By MARK SABBATINI
JUNEAU EMPIRE

"You're moving to Juneau? Isn't that where a plane nearly had a mid-air collision with a whale?"

A variety of people, including those relocating, might question the judgment of friends and family moving to Southeast Alaska based on many news and film clips that tend to draw national attention. The region's struggles with timber and tourism might get lumped in with dozens of news stories about various problems around the nation, but it's those pesky whales that really manage to stand out.

The collision was highlighted by nationally syndicated humor columnist Dave Barry in 2002 after numerous "Alert Readers" sent him copies of a story about Petersburg commercial pilot Rod Judy nearly colliding with a breaching humpback whale on takeoff.

"Attention of dubious origin is better than being ignored," said Kathy Dye, a writer for the Sealaska Heritage Institute who wrote the article as a staff reporter for the Empire at the time.

Misguided impressions of Southeast life are portrayed in everything from stoic Wall Street Journal articles, which ranks Juneau with Chernobyl as one of the worst vacation destinations in the world, to what can only charitably be described as fringe movies featuring beach babes and alien invaders. But like all good lies and exaggerations, there are nuggets of truth - and the inescapable conclusion that life in Southeast can be weird.

And for those who want an idea of what to expect and how they'll fit in, there are opportunities to garner genuinely useful tidbits beyond the relocation brochures and videos offered by various real estate and other organizations that help people relocate.

Take, for example, a bit of normalcy that actually qualifies as unusual news when it comes to living in Alaska. The latest census data shows Juneau is split almost 50-50 by gender, contrary to the traditional view (still true in many areas) that men dominate the state's population. For singles, including those inspired by the numerous women who moved to the area lured by the odds in finding a mate, that might play a role when picturing their social lives.

"Women come up here and they think, 'I'm going to be walking down the street and men are just going to be growing on trees and I can just pick them and put them in my basket,' " said Susie Smutz, founder of the women-oriented magazine Alaska Men, in an interview after the census data came out. She said she was told there were about eight times as many men as women in the state when she started the magazine about eligible bachelors in 1987 - a wild exaggeration even then.

The Wall Street Journal, in a pair of articles, apparently doesn't consider Juneau much of a place to visit or work.

An article ranking the worst tourist spots in the world listed Juneau as one of it's runner-ups, part of a list including the Chernobyl site when the worst nuclear accident in history occurred. In regards to Juneau, it declares "this is one of the most visited spots in Alaska, but it has almost twice as much rain as Seattle and is inaccessible by road - you have to fly or boat in. Every day, as many as 10,000 cruise passengers jam the streets here. Even worse: The buzz of touring helicopters rattles windows."

Juneau political and leaders reacted with various degrees of outrage and amusement, but for anyone moving to Juneau the heavy rainfall and intense debate about large-scale tourism impacts on everyday life are legitimate issues to consider.

The Journal also featured Juneau when detailing one legislator's adventures while making the annual road and ferry trip to the Capitol for the legislative session. Various aspects of the article were questioned locally, including the non-existant 7,000-foot peaks supposedly towering above the city (3,000 to 4,000 in reality), but the lack of road access and options being considered for the future are a critical factor for homebuyers. Not only does isolation from the rest of the world have an impact on everyday life - as would a road if it's ever built - but the real estate market could be severely affected if legislators are ever successful in their ongoing efforts to move sessions to a different part of the state.

The PBS television show "Nova," in a recent feature documentary about avalanches, portrays a sizeable number of Juneau homeowners as folks of questionable intelligence willing to gamble their lives and homes by living in slide-prone areas.

The mood is set with a series of photos of what looks like a large avalanche wiping out most of downtown; in reality it was a slide near downtown that just happened to kick up an enormous and harmless cloud. Still, past slides have caused damage to some homes and, while no one is rushing to build in established slide zones (easy to spot because of all the missing trees), buyers of property near hillsides need to know avalanches don't always follow their traditional paths and plan accordingly.

Media's other half, the entertainment world, also manages to plant of strange and sometimes misleading impressions in the minds of outsiders. But those making a trip to the video store may also learn a thing or two.

Probably the most noteworthy recent release is the John Sayles film "Limbo," shown nationwide and now in common release at video stores. The movie got mixed reviews and a lukewarm reception at the box office, but a review of it at Amazon.com (where it recently ranked 14,539th on its sales rank list) details some very real-world aspects of life in the region that are shown. "The first half of the film focuses on why men and woman turn to Alaska, a land still ripe with opportunity," the review notes. "A small town is at a crossroads, with its pulp mill and canning factory closed, and new investors seeing different directions in which to take the area (one even boasts the state is the ultimate theme park)."

Even when the movie turns to a second half featuring murder, drug runners and other essential fundamentals of Hollywood, a few items of interest stand out. A Bush pilot refuses to fly out a lost and seriously injured hiker, for example, stating help must be sent back because he doesn't have enough fuel to handle the passenger's weight. Perhaps not likely if a hiker new to the area actually gets lost - but certainly an indication of the numerous unexpected scenarios that could occur during a rescue in the Last Frontier.

Some other recent serious and not-so-serious portrayals of Southeast Alaska life in the national news and entertainment media include:

* Ketchikan is one of the top 10 emerging markets for second homes, according to an Internet site EscapeHomes.com, which based its ratings on user requests, buyer interest and real estate prices. It describes the city as place of interest to "hunters, people with an interest in the outdoors, people looking for real estate and Alaska adventure."

* Haines, in a New York Times feature story, is depicted as a small-town haven with "aggressive independence and a wild and woolly individualism that the male population advertises with beards. Women tend to wear clothes that seem to express a commendable wish to snub every fashion trend of the last 25 years."

* The winter moose population outnumbers people in Gustavus by a two-to-one ratio, with the estimated density of 3.8 moose per square kilometer among the highest recorded in Alaska. This is something of a radical development, since moose have been known to occur in the area for only the last 40 years or so.

* A good chunk of Southeast gets portrayed in absurd fashion in the movie "Baywatch: White Thunder at Glacier Bay" (26,288th on the Amazon's video list). About the only things that come out looking good are Princess Cruises, which gets lots of its promotional film clips about their cruise ships included in what can only be assumed to be a cost-savings move, and David Hasselhoff's hair, which never wavers in the face of glacier gunfights and other life-threatening adversity cruise ship passengers inevitably face.

* Portions of John Carpenter's alien film "The Thing" were filmed on the Juneau Icefield, as was the family-friendly dog-befriends-boy movie "Kavik the Wolf Dog, which also includes footage from other some surrounding areas of the region.