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A town of about 200 people, almost all of whom live in the same building

stories.californiasunday.com

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Re: A town of about 200 people, almost all of whom live in the same building

#91

Post by sanoli »

grecy wrote: post #27
sanoli wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, this town is not only remote, but during the winter you have to pretty much dug in and stay inside. No going anywhere. It's not the same as just being somewhere isolated and remote, and you have to take that into consideration. Some people might enjoy it anyway.

> and stay inside Huh? Why would you stay inside when you live in such a beautiful place? I live in the Yukon - it's -37C today and it's absolutely beautiful outside. I rode to work today, and just did a 1 hour round trip walk to the library to drop off some books. I'll go for a ~2 hour snow shoe tonight in the dark with my headlamp. I saw the Northern Lights last night, so I'll take my camera tonight. Winter is actu…

> Huh? Why would you stay inside

Well in the full article they talk about the constant hard winds that sometimes shatter windshields and such. Also the poster who grew up there mentioned the constant rain that gets wind-blasted in your face. And so I'm thinking about somebody who was never accustomed to these things suddenly moving there because they seek some solitude. Might not be as great as she/he imagined, that's all.

Re: A town of about 200 people, almost all of whom live in the same building

#92

Post by tracker1 »

erroneousfunk wrote: post #33
noobermin wrote: post #14

It would be interesting if someone tried this in one of these larger cities with high rises like Singapore. You'd create a smaller groups with a sense of community while still giving members the benefits of living in a large city. The reason I thought of this is it reminded me of a strategy of using small bible study groups being employed in a large church that was part of my alma mater. The idea is that it was easie…

This is essentially what college campuses do already, to some extent. My current apartment complex also hosts activities, movie nights, brings in nurses so residents can meet and ask about health problems. This is in addition to the playground, tennis/basketball court, computer room, gym, small theater, and other amenities that help to create a "community" atmosphere. Also, I think a big reason this model is so "succ…

    I live in the city, because I want to be with people
    like me, not because I want forced socialization with
    people who just happen to live together.
That just sounds like a contradiction...

Re: A town of about 200 people, almost all of whom live in the same building

#93

Post by haroldp »

jnellis wrote: post #86
haroldp wrote: post #28

W00h! I grew up in Whittier, AK. Ask me Anything! Haha, seriously, I moved to Whittier at the age of 2 in 1974 and lived there until 1986. The big change there since I left has been the tunnel. When I was there you had to drive your car up onto a railroad flatcar (and pay a steep ticket price) to get out. Anchorage is only 55 miles away, but really it's two mountains away. The railroad sold passenger service only as…

I was in Whittier in 1991, two years after the oil spill. I'll say that even then there was other housing and not everyone lived in the one building. You can easily see housing dotted around the area and the building sits back a bit from the water. The pictures in this article shows a remodeled building but when I was there it was in some disrepair. And as fishermen from around the prince william sound used to say, "…

> I'll say that even then there was other housing and not everyone lived in the one building.

When I was there last in `86, there were a few dwellings (maybe 8-12?) at the Sportsman's Inn and two old shacks right down by the railroad owned by one family of three. On google street maps I can see two or three new freestanding houses. The Shens who ran the better bar lived there. The vast majority of people live in Beggich Towers. It looks about the same now as it did then, and does not seem to have been renovated much. Are you perhaps thinking of the Buckner Building?

> There's no place shittier than Whittier

Not that I have found so far ;)

> I was told the main reason Whittier exists is because it's the only port deep enough to dock warships.

Supply ships to support the war effort, more than war ships, per se.

Re: A town of about 200 people, almost all of whom live in the same building

#94

Post by jamesk_au »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #84
haroldp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seemed to have about the same crime as anywhere. I could easily imagine a drug epidemic really getting out of hand there, though I never saw that happen. When I was there, some Alaskan religious group would rotate some "nondenominational" preacher through for a year or three and serve up basic Sunday School type Christianity out of an ugly room in the big building pictured. There seemed to be a high-ish suicide ra…

Were there people moving in to replace the deceased? Is the building shown in the article at maximum capacity? And finally, I'm extremely curious about the criminal justice system. The brief article mentions a Sheriff and I assume there may or may not be a deputy also. It also mentions a pot bust. What happens to people arrested? Are they detained until they can be transported to a nearby town with a court system, or…

Re the pot bust, it seems the constitutional backdrop may have forced both sides into a tacit understanding that pot is fine so long as it stays at home:

Dave Schofield is the chief of police in Whittier. He is also the only officer who lives in town. Alaska’s laws often reflect the needs of a sparsely populated state, which presents challenges for policing within Begich Towers. For example, the state constitution has written into it a right to privacy; if something is occurring in your own home, you have the right to keep it private. This means that although there is a pervasive smell of marijuana in Begich Towers, the police can do little about it. “The law says you can’t have drugs within 500 feet of a school; there’s not a unit in this building that’s 500 feet from the school, but we have the right-to-privacy issue.”

