Next Stop: Alaska?

Nilsa made a very good point in my last post about the best cities for singles – what about Alaska?? There are supposed to be a ton more single men than women there.

Well, that is still the case in much of Alaska, especially remote, rural villages that are only accessible by plane or boat (!). I’m sure it’s beautiful there. I’m also sure it’s freakin’ FREEZING, obviously isolated, and I would get so homesick for my family and for New York City.

But if you’re curious, check out Susie’s Alaska Men Magazine and web site, which proclaims it has been “bringing you Alaskan bachelors since 1987” (http://www.alaskamen-online.com).

Interestingly, according to a New York Times article on lovelorn Alaskan men, “Anchorage and Fairbanks, the state's two largest cities, are becoming the fast-growing hot spots of a new demographic -- lesbians. Alaska now ranks 12th in the nation in its concentration of lesbian couples per capita.” Here is the complete article with URL:

It's a Long, Lonely Search for Men Looking for Love in Alaska
By SARAH KERSHAW (July 21, 2004)

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F05E2D8113AF932A15754C0A9629C8B63&scp=1&sq=It%27s+a+Long%2C+Lonely+Search+for+Men+Looking+for+Love+in+Alaska+&st=nyt

It was late on a summer evening at a saloon on Front Street in this dusty mining and fishing town on the Bering Sea, and the men were excited.

The bar, Breakers, was packed. And standing on the beer-stained floor was a most unusual sight for Nome's many bachelors: women.

There they were, an oasis in the Arctic, shooting pool, giving out phone numbers, dashing off to the restroom to apply lipstick, coquettishly sipping drinks bought by their suitors, including a popular cocktail, ''Love Me Tender,'' made with gin and peach vodka.

''Aren't they so fantastic?'' one single man said to another. ''I wish they wouldn't leave us.''

Summer is a time of hope for the unattached men of Nome, a tough gold rush town of 3,500 people in Alaska's far western corner, where single men outnumber single women by almost two to one. Each June, with the midnight sun come the summer interns -- this year, seven fresh-faced women in their 20's from across the lower 48 states. They work on a nutrition project with Nome's Alaska Natives and then spend many of their nights barhopping.

In July, a troupe of traveling strippers from Minnesota makes its annual stop in Nome; the other night, five topless dancers drew a huge crowd to another Nome saloon for their show, ''Erotica.''
Seth Augdahl, 24, a ticket agent for Bering Air, attended the topless revue, and he was heavily flirting with the interns at Breakers the night before. But there was a certain sadness in his eyes.

''The summer influx is great,'' Mr. Augdahl said. ''But I would like something long term. My friends keep telling me, 'Seth, one of these days, a girl will move to town, and she will be perfect for you.' I'm still waiting for that day.''

Alaska is known for its abundance of single men. Gold miners, oil workers, hunters, trappers and fishermen moving here in droves to live out the fantasy of a rugged, prosperous life on the frontier, a fantasy not often shared by women. The latest census data show there are 114 single men for every 100 single women in Alaska, compared to 86 single men for every 100 single women nationally (and 80 to 100 in New York State.)

The current ratio in Alaska actually reflects a slight improvement, from the single man's perspective, over 10 years ago. In 1990, there were about 94,000 single men and 75,000 single women, while in 2000, there were about 113,000 single men and 100,000 single women, according to the census. Forty-eight percent of Alaska's 650,000 residents are women, according to the 2000 Census, up from 47 percent in 1990.

Complicating matters for lovelorn men, Anchorage and Fairbanks, the state's two largest cities, are becoming the fast-growing hot spots of a new demographic -- lesbians. Alaska now ranks 12th in the nation in its concentration of lesbian couples per capita, said Jason Ost, a researcher at the Urban Institute and the co-author of ''The Gay & Lesbian Atlas.''

The increase in the number of women here is largely because of the growth of urban areas like Anchorage and Fairbanks, where life has become much less isolated and difficult and therefore more appealing to women, experts say. The Internet and ''big box'' stores provide the kind of conveniences that were lacking in much of Alaska until just a decade ago.

''What is happening is that the cities are normalizing,'' said Judy Kleinfeld, a professor of psychology at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and the director of the university's northern studies center, who specializes in gender studies. ''City life is just like life in the lower 48, and there's no particular reason why women should want to leave.''

