New Girl Observation No. 7: What earthquake?

I’ll tell you this much—life does not stop in Anchorage for a mere 5.4 earthquake , as was felt this morning at 11:30 a.m.

In fact, it barely ranks top-of-the-fold news on the front of the Anchorage Daily News, as evidenced by its placement under three stories describing a dad’s ordeal adrift in the Pacific Ocean for 52 hours, swine flu in Alaska and the closure of a popular creek to protect a King salmon run.

The New Girl was at a staff meeting at work where discussions continued while the building swayed gently and the ground rumbled like a freight train was rolling by. “This building is on rollers,” a work friend whispered, as the gyrations continued and someone else commented that they felt a bit seasick. The quaking kept going for few minutes and was quickly forgotten as we got back into our talks. By the time my mom left a message on my voicemail a couple hours later, I had already forgotten about the earthquake.

This casual attitude about the earth shifting beneath our feet isn’t surprising in Alaska, which experienced one of the largest earthquakes in modern times on March 27, 1964. Here’s a quick video about the 110 died in the tsunamis—the largest of which was recorded in Valdez Inlet with a height of 67 meters. Many Alaskan coastal communities like Seward and Valdez were devastated by the tsunamis and have not forgotten it. I recently visited the Seward Library, which just secured grant funding to produce an updated movie about the impact of big earthquake on that seaside town.

Since coming to Alaska, I’ve meet many people who remember March 27, 1964 in great detail, just as they remember the day President Kennedy was killed and where they were on September 11. In Alaska, the earthquake left its mark on a generation and they vividly tell stories of cleaning up debris and rebuilding entire communities for months and years afterward.

Thankfully, there is no debris to clean up today in Anchorage. At the New Girl’s house, not a single vase was knocked over. But it’s a healthy reminder of what’s happened before and what can happen again in my new hometown.

New Girl Observation No. 6: The new 'hood

Riding a townie makes me feel like I live somewhere. That’s what I decided today as I biked around my new neighborhood in central Anchorage. Just south of downtown, Spenard appears at first to be collection of low-rent and middle income homes and busy four lane streets lined with omni-present strip malls.

Spenard got its slightly seedy start early in life. In the early 1900s, Spenard was a lumber camp outside Anchorage that eventually became a destination for rail workers hoping for a good evening on the town. The workers would follow a 3-mile wagon road out of town (now Spenard Road) and end up at Joe Spenard’s night club on the shores of Lake Spenard. Pretty soon, Spenard got the reputation that lingers today. It officially became part of Anchorage in 1975 during oil boom days when its proximity to the Anchorage International Airport and a clean-up effort downtown caused a proliferation of bars and brothels to sprout up. Ever since, Anchorage has been trying to “clean up” Spenard . (Here’s a column by Julia O’Malley about the latest attempts to fix Spenard Road.)

I haven’t lived here long enough to figure out if Spenard deserves it’s reputation. I met a nice cop the other day who sucked air through his teeth when I told him where I was living. “Yeah, we get a fair number of calls in there,” he said. “But mostly just petty stuff.” He was pretty delighted when I said Cam and I had used the Anchorage crime map before deciding we were willing to move on in. The map confirmed what he said--lots of thefts and vehicle break-ins but no violent crime. Now that I'm hardened against purse thefts, I've got tons of confidence. Another friend advised that we keep the house locked but said we'd be okay. My neighbor across the street has an American flag waving in front of his picket fence and flower baskets rotating in the breeze by the front door. It doesn’t feel too sleazy in Spenard today.

I did a big cruise around the neighborhood on my bike today and found much of the same. A big group of teens liked my bike and said so as I passed. I thought about telling the youngest one that he shouldn’t smoke cigarettes but let it go. A couple of guys outside the pull-tab joint and mini-mart liked my bike too and an older guy helped me get the chain guard rearranged when it started making a racket.

I biked over to a work friend’s house and we’re all excited for the Indian food restaurant to open two blocks from my house. They’re going to come over and we’ll push the baby stroller down to enjoy a curry when they open up.

From my seat, Spenard today is sprinkled with the old and new—yoga studios and cigarette stores and they seem to happily co-exist in a way that I haven't seen in other towns. There’s new restaurants and ancient bars, bike stores and motels. I think there’s a music festival in Spenard today that we might go check out. I’ll let you know how it goes.