The pot bust itself appears to have stemmed from this event:

A few years ago, a pot grower on the 10th floor had just finished a harvest and decided to get rid of some of the evidence by flushing it down the toilet. In the process he stopped up the plumbing on the floors below him—a neighbor called city management to complain that someone had flushed large amounts of dog food down the toilets, but it turned out to be pellets of grow medium.

http://reedyoung.com/project/whittier-alaska/r-young-whittie...

Re: A town of about 200 people, almost all of whom live in the same building

#95

Post by pkaye »

haroldp wrote: post #28

W00h! I grew up in Whittier, AK. Ask me Anything! Haha, seriously, I moved to Whittier at the age of 2 in 1974 and lived there until 1986. The big change there since I left has been the tunnel. When I was there you had to drive your car up onto a railroad flatcar (and pay a steep ticket price) to get out. Anchorage is only 55 miles away, but really it's two mountains away. The railroad sold passenger service only as…

How much does it cost to live there? Like that guy who is running a grocery store? Seems like he could spend his whole day with browsing the web given the customers to expect!

Re: A town of about 200 people, almost all of whom live in the same building

#97

Post by prawn »

haroldp wrote: post #67
kendallpark wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's it like having an entire town in one building? Crime? Illness? Religious events? Births? Deaths?

It seemed to have about the same crime as anywhere. I could easily imagine a drug epidemic really getting out of hand there, though I never saw that happen. When I was there, some Alaskan religious group would rotate some "nondenominational" preacher through for a year or three and serve up basic Sunday School type Christianity out of an ugly room in the big building pictured. There seemed to be a high-ish suicide ra…

Could you open the windows in the building or are they sealed against the weather?

Re: A town of about 200 people, almost all of whom live in the same building

#98

Post by yourapostasy »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #85
kayge wrote: post #41

I live in Alaska and have visited Whittier multiple times. Every time we go, my wife and I comment about how great of a setting it would be for a zombie apocalypse movie. "Oh it's only accessible by water or the main tunnel, it's easy to secure" "oops we forgot about securing the old train tunnel" "oh no they're in the apartment building, let's go hide out in the creepy old abandoned building down the street" ... cle…

It would be a great place to hold out with a large group if you had a way to obtain and import supplies and you cleared the building first. You'd probably be able to spot anyone coming or going (living or undead), and it would be likely that very few zombies would be in the surrounding land. Also, of course zombie fiction requires a major suspension of disbelief in this regard, but the damp/cold weather would cause t…

The Whittier temperature averages [1] seem to indicate a 6-9 month period where highs are above freezing. That would make for some exciting daytime zombie interactions. By comparison, McMurdo Sound, Antarctica [2] does indeed appear to be below freezing on average the vast majority of the year.

To hide out from the zombie hordes behind an impenetrable wall of freezing air, you would just have to set up shop at some place like Amundsen Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica [3]. Once the jet fuel (what they use for power) runs out though, it will get unpleasantly cold, fast.

[1] http://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/whittier/alaska/united-...

[2] http://www.weatherbase.com/weather/weather.php3?s=46698

[3] http://www.foresthillweather.com/PHP/Metar2/AntarcticaAverag...

Re: A town of about 200 people, almost all of whom live in the same building

#99

Post by jzwinck »

noobermin wrote: post #14

It would be interesting if someone tried this in one of these larger cities with high rises like Singapore. You'd create a smaller groups with a sense of community while still giving members the benefits of living in a large city. The reason I thought of this is it reminded me of a strategy of using small bible study groups being employed in a large church that was part of my alma mater. The idea is that it was easie…

> It would be interesting if someone tried this in one of these larger cities with high rises like Singapore.

In Singapore, 80% of people today live in what are called HDB flats. These are government subsidized housing projects (with few of the downsides that phrase entails in the west). These HDB buildings (or just "HDBs") are each, eventually, integrated as part of an "estate" which usually comprises one or two grocery stores, some restaurants, maybe a salon or barber shop, hardware store, etc.

Given Singapore's population density, there are often several HDBs near each other in one "town." But if you want, you can find one that lets you live in relative isolation, with shopping and eating downstairs, and perhaps a direct connection to the metro to get to work. The playground will be outside, but otherwise you could live almost entirely indoors if you wanted...and some people do, since it's 30 degrees Celsius every day.

Re: A town of about 200 people, almost all of whom live in the same building

#100

Post by haroldp »

prawn wrote: post #97
haroldp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seemed to have about the same crime as anywhere. I could easily imagine a drug epidemic really getting out of hand there, though I never saw that happen. When I was there, some Alaskan religious group would rotate some "nondenominational" preacher through for a year or three and serve up basic Sunday School type Christianity out of an ugly room in the big building pictured. There seemed to be a high-ish suicide ra…

Could you open the windows in the building or are they sealed against the weather?

Well the Army installed great heavy-duty double paned windows that you could totally open and close. However, they were kind of bulky and ugly, so many people (especially on the North side with a view of the Sound), have replaced them with big unopenable picture windows. Whittier is really not THAT cold most of the time.
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