Matchmaking Falls on Hard Times--Alaska Bachelors Get Low Bids at ‘Auction’

Here in the shadow of Mt. McKinley, the days are short, the nights are cold and the bachelors are lonely.

So, members of the loosely confederated Talkeetna Bachelor Society on Saturday night abandoned their remote cabins for the 11th year, traveled to this snow-blanketed town of 500, stepped onto an auction block in a local bar and invited all unmarried women to begin the bidding. The all-night party is the best known of Alaska’s matchmaking events.

The Talkeetna Bachelor Ball and Auction draws on Alaska’s reputation as a wild land overburdened with unattached men seeking women.

One bachelor known as “Dirty Joe” emerged from his hotel room freshly bathed and perfumed, with his hair combed, wearing a tuxedo, wolf-skin hat and mukluks, traditional Eskimo boots.

But last year’s ball revealed that even tiny Talkeetna has been touched by 1990s restraint.

The recession was blamed for low bids this year, and the waitresses at the Latitude 62 bar passed out condoms with drinks to bidders mindful of the risk of contracting disease from sex.

The reality is that matchmaking here has fallen on hard times.

AlaskaMen Magazine, the Anchorage-based bimonthly that posts photographs, descriptions and addresses of eligible Alaskan males for the consideration of marriage-minded Lower 48 women, in November declared bankruptcy.

And the Alaska Department of Labor has punctured that inflated myth of a high male-to-female ratio here.

The true gender breakdown in Alaska is about 52 men to 48 women, the department said in a recent demographic report. Although Alaska remains the most male of the 50 states, the department’s “Alaska 2000” report predicted that it will have more women than men in nine years.

The Talkeetna bachelors’ real problem is not a shortage of women but too few compatible women, said Kenny Farina, one of the Bachelor Society’s founders.

After more than a decade of trying to lure companions to this outpost 112 miles north of Anchorage, the Talkeetna men have learned to expect less of their annual romantic encounters with city women, he said.

“You can’t take a lady off a couch and put her on a stump,” he said.

The search for the right type of woman led the society to start a Wilderness Woman contest to coincide with the ball, he said.

Likewise, women here cautioned that Talkeetna bachelors fall short of the usual ideal man.

Waitress Pam Rannals made a sour face when asked if the bachelors on the auction block were desirable.

“They wouldn’t be bachelors that long if they were that desirable,” she said.

Shannon Tobiason, a waitress at the nearby Fairview Inn who bid $25 to share a drink and dance with “Dirty Joe,” said few of the bachelors are the marrying kind.

“None of the guys here seem to want to settle down,” she said. “I’m 29 years old, and I want to settle down,” but not with the typical Talkeetna bachelor, she added.