bike21
9-5 Ruins Lives
If you can spare a minute, our local field is under fire from some misguided NIMBY's. They think somehow closing the airport is the answer to our affordable housing issues. Thanks!
Save Boulder Airport
- Thread starter bike21
- Start date
ppragman
FLIPY FLAPS!
It's here, but not nearly as bad, and practically everyone likes airplanes here. The only Nimbyism I have seen here is related to not wanted nuclear power around (which is kind of dumb). You moving to Anchorage?
Brian29
Well-Known Member
Palmer/Fishook area
ppragman
FLIPY FLAPS!
Welcome! I like it in town for a wide variety of reasons, but I spent a bit of my youth out there. I hope you enjoy it here, it's a good place to be.
bike21
9-5 Ruins Lives
Thanks! NIMBY'ism is an ugly look for sure. Occasionally gets mislabeled for legit reasons, but most hide their actual fears behind semi-valid concerns.Done but good luck. Colorado has become a nightmare of this kind of crap and it isn't the same state I grew up in. Such a shame and it breaks my heart. Hopefully the NIMBY virus doesn't follow me to Alaska.
EIR
It's 5 o'clock somewhere
Christain and now you? You guys might be on to something.Done but good luck. Colorado has become a nightmare of this kind of crap and it isn't the same state I grew up in. Such a shame and it breaks my heart
Murdoughnut
Well sized member
Speaking of NIMBYs ... and in truth, this is the case for every airport I've ever worked at/for. 1-3 people account for about 80% of total noise complaints.
jalopnik.com
Reagan National Airport Received Almost 7,000 Noise Complaints In One Year From A Single Household
This household's complaints made up 78 percent of the noise complaints against the airport.
jalopnik.com
Lawman
Well-Known Member
Speaking of NIMBYs ... and in truth, this is the case for every airport I've ever worked at/for. 1-3 people account for about 80% of total noise complaints.
Reagan National Airport Received Almost 7,000 Noise Complaints In One Year From A Single Household
This household's complaints made up 78 percent of the noise complaints against the airport.
It’s not unique to this country either.
We had a German guy who would drive around the training areas immediately in vicinity to the Kaserne (Post) and then call in noise complaints so the helicopter would sound extra loud.
It got bad enough we had a page in the Brigade SOP literally titled “Herr Shultz.” It laid out exactly what to say on the phone and was kept in a separate log to show the local government when they wanted to discuss agreed restrictions on training hours and holidays.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Screaming_Emu
Joe Conventional
Roger Roger
Bottom of the list
One of the first people I met up here after Pat told me “before I moved here, I thought that if you could make it in Alaska you could make it anywhere. Then I came up here and found out that if you can’t make it anywhere else, you move to alaska and maybe you can make it here.”
ppragman
FLIPY FLAPS!
I haven't been able to tolerate anywhere else I've tried to live. I am not sure why, but literally everywhere else in America has been too... I don't know... it just feels wrong? I would say that so far, this has actually been correct for me.
I've generally found all the places outside Alaska I've lived to be some combination of constrained, pretentious, and overly concerned with form over function? Hawaii came close to being alright, but there were a lot of written and unwritten rules in Hawaii and it was insanely expensive to live there. Talking to a friend of mine recently he said, "you know the first thing I realized when I moved up here was that nobody has any respect for the law in Alaska - not traffic laws, gun laws, zoning laws, nothing ... it's just weird!" That kind of struck a nerve with me, because, well, I don't really either and had never really put my finger on that part of our culture?
It's just a fundamentally different place, the culture is "American" but not like any other state I've been to. For better or worse, despite spending the whole of my youth wishing I could leave, this is my home. I might leave the country at some point - in fact I'd like to for awhile for sure, but moving to the lower 48 seems as crazy to me as moving to France or something.
Thank you (though I may be the uncouth dickbag exception to that rule lol), and those who move up here are sometimes controversial but welcome. In Anchorage we have a lot of refugees that come in - that's kind of a point of pride of many here (myself included) and something like 95 languages are spoken in the school district. We're proud of that and culturally many of us feel a strongly that we have an obligation to help when we can. Apparently it may not be true, but I was always told as a boy that if there was a disabled vehicle on the road, or there was someone who appeared to be injured it was required by law here that you inquire if they were ok. I wish it was on the books though.
One thing that you may have noticed is we have something called Xenia and constantly invite everyone to our home. I just recently learned this term, but it means, "we have a strong guest culture." While I was backpacking some lit major told me, "you Alaskans are all the same, you invite everyone to your home - even if you've only just met them, you're like the ancient Greeks!" Anyway, I looked it up, and yup, that's kind of like us, though I don't feel any restriction to not ask guests anything. Still, I would actually feel bad if I did not invite someone to my home while I was traveling, and have at various times in my life harbored a vagrant pilot or friend on my couch. The duration was not really a problem. I'm not even the only person I've known who has done something like this, it would be weird not to.