But Professor Kleinfeld, who has conducted extensive interviews with unattached men living in the bush, acknowledged that bachelors looking for love in rural areas of Alaska were still facing tough odds and that mail-order brides were common.

''In a place like Nome, they are still asking, 'Where are the girls?''' she said.

If the shortage of women is less severe now in the big cities, Jason Friars, 25, who lives in Anchorage, has neither noticed it nor reaped the benefits.

Mr. Friars, a hotel cook who moved to Alaska a year ago from California, was interviewed one evening at a downtown bar called Darwin's Theory. When asked about the dating situation, he paused, took note of who was at the bar and announced bitterly that there were 22 men and four women, including a female reporter from out of town.

''I have one girl in mind right now,'' Mr. Friars said. ''And she has 200 options.''

Repeating a commonly exaggerated interpretation of the male-female ratio, Mr. Friars said, ''The women up here, they know it's 10-to-one odds, so they can be as picky as they want.''

There was some evidence of pickiness among women on an online dating Web site, Plentyoffish.com, where an Anchorage woman recently posted a message headlined ''Bye Bye Losers.''

''I am a female who knows what she wants and will stop at nothing to get what I want,'' the woman wrote. ''That means what I want I get and I will not take no for an answer.''

On the same site, where there were significantly more Alaskan men seeking women than women seeking men, a man posted this message: ''Bushdweller seeks good woman,'' saying, ''I live out in the Alaska bush 1/3wilderness$) leading a back to basic lifestyle. I have no electricity except when I use a generator. I haul water and heat with wood.''

A bartender at Darwin's Theory, Brandi Domas, 31, said she saw many solo men at the bar.
''These guys are really sweet, and they should not be sitting here alone,'' Ms. Domas said. ''I tell them to import, to go out of state, bring a girl back and then watch her close. Import, import, import!''

But the women had complaints, too, and it seemed, from dozens of interviews with singles across the state, from Nome to Juneau, in the southeast, that Alaska was embroiled in an intense war of the sexes. A popular cliché about finding a man in Alaska is, ''The odds are good, but the goods are odd.'' A popular cliché about breaking up with a woman in Alaska is, ''You don't lose your girl, you lose your turn.''

''Men? They are looking for someone who can skin a moose and bring home a sixpack of beer,'' Liz Lynch, 37, a single publicity agent for an oil company, said. ''A lot of women out there say, 'Get thee to Alaska.' But they're nuts. And I like a mountain man, a rugged individual, oh, my God. But these guys don't commit.''

In terms of the male-to-female ratio, things have not changed much in Nome, famous for its rough saloons, its frontier state of mind and for being the last stop of the annual Iditarod dog sled race.

And Mr. Augdahl, the wistful ticket agent, is not alone. Well, he is alone, romantically speaking, but he has plenty of male friends who are single, too. According to the Census, there are 598 unmarried men in Nome, not counting widowers and divorcees, and 344 unmarried women.
One of Mr. Augdahl's friends, Haven Harris, 25, an aide to a state senator from Nome, said that he had not had a girlfriend in years and that he was planning to move to San Francisco by the end of the year to find a woman. The ratio of single men to single women in California is 92 to 100, according to the Census.

Mr. Harris made reference to the long, dark, freezing, icebound winters in Nome, which is 100 miles south of the Arctic Circle.

''I want to live in Alaska all my life, but it's hard being in the bush in Alaska when it's so hard to find someone,'' Mr. Harris said one night between innings at a softball game on a gravel field in the tundra. ''If you're going to live up here as you get older, you're going to want to be with someone.''

The interns, socializing later that night with Mr. Harris and Mr. Augdahl, said they were warned about the male-female ratio before coming to Nome last month.

''My friends thought it was funny they were bringing all these nutrition girls to Nome,'' said Kelly Keyes, a 26-year-old intern from Worcester, Mass. ''And they kept saying, 'The ratio, the ratio, the ratio! It's 30 to one!'''

''You get a lot of attention here,'' Ms. Keyes said. ''The guys are like 'Woo!'''

At Breakers, Mr. Harris was pulling out all the stops with Ms. Keyes and the other interns, massaging their shoulders, mentioning that he worked out five times a week, impressing them, he hoped, with his cue shots and quick wit.

But near 2 a.m., as the midnight sun was setting, he left the bar alone.