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San Francisco. Visited many times as kid. Went to college there. Usually people love where they went to college. Hated it. I've also been visiting NYC my entire life, and being from LA, I didn't realize how much smaller it would actually feel compared to both until I lived there. Dirtiest city I've ever been to. Extremely expensive. Weather is horrible. Public transit and driving are both equally horrible options for getting anywhere. The locals are neither friendly nor attractive. The nightlife is quite boring. Basically I never found the purpose of spending NYC prices for anything but NYC. And I never found the purpose of paying the CA "sunshine tax" for a smaller, dirtier, ruder, uglier, more boring city when you can just live in LA.
Yeah, the size was the biggest reason I didn't move to SF after getting used to LA, and the size 43 miles would start to feel like a prison.
First impression was probably what everyone else gets - good, active downtown area, scenic location, good food/beer scene, etc.
Well, part of the reason Portland's downtown area is so robust and active is because everything in the city is concentrated there. There are no real neighborhood centers, there's not much else to explore from an urban standpoint outside of the central part of town. Once you've experienced that (and it doesn't take long), you've experienced it all.
The other thing that got me is that everything in Portland is hyped to levels of absurdity that are difficult to imagine. Every restaurant is "amazing," every bar is "the best," every store is "the coolest." You get the point. Coming from an area where people tend to downplay (or even take for granted) the things they're fortunate to live near, this was tough for me. I get loving where you live. That's important, and something everyone should strive for. But it's hard to blindly buy into the hype for everything simply because it happens to be in Portland.
Portland's a cool town. One definitely worth visiting, and for the right people, maybe even moving to. Definitely has a good restaurant scene, good beer scene, and is pretty. But don't take the "Greatest food town in America!" etc. press at face value. It's not an underrated city (people in Portland truly believe it's underrated). It's been a media darling for going on 2 decades and I'm hard-pressed to think of a comparably sized city that gets more attention nationally. And I think the relentless self-congratulatory attitude (especially when a lot of the stuff is wayyyyyyy overrated) is soul crushing unless you buy in completely. I live in Boston, another city that often gets a rap for being smug/full of itself. And in many ways, it is. But Boston has enough self-loathing, and an inferiority complex that keeps it at least somewhat grounded. Portland has none of that. I'll still visit Portland (and I do a few times a year for a beer from Bissell Bros, or a meal on the way up to Sunday River), but no other place I have lived has been more of an overall disappointment in the long run.
San Francisco
High hopes but definitely dirty and overrated. Not nearly as tolerant as its image leads to believe, some of the worst traffic in the nation. It wasn't horrible, but definitely not in the stratosphere citizens liken it to (LA, NY)...
Cleveland
I actually quite like Cleveland, but I expected a more cosmopolitan city with a bigger countenance. Not at all what I got, but it has charm...
Buffalo
Like Cleveland. I adore Buffalo, but when I moved to NYS was led to believe it was grander than it actually is. Buffalo is just really small...
Atlanta
I remember being really excited to move to Atlanta, then I got there. Overrated, for a better experience just go to DC. I find the city to be too pretentious and fake...
Norfolk
I'd always thought this area was charming and full of energy. Turns out it possesses little charm at all, there us a defeatist energy here, it has more of a southern vibe than I'd like, and the locals are not inspiring, to say the least. It is a pretty city, it's cute, but it's small and in its own head...
Baltimore
Highly unimpressed. Dirty, impoverished, ugly, not great people. Just doesn't do it for me...
Albany
I have fond memories of living there (2012), but as time goes on, my opinion has changed. I visited back in January/February this year. It really is small and while I think it is fine for what it is, it just doesn't offer enough to do, and the weather and location ain't that great...
Boston
SF of the East. I like Boston, had a positive experience there. Just find it overrated, smaller than I thought it would be, and just missing the pizazz I was led to believe. I'll take DC or Dallas in that size range, Boston is like Atlanta and SF to me...
Cleveland has never been a cosmopolitan city lol .
Haha, why would someone expect Cleveland to be cosmopolitan?
To be fair, it was the biggest metro in Ohio until Columbus passed it a couple years ago, and once neared a million residents in the city proper. It's also one of the few American cities to have a full-fledged heavy rail system, and the only city in Ohio where the surrounding counties don't all vote deep-red in presidential elections.
Not even. The city just sells itself as the last white bastion for major east coast cities. It sells white young rich and college. Not difficult to do, especially if you ignore what actually going on in the city. Any PR or marketing department could handle that.
This isn’t the U.S.S.R., you could freely move about the entire Bay Area if living in San Francisco.
False. MUNI is subpar and doesn’t extend past the tiny city limits. BART is simply a commuter train to car-centric suburbs. Don’t sell SF on being a walking and public transit city if you need a car to not feel isolated. Without a car, SF is claustrophobic.
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