Anchorage is not setup like a city. You don't really live near "bars and restaurants".

The housing situation is very limited as well budget wise.

People want it to be a bike city badly, but you dump a foot of snow on the street and that goes out the window. There is plenty of recreational biking options and a handful of hardcore people will bike to work but that is often situational (they have an aunt who drives that way to work anyways, their job doesn't have set hours).

Living in Alaska is about small social groups and families. The population is a small 300k people in the city and 200k of them are stay at home family types, 40k of them live in the "suburbs of eagle river/chugiak/girdwood" which is too far to safely drink and be out unless you have a DD.

The military has 6,500 stationed on the edge of town and they of course contribute a lot to the disposable income "bar" scene.

There is only ever enough population to make a handful of bars popular. They stay the same until there are a few shootings outside of them and then the crowd picks a new spot.

You will see a lot of the same people, it is a small town and I'm sure the gay community is the proportionately the same. But keep in mind it is so small it's basically a big high school in the social scene.

As someone said Myrnas is the most popular "gay" bar but Alaska has so few people and is quite libertarian it's luckily not even a choice to segregate the communities. So you should consider that no one cares if you're gay. I know plenty of gay people who don't want to do the "gay" scene and just skip that place.

Just don't get a DUI. Budget for cabs or ride with friends.

As for where to live, I 100% suggest living close to where you work. Spend as little time commuting as possible. If you want to be one of those bike people, you can do it all summer. If the roads are crap in the winter, you don't have to go far.