Last night I was walking around downtown Fairbanks hoping to take some low light city pictures. It was around ten pm, and seventeen below zero and totally dark.  I was on the notorious 2nd Ave. (locally known as “Two Street”) where people have a tendency to disappear. I was about to take a picture of the Mecca Bar when a fight broke out in the street in front of the bar. I ducked in to a local hotel lobby to wait it out. I returned a short while later just long enough to take this picture, before a couple of hostile inebriates started shouting and walking my direction.  It was at about that time that I re-evaluated the wisdom of walking along Two Street alone, carrying more camera equipment than I can afford to lose.

The hotel where we are staying is very popular with Japanese tourists. Fairbanks in general is a popular destinations for Japanese tourists, and winter is an especially busy time. People come to this area from around the world to see the aurora borealis. I think that it’s amazing to I live in a place where people come to see something that I can see by walking outside my front door in slippers. And if it’s cloudy outside with no aurora visible, I simply go back inside to get warm and try again another night. Tourists who miss out on the aurora have to go back home disappointed, perhaps never to have another chance to see.

A tour service that works out of this hotel provides its Japanese visitors with boots, bib overalls, and parkas for use as they go out to view the northern lights. Tour buses idle in the cold waiting to take these intrepid aurora hunters out into the dark winter’s night. This afternoon, moving from one meeting to the next, I saw the boots being lined up in preparation for the evening tour. I had to snatch a few pictures (thanks Neubert - good eye).