urban Bay Area vs. Portland OR? (San Jose, San Francisco: transplants, sales, how much)

[mayorhaggar]

I've been in the Bay Area for about 7 years now, lived in SF for just over 6 years and have been in North Oakland for almost a year now. Generally I like it a lot but before moving out here I moved around a fair bit and now I find I'm getting a bit restless. I thought about moving to NYC last summer but decided the economy was too crappy to take a chance on, so I only got as far east as Oakland, lol.

Anyway I read this article this morning:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/24/sp...team.html?_r=1

I really like soccer and watch a lot of European games on TV, but having a local team that people really get into sounds fun. Yeah San Jose has the Quakes but I don't have a car so I can't go down there, plus it doesn't sound like as fun of a scene. So I started thinking that maybe as a change of pace I'd like Portland but I dunno. Generally I like the Bay Area, and I like Oakland a lot more than I ever thought I would, but that old wanderlust does raise its head a bit now and then. I don't really have enough time off or make enough money to travel much so in some ways it's better and easier for me to move somewhere and experience living there than to travel there, though I'd definitely try and get up there on a quick vacation before seriously considering moving there.

So I figured I'd ask people here and see what people who live in the SF area what they think about comparing it to Portland--since people here would be less likely to be totally enamored and biased about Portland, and we know how much people on this forum and in the Bay Area in general like to complain about the Bay Area. I think later if I'm more serious about a move I'll ask on the Portland board.

Anyway here are some specific things I wonder about:

• People always say the public transit in Portland is great. But really, what are they comparing it to, rural Oregon? SF? NYC? How does it compare with SF's transit, or BART? It's easy to get around SF or Oakland without a car--a bit less so in Oakland but I bike everywhere. I have no desire to ever own a car so I need good public transit.

• People say Portland is walkable and very bike-friendly. How does it compare to SF or Oakland in this respect? Most of SF is ridiculously walkable but I never liked biking there much--too hilly, windy, too much traffic on the streets. I really like biking in and around Oakland and Berkeley--less hills, less wind, and cars give you a lot of space and a lot of streets don't have much traffic compared to SF. But it could be better, there aren't enough bike lanes (there are several but it seems like they cut in and out randomly like on Telegraph). Also it's pretty easy to get to trails in the East Bay like the Iron Horse trail by BART, without a car. I wonder how easy it is to get to trails like that or hiking without a car in Portland.

• how does the food compare, Portland apparently is really not diverse, like 78% white. I like how in SF or Oakland I can get pretty much anything I want.

• how does the weather compare? Sounds like it gets slightly colder in winter than PDX but summers are warmer than SF or Oakland.

• how does housing compare--I know it's a lot cheaper in PDX than SF but still more expensive than if you were somewhere like rural Florida. Is the housing in good shape or does it tend to be crappy unless you're rich like in the Bay Area? Is it easy to afford to live well? I find that if you aren't stupid about money you can get by and be comfortable in SF or Oakland on around 30-40K if you don't have a car, but it would be nice to be able to save more.

Anyway feel free to add any other comments. And this probably wouldn't be for a while, like a year or so, plus I'd want to wait until the economy was better and I could expect to be able to pick up sticks and show up there and get a job, or get a job there while still down here, and I don't know if the US economy will ever get back to that point soon.

[tstieber]

Portland is a great city, very urban for being small. The whole metro are is much smaller, like a giant Sacramento on steroids. The Pearl District is really cool, and the public transit (street cars) are FREE within the city! Food is actually rather good, and it's very affordable. If the weather didn't suck, then it would be a more popular place. People tell us it rains most of the year except in summer. I've been in July, and it was alternatingly hot and then cool and rainy as well. In winter, you do get some snow but also occasional ice storms, and it CAN get very very cold, like 10 degrees or so, so you won't see eucalyptus trees or palms like in California. Recreational opportunities are fantastic, as long as you're okay with it raining frequently. I love the place, but couldn't take the long, long rainy season. If you go now, you'll fall in love with it. If you go in October, when it's warm here are crappy there, you'll think differently. But for a few years, it's pretty cool.

