urban Bay Area vs. Portland OR?

[PeixeGato]

Originally Posted by Isebiel

Just today a friend of mine in San Mateo mentioned that she got a Brazilian football channel through Comcast cable. (And she was mentioning it as a thing included that she didn't have any interest in, so I don't think it cost extra.)

Can you find out the name of the channel? Please?

[Isebiel]

Originally Posted by PeixeGato

Can you find out the name of the channel? Please?

I believe it is this: PFC - O Canal do Futebol. Might generally be offered as part of some Portuguese programming package. Good luck!

Here's the Comcast page that shows their offerings: http://www.comcast.com/Corporate/Pro...ortuguese.html

[hamellr]

You might ask this in the Portland Forum. Most of us over there try to be realistic about our city, to the point that a lot of people accuse us of trying to keep people away. Pretty much everything said here is spot on though.

Portland has a good food scene, per capita I'd compare it against any US city for quality. We have a great cooking school and another "pretty darn good" cooking school, many of the graduates end up opening their own places here. The Food Cart scene is phenomenal (just passed 600 unique carts a few months ago,) a lot of high end chefs found themselves laid off and opened food carts to make ends meet. If you're into Beer, we have more Brewpubs then any other state. Most of which are in PDX. Pretty much every neighborhood has a farmer's market, several are twice a week.

Trimet is actually very good, when busses are late (rarely,) it's usually due to either a traffic accident or a breakdown. (A friend is a Trimet Driver.) MAX covers a good portion of the city and runs well into the suburbs. A few Bus lines have been cut in service lately due the economy again. The biggest complaint by passengers and ironically Trimet itself is the lack of ticket inspections on MAX. Trimet did just hire six new ticket inspectors finally figuring out that $1mil/year could recover up to $10mil/year in lost revenue.

Property taxes in high population areas do negate somewhat the lack of a sales tax. In other areas there is a net savings. Rent is going higher across the city unfortunately due to the number of foreclosures and job losses. But we don't have entire neighborhoods that are foreclosed thankfully.

Portland is NOT as diverse as other cities, anymore. Due to a variety of issues that all stem from the Civil War era, Portland (and Oregon in general) has not been friendly towards non-white races. Many former "black" neighborhoods have been gentrified, but the good side of that is that they now have less crime. Although as the economy fails, Gang Activity is increasing again.

Bike commuting is a huge deal. There are a lot of people who resent the "large amounts of money" that the city has spent on bike infrastructure, who conveniently ignore the fact that the total amount of money spent on such last year would only build about five miles of new road, or repave about 50 miles of road. The is a lot of bike vs. driver arguments including a couple of fatalities due to road rage as both sides get used to the new order of things.

Part of the frustration stems from drivers believing that cyclists "don't pay taxes to use the roads," when statistically most of us do have cars (in my case several,) but prefer to bike or walk as much as possible. You can do a lot via bike in Portland, but if you want to travel outside of the Metro area you must have a car.

We have an awesome Zoo, I'd say that your's is slightly better only due to it's overall size. We have several decent museums, but again not on the order of what you have down there.

I think that most of Portland's problems right now are due to growing pains. There are a lot of us Natives who resent the fact that Portland is being forced into becoming a "large city." Telling a Native (or someone who's lived here for over ten years,) that something needs to be changed (IE, "You guys really need an In-and-Out" is common,) can cause arguments.

The homeless are a problem. I wouldn't compare any place in PDX to the Tendorloin in SF though. It has gotten worse in the past couple of years with open drug use, but there are still few muggings, fights or random murders. Part of the issue is that Portland has been a dumping ground for homeless from other cities for many, many years. Another problem is that a large number of anarchist kids were bussed into to propagate riots (by a still unknown group,) in the late 90's. Many of them stayed here. Most of them are now involved in the drug trade. They tend to attract disenfranchised latch key kids who are usually fairly well off, but had to run away in their teen-age angst. Luckily most of those kids get off the streets eventually. For the most part, just don't make eye contact with any of the homeless and you'll be good. They usually only ask for change when you do.

Politically it feels like things can take a long time to get done. This is because we have an additional governmental body called Metro that lies in between the Counties and the Cities who's focus is the entire region (AKA the Greater Portland Area - Salem to the south, Battleground to the North, Sandy in the east and Forest Grove to the west.) It's an fairly effective body doing a good job in addressing the needs of 40+ various sized cities, four counties and two states. Not to mention the various government agencies at all levels. It takes longer to iron out issues, but is well respected and rarely gets bogged down in inefficiencies.

I think that right now Portland's biggest challenge is the job market. Pretty much every sector of industry is suffering. Minimum wage jobs are getting applications from people with Master's degrees in various industries mixed in among the 500+ resumes. It's gotten to the point that you really have to know someone at the company you're looking at to get a job there - simply because HR departments are getting overwhelmed. Out of staters have an even harder time because the 8+ months of cloudy skies tends to overwhelm most newcomers and there is a high risk that a company will hire someone, then find them moving in six months due to the weather.