Pastiche *: whatever happened to the $15 business lunch?(From the Publisher)

The legendary two-martini lunch fell from favor years ago and now, apparently, so has the $15 business lunch.

Once the hallmark of networking and fellowship, the casual, collegial, informal institution seems to have gone the way of mom-and-pop stores and neighborhood bars. There aren't many left.

If one is in business or must be out and about in the line of duty, membership in local service and social clubs is de rigueur. Often there are two or three business lunches that business people must attend every week, plus the occasional dinner. In the past, when lunch tickets ran about $15 each and a dinner could be had for about $20, someone could run up about $65 a week going to meetings and supporting sponsoring organizations. Annualized at eight such events a month, out of pocket meal expenses could conservatively hit $1,700.

However, since many organizations now look upon these business lunches as profit centers, the $15 lunches have gone up to $30 to $35 and dinners are going for $45.

Partaking of just one $30 lunch and one $45 dinner repast each week, in addition to a couple of "cheaper" lunches and a dinner a month, expense accounts will hit $2,400 per year per person. If one takes a colleague or contact to a meal a couple times a month, you're talking annual costs of $2,500!

No wonder some attendance figures are trending downward.

* Pastiche. Noun, from the French and Italian. "Having satirical intent."

Whatever happened to "Alaska: Air Crossroads to the World?"

One consultant who recently landed in Anchorage asked if he could catch a taxi to Nome or should he hire a car!

Thus it often is that when consultants are brought on to promote or work for Alaska, we have to train them first. Witness the Performing Arts Center where women in heels must trudge through snow or driving rain to attend the opera. And then there is that monstrosity and death-defying staircase to the Loussac Library! In both cases the "insultants" had not a clue about winter in Alaska. Did they not know that we have it here for several months of the year?

Now we must endure still other great experts who are going to tell us how to brand ourselves to the Lesser 48. Branding is for cattle. Before that, Pharaohs did it to slaves.

By year's end, some of Anchorage's leading organizations will, all told, have "invested" more than a half million dollars in the past three years to sell Alaska. The great bulk of that money went to Outside consultants.

Have we no specialists in Alaska? The answer is a resounding "Yes, we surely do." Results of their work can be seen and heard every day on television, radio and the print media; splendid work. We maintain that it is high time we stop outsourcing the work that we know how to do best-sell Alaska.

We threw over "Star of the North" and probably not a bad thing. Polaris, the North Star, aside from being pointed at by the Big Dipper, is sort of nowhere. It is between the constellations Ursa Minor and Cassiopeia, and it said little about Alaska and Anchorage. But "Anchorage: Air Crossroads of the World,"-that says it all. Let the tourist and convention professionals promote the flora and fauna. The rest of us can tout all of the other commercially favorable aspects of "The Great Land."

It is axiomatic: The next great thing is often the last great thing, retouched.

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