Travel and Leisure Magazine rated Anchorage the 13th rudest city in America, up (down?) seven points from its prior No. 20 ranking. This isn’t news to Fairbanks.
Anchorage has had overcompensation issues regarding its northerly neighbor for years. Maybe it’s the old jokes about “suburb of Alaska” or “Los Anchorage” or “you can see Alaska from Anchorage”? But Anchorage can’t talk about Fairbanks without being condescending. Fairbanks, of course, declines to sink to that level.
But that’s not all of it. A few years ago, WC asked a woman in front of Nordstrom’s for directions and was told, “If you bother me again I’m calling the police.” The only other place WC has gotten that particular response was in New York City itself, which, unsurprisingly, ranks No. 1 in Travel and Leisure’s report. And if WC really wanted to get vindictive about Ship Creek, he’d talk about the drivers…
And how, you ask, does Fairbanks really feel about Anchorage and the softies who live there? There’s an Ambrose Bierce story on point:
A woman shot her husband dead.
She confessed to her minister.
“Woman,” said the man of the cloth, “Why did you shoot your husband?”
“Because he was an evil man, and was going to leave me and move to Anchorage.”
“Madam,” said the minister, “You cannot stop an evil man from going to Anchorage by killing him.”
Wickersham's Conscience 