Portland Hype (Detroit: job market, theatre, colleges)

[SteveMark]

Originally Posted by chattypatty

I have to second what SteveMark said. I have lived in Portland for 28 years, minus a few years when I have been away traveling. If I didn't have family there, I'd have pulled up and moved away long ago.

This city has a beautiful waterfront area that was created a number of years ago and is a lovely place to walk. The city has some beautiful architecture. Certainly there are wonderful restaurants and a lot of cultural activities for a city this size. Yes, I do love Powell's Bookstore -- it's special and not just like any other old bookstore. The NW and West Hills neighborhoods are gorgeous. Just go for a walk (during the day, of course). Washington Park is lovely (again, go during the day). Portland has its good points.

But the city has become absolutely a liberal fascist hotbed. I say that as a registered Democrat!! I can't even be "moderate" anymore without having my head bitten off everywhere I go. It has become a politically frightening and unpleasant place for me. I actually toy with becoming Republican just to really **** people off. (I know, I know, immature.) This is the land of Al Gore and Michael Moore. I'm surprised they haven't erected structures in their honor in Pioneer Square yet. I find it disgusting and disconcerting. It's like all the aging, greying, balding, sagging, disgruntled hippies have migrated to Portland and have staked their claim. The streets are full of good for nothing youthful bums who panhandle quite aggressively when they're not making money standing in for local activist shows that plague the sidewalks and the streets (the last time I was there, a gaggle of morons were jumping out in front of traffic in front of Pioneer Square with signs saying "The is an Israeli Checkpoint" and proceeded to inconvenience all the motorists with their nonsensical show. Sometimes the homeless standins were a little slow to react when the lights turned green. (Naturally, the part about the dismembered Jewish victims of terrorism was edited out of the performance.)

We moved to an outlying community that is much more conservative, though in Portland, that's not saying much. We finally left for extended periods of time traveling. When we come home for visits now, we just go straight to our conservative haven and bypass the City Moonbats. It's a shame. All that is left for me now is the State Fair and the St. Paul Rodeo, where you still see some semblance of love for country. God help the Republicans! I don't know any personally but I'd sure love to know how the heck they are surviving in Portland.

Wow, someone else who agrees! Be careful, Chatty Patty, you will most likely be censured for speaking your mind about Portland. How dare you have an opposing opinion about that wonderful city!

Nice to hear someone else has experienced the same things I have and actually DOESN'T like those experiences! You should watch the History Channel program, The States. I watched this weekend and when it got to Oregon, basically all I got out of it was that Oregon and Portland is the hotbed of activists and weirdos and they are VERY proud of it. To prove it, one of the people they interviewed to express those thoughts so eloquently was a large, cross dressing man who looked like a Penn State linebacker in drag. He/she sure made me want to move back there!

By the way, the St. Paul rodeo is cool, along with the Pendleton Roundup. But you know animals get hurt at those, so how dare you attend it! Ciao!

[John Shaft]

Originally Posted by chattypatty

We moved to an outlying community that is much more conservative, though in Portland, that's not saying much. We finally left for extended periods of time traveling. When we come home for visits now, we just go straight to our conservative haven and bypass the City Moonbats. It's a shame. All that is left for me now is the State Fair and the St. Paul Rodeo, where you still see some semblance of love for country. God help the Republicans! I don't know any personally but I'd sure love to know how the heck they are surviving in Portland.

You answered your own wondering...we stay on the outskirts. I'm no registered Republican but I'm a conservative-leaning independent (although I don't really like "liberal" and "conservative" as term as they are oversimplying). I'm all for tossing around differing ideas to see what actually WORKS in the real world, but the PDX environment is just as much "shout down the undesirable opinions" as any lockstep right-wing talk show.

So...we stay on the west side as much as possible, and when we're in Portland, we keep a low profile. Which is fairly easy to do since it is not my natural inclination to put 700 bumper stickers on every square inch of my car.

[GB1]

I agree with the latest posters in this thread (with some exceptions; I couldn't care less about men in drag or "weirdos" or whatever; most of the "Keep Portland Weird" stuff is about as weird as Wacky Shirt Friday at a local insurance office, anyway).

