's many Strip Clubs come alive on those days, with a hierarchy all their own ("Stay away from P.J.'s").

Phil's other Strip Club Tip was this; sit next to the guy who brings a date. All the dancing girls are lesbians and flock to any females in the club, and by sitting next to a couple, you can pick up the "Collateral Damage". Let me know how that works out.