There is a bit of a dark side to this place though, we have a major substance abuse problem, a problem with violence against everyone (but women get most of it), significant amounts of poverty, and a shockingly high rate of STDs. Winters are extremely long and miserable and the last few summers have been... sub-optimal. We treat the homeless very poorly here and there's racism like anywhere else. We have a long way to go. Still, this place still feels so much more real to me than any other place I've ever lived.
Screaming_Emu
Joe Conventional
I really do want to come down and check out your neck of the woods. I really wish I liked ANC because, man it would make this job a whole lot more pleasant being home every couple days. But...nope.
Richman
JC’s Resident Curmudgeon
I had some busybody knock on my door one day trying to get signatures about our local GA field. I listened, but she had to keep repeating herself because of the constant jet traffic that flies over our neighborhood at 1600 feet going into Big Airline Field.
The irony was completely lost on her. I finally told her I bought this house so I could be close to where I kept my Bonanza. They haven’t been back since.
The irony was completely lost on her. I finally told her I bought this house so I could be close to where I kept my Bonanza. They haven’t been back since.
ppragman
FLIPY FLAPS!
Anchorage yo - it's connected to literally everywhere in the hemisphere, she's got her problems, but I tell ya, it's a good place to live. You've just gotta leave for 3 weeks in the winter if you can.
Still, it's 30min away from real Alaska.
🦈💜
All dragon~
Anchorage is ok ... super conservative and weird, though, in my limited experience. On the bright side, at least it's close to Alaska.
... oh wait, you already went there. XD
I used to joke with people that there were daily flights to Alaska from both Seattle and Anchorage, but nobody ever got it.
I'm probably not Alaskan enough to actually make that joke, but screw it. I left enough blood and sweat there to at least claim part of it.
My heart still lives there.
CFI A&P
Exploring the world one toilet at a time.
One of the top five worst pilots I’ve ever flown with was a guy that fancied himself as an Alaskan bush pilot who walks on water and urinates excellence. “Pilots in the lower 48 just don’t understand what we do up there.” kind of guy. A simple flight review was all we had to do that day, in their hot rod AK bushplane, and we did not accomplish the flight review due to their poor airmanship. I still laugh about that guy.
ppragman
FLIPY FLAPS!
Gotta hang with the right crowd, the valley is super conservative, and south Anchorage is super conservative, but there are at least dozens of us leftists here. There are bike punks here, a mutual aid network, and sometimes the anti-abortion protestors have counter protestors. Alaska isn't like Seattle, but there is definitely a significant left-wing contingent here. I even met a man with a Anarcho-Syndacalist flag on his house while I was canvassing for Peltola, though to be fair two blocks away a man threatened me for supporting the "baby killers." I imagine you'd find that in Seattle too.
It's definitely a weird place though - I definitely feel that way, but I'm a weird dude, so it makes sense that I would be ok here. The aviation scene is great, the hiking scene is great, and I can get pretty much anywhere from here. There's also a lot to do. My daughter has art in the museum so we went and got a year long museum pass and I forgot how good it was. My wife is going out to watch the drag show with her work friends tonight, and you can get high quality Turkish food a few about 6 blocks from Merril Field.
If you like to hike or be outdoors, there are ample trails here and the city maintained trails are great. We just got done with Fur Rondy and the start of the Iditarod was amazing as usual. The public transport exists, but kind of sucks, that and the sidewalks have been impassable due to snow the last couple years, so that's a bummer. In part that is because we elected an utter moron of a mayor during covid (a former pilot), but I doubt he wins re-election. Personally, I used to be really angry at the people who elected him and were screaming about "opening back up" because his policies directly made my life a pain. I'm still "upset" but now it's more like "man I'm dissappointed in y'all."
Regardless, I recognize that we're a weird place, but I definitely do not find Anchorage "super conservative." The Valley or the Kenai - yeah, but Anchorage? Not really.
If you lived here and want to live here again, you are more than welcome to use that joke, hell use that joke if you hate it here, I ain't your keeper lol. The great irony is that in some ways I find Anchorage more Alaskan than many other communities up here, but I too use the same joke and would be loathe to admit that in certain company. Still, in our own unique way, I find this place very Alaskan. One of the things that I do truly enjoy though, is how here, of all places in the world, I've always been able to make a decent middle class income. There have been times when I struggled, and times when I made a crap-load of money, but if you were willing to bust your ass, you could always find a decent income here. I thought this was just me being one of "the olds," until my neice got a job throwing bags for the ferry and cleaning houses part time and was making about $50k a year at 18... so I feel like there's still opportunity here, which is something that's really nice.