But the groupthink mentality in PDX is as stultifying and doctrinaire as that in any Bible-banging small town. Instead of Jesus, you've got recycling and sustainability. Instead of "family values," you've got progressivism (whatever that means this week - and if you want a laugh, ask a Portlander to define "progressive").

Not that any or all of those things aren't laudable; they're just not thought through. They're buzzwords, and they take the place of original thought...and, all too often, original conversation. An acquaintance of mine there once said "Diversity in Portland means that everyone has a different tattoo and thinks the exact same," and there's some truth in that.

My own politics are probably slightly left-of-center on the national scale. In Portland I felt like Sean Hannity.

[lilypad]

It is true, Portland is the Land of Oz and "out there" with its progressivism, but may have a less skeptical perception now that I no longer live there. I lived in SE Portland for about seven years in the late 80's early 90's, and was liberal but probably not as crazed as today. I manage to get a visit in once a year usually during the nicer weather, late summer or early fall. Is still a beautiful place to me for the most part, and pleasant.

I enjoy visiting my old places, Mt. Tabor, Ladd's Addition, the wonderful parks, bookstores, health food stores and my favorite coffee shop on SE Clinton St. Have family and friends still there, so that makes it special as well. I would find it hard to live there now, as it seems the growth and traffic have made it a less desirable place. Just hope the City leaders can do something to curb the homeless folks and panhandlers to a more restricted area, or the tourism and economy of Downtown may take a turn for the worst.

[pdxtc]

Very interesting to read all of this. I grew up in Portland, then moved away to NY for many years. I decided to try and make a go of it here, and unfortunately, I drank the Kool-aid with the Portland hype and moved out here. I've been here six months, and I find the people, well, hard to put my finger on it. They're polite, but not terribly gracious. They don't seem to be curious, really, and there's this weird code here - it's great to be weird, but as long as it's just like us. They say it's diverse here because there are some gay people, but I don't think that means diverse, that's just a fact of life. I find the lack of acceptance of many valid opinions (we're not talking right wing here) are basically just intellectual laziness. Maybe they just don't know - maybe they don't know that they don't know. Even the people that seem more sophisticated here will often ask which high school I went to - considering that was so long ago, I hardly think that matters. I think it's just a way to pidgeon-hole people. And the bumpersticker politics! Well, I'll probably be going back, and I'm sure that some people on this post will say good riddance. One thing I can say is NY welcomed me with open arms, and many people are genuinely nice there - only wish I could say the same about Portland. The woman who manages my apartment building said that 1 of of every 3 people that leave the building move out of state. She also told me that she's had so many people move here, then just feel like, screw it, don't even want to bother with this place. I think especially East Coast people have a hard time because the energy is so different - there's no real electricity here. There's my two cents.

[Leisesturm]

Well, thank goodness I don't give a hang about whether Portland's people are polite or gracious or not. Or weird. Or socially welcoming. Or interesting, vibrant. When you have lived all of your life as a member of a minority group on the absolute bottom of the racial pecking order you don't, as a rule, develop much of a spirit of entitlement to color your perception of a particular city's moral or social code. I will be happy in Portland if I am not accosted four times in six months by the police while on a bicycle or riding the subway and subjected to 20 minute checks for outstanding warrants each instance. I will be just fine with PDX if I can rent an apartment that I can afford, if I can afford it, regardless of where in Portland it is. Coming from NYC that would be anywhere, including Downtown. I don't think $1500/mo is a lot to pay for housing. I can make my own excitement and I am not asking anything of Portland except to let me be me. Maybe for some, Portland has failed them and I truly don't know what they will do next, as IMO, the things they openly pine for are not to be found in any modern American city any longer. Well, to be fair, some qualities and intrinsics can still be found elsewhere but IMO at unacceptable tradeoffs. A great many unhappy residents of Portland are seeking qualities in a city that are, simply put, totally and completely mutually exclusive. In other words. Good luck finding it! I don't know of any American city that has a Gold rating when it comes to it's treatment of minorities. What I can tell you, from experience, is that my first mode of interaction with cities in the Northeast, the Midwest and the Southeast is usually some form of traffic stop or civil supeona on behalf of local law enforcement. I lived for two consecutive years in Salem with never an interaction with law enforcement. Portland may be different but I hope it will not be anything like the rabid persecution that goes on in towns in the Northeast where gentrification is underway and active deportment of an entrenched minority group is underway. In short, what I can tell you quite honestly is, for me at any rate, if I cannot find it in Portland then it will not be found in these United States and will therefore require searching in Canada or the U.K. hopefully it won't come to that.

