Anchorage birthdays split cleanly between a desk and a porch, and the desk side is denser than people outside Alaska expect. The downtown core is a compact walk: the ConocoPhillips Building at 700 G Street is the tallest building in the state and a straight elevator problem rather than a campus problem; the Robert B. Atwood Building at 550 W 7th Avenue stacks most of the state government's Anchorage workforce into one tower; the municipal offices, the Nesbett Courthouse on 4th Avenue and the downtown law and accounting floors fill out a six-by-six-block rectangle a runner can cover on foot. Midtown carries the corporate second half — GCI, First National Bank Alaska and Northrim Bank, all of them Alaska companies headquartered in Anchorage rather than branch offices of somebody else's company, plus Global Credit Union and the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company offices. And then there is the layer that exists nowhere else in America: the Alaska Native regional and village corporations headquartered here — Cook Inlet Region, Inc. on the Fireweed Lane corridor, Bristol Bay Native Corporation, Calista Corporation, Chugach Alaska Corporation — alongside the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and Southcentral Foundation out on the Diplomacy Drive campus. Add the Alaska Railroad headquarters down at Ship Creek, the Port of Alaska, the freight operations at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport that make this one of the busiest cargo airports on earth, Providence as the largest private employer in the state, the Anchorage School District, and Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, and a weekday birthday desk drop here is routine work.
Neighborhood by neighborhood, the runs look like this. Downtown, South Addition, Bootleggers Cove and Government Hill (99501) are tight, walkable and full of older homes with real front entries — the easiest winter drops in the city. Midtown and Rogers Park (99503) is Evalyn's Floral's own ground, a few minutes in any direction. Spenard and Turnagain (99517) and Sand Lake and Jewel Lake (99502) run west toward the airport and Lake Hood. Airport Heights, University area and Russian Jack (99508) put you next to the UAA and Alaska Pacific University campuses off Providence and University Drive. Mountain View, Muldoon and Northeast Anchorage (99504) is Flowers Byjune's territory — Mountain View has been identified repeatedly as one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the United States, and the birthday work there reflects it, with multi-generational households and big family parties. Abbott Loop, Taku-Campbell and the Tudor corridor (99507) is Alaska Flower Shop's ground. Dimond, Oceanview and Klatt (99515) run south toward the Seward Highway. The Hillside — Upper O'Malley, Huffman, Rabbit Creek, Bear Valley (99516) is the hard one: long private driveways, steep pitches, stretches that do not get plowed for days, and addresses that are effectively invisible from the road in a snowstorm. Beyond the bowl, Eagle River (99577) is thirteen miles up the Glenn Highway, Chugiak and Birchwood (99567) a little further, and Girdwood (99587) is a forty-mile commitment down the Seward Highway along Turnagain Arm.