H

[oldtintype]

Portland has had some problems with racial profiling, but probably no where close to what you've experienced. I hope you post after your move so we can see what you end up thinking of the area.

[readytojet!]

I'm very amused by this thread. I live in Michigan currently, but have several friends in Portland and all love the city and all of them were transplanted from different regions of the country. What's funny is that it seems that no matter where you go, there are locals who hate where they live or what their city has become. Every city has its fine points and every city has its negatives. I love that people complain about their city and that its not what they want it to be. Instead of complaining about their city, they should just move somewhere where they feel they would adapt better. It's very humorous to me that people decide to be miserable in the state they are in and don't make an effort to change.

[vanyali]

I like the wild berries in Portland. There was a bush next to the grocery store I would walk to from the group house I stayed in one summer in college, and you could taste the weather in the berries (sunny = sweet, rainy = tart). Finding salmon berries in the woods was fun too. And in general I don't mind the weather. I like rain. It makes it easy to garden for one thing.

I can see what people are saying about the liberal thought-nazis. I was staying with fellow college students at Reed when I was in Portland, so I figured I was just getting the worst of it, but I know the type, and they can be overly bold and unreflective. There are some of them in New York too -- in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, when Bloomberg was closing down small, inefficient, redundant firehouses (i.e.: running the city), some group of people showed up for a protest at the local firehouse and propped the garage door open with their bodies so the city couldn't "close" it. Get it? Can't close the firehouse if you can't close the door? It's kind of funny, but I'm not sure the humor was intentional. In New York, there are enough other people wandering around (Wall St types, etc.) that you feel like it's OK to have a different opinion. I can see how Portland can feel too homogeneous.

I don't know how far west I would ever want to go in oregon. Yes, you get away from the above-mentioned problems, but you eventually run into a completely different set of issues. My (I admit, total redneck) uncle lived on some land he had out near Burns when he was killed and thrown down a neighbor's well by one of his tenants. The local sheriff and police force went into overdrive to destroy any evidence they could think of, and basically just closed ranks around the killer, because they liked him and didn't like my uncle. The guy was bragging about what he did at a local bar, but it didn't matter. Talk about scary redneck podunk. National Geographic ran an article on Burns, OR a few years ago in which they described it as a place you'd only go to to prepare for Hell. ? That quote was a bit much, I admit, but it goes to show, even a National Geographic travel writer can have a hard time finding something to like about that place.

I like noticing the reactions of people on the different area forums on this site to negative posts. Posters from some areas brush them off, from other areas agree and pile on the complaints, and in still other areas people gang up on anyone who admits to disliking a place, heaping abuse on the poor person's head and driving them away. The forum for the area I'm in now (Charlotte) is of the third type. I'm getting the feeling that the Portland forum might tend toward that too. It really reflects badly on the city, and helps prove the points of the negative posters regarding intolerance of different opinions.

[Tesaje]

Originally Posted by vanyali

I like noticing the reactions of people on the different area forums on this site to negative posts. Posters from some areas brush them off, from other areas agree and pile on the complaints, and in still other areas people gang up on anyone who admits to disliking a place, heaping abuse on the poor person's head and driving them away. The forum for the area I'm in now (Charlotte) is of the third type. I'm getting the feeling that the Portland forum might tend toward that too. It really reflects badly on the city, and helps prove the points of the negative posters regarding intolerance of different opinions.

I like those wild berries too!

From what I've seen on this forum, there are Portland haters, Portland lovers, some are all one and some are all the other and they fight. But I've also seen several people who acknowledge there are negatives as well as positives about the place and know that it is their opinion and others might not agree. People are entitled to their opinions.

Parochial attitudes can be found just about anywhere in this country. But we are such a mobile society, as one poster noted who is new to the area, there are so many people from elsewhere that friends can be found.

Personally, I find people from the far left are pretty much like people from the far right - both are entrenched and rigid in their beliefs. I like more moderation.