[Isebiel]

When I was looking for places to move, I thought Portland would be perfect, based on what I'd heard and read. I have a lot of friends there, so it was easy to visit for quite a while and explore extensively.

This was in fall 2009. (This may matter.)

The transit system is pretty comparable to SFs, though there's no equivalent to CalTrain, since there's no place it would go to. It seemed quite a bit cheaper than MUNI and the whole downtown area is a free transit zone. There's light rail all over the city and out to the burbs, ordinary diesel buses that seem to do a good job, and electric trolleys which run downtown.

Walkable and bike friendly... well. Depends on what you like! The sidewalks aren't particularly spacious, but cars are very aware of pedestrians and will just straight out stop if you stand at the curb and look wistfully across the street. Even on multi-lane highways. It's kind of freaky. The areas with single family houses often have incredible flower gardens in the front. Very pretty, great for walking through. Downtown was kind of crowded and unfriendly. (More on that later.)

I don't bike, so I can't say about how friendly it is, but there were a lot of bicyclists around (many of them going at crazy unsafe speeds on shared walkways, which annoyed me a lot). I did see one guy on a bike get hit by an unobservant turning driver. It's a little hilly, but not as much as SF.

Food is better in SF. The "best" Chinese in Portland was pretty lame, and you can hardly get Italian food at all. Lots of decent Thai restaurants, if that's your thing. Lots of fun food carts in certain locations. Similar availability of good, fresh organic produce.

Couldn't say about the weather year round, but all my friends there seem to get pretty depressed around January...

Also can't really say about housing, because as soon as I visited I dismissed the city out of hand and stopped looking.

The problem for me was (dun dun DUN!) the "homeless." Kind of ironic. Having looked back through some archives on these boards, I think I may have witnessed what people used to complain about in SF. (They may, in fact, have been the very same people, if the rumor about bussing homeless from SF to Portland in 2009 is true.)

I have no problem whatsoever with homeless people, other than feeling that the situation is unfortunate for them. BUT, the homeless in Portland were all over and they were extremely aggressive. Every time I got off the train outside the "free" zone there was a line of bums asking for train passes. The whole downtown area, by the city library and the square, was packed with gutterpunks sitting on the sidewalks and being mouthy. (They weren't even begging, they were just harassing people.) In one sandwich shop I saw someone get extremely aggressive when he was told the bathroom was for paying customers only. The riverside park was pretty much shoulder-to-shoulder with people who sure looked drugged-up, sprawled out on the grass. Every bus I went on had someone obviously crazy and occasionally violent.

I read up on the situation afterwards, and learned that (1) there was a huge surge in heroin trade in Portland that summer, with it being cheap and strong and there being no prosecution of people using/selling it, and (2) a law against blocking sidewalks had been overturned by the Oregon supreme court as suppressing free speech. So it's possible 2009 was just a really bad year in Portland and it's better now.

I liked the Alphabet District best. The Oregon coast is not too far away and incredibly beautiful. The walkway along the river had the potential to be really nice (except for the crazy bicyclists and the drugged up people napping). And Portland is fabulous for coffee and bookstores.

There was no earthquake protection anywhere that I could see, and we now know that it's a seismically active zone. Looking up at some of the elevated highways was scary. The bridges aren't very well constructed, the trains had to go really slowly over the one they used (shared with cars) because it couldn't take the strain.

[OakAve2OakLand]

I've heard that Vancouver, Washington (just over the river) can also be a nice alternative to Portland (cheaper housing, no state income tax, etc..)..yet still in the Portland metro. I'll defer to the locals though for any details on this...just an idea.

[Hemlock140]

Yes, Vancouver WA is the best of both worlds, no state income tax and shopping in Portland with no sales tax.

With your tendency to move around, I would suggest that area as the next step. Then when you get the urge to move on you can try Seattle for a while. These three west coast areas are very similar in many ways, the main difference being rain and a less "urban feel" as you go north.

[mayorhaggar]

a) I don't think I'd want to live in Vancouver WA, like I said I wouldn't want to have a car and it sounds rather suburban.

b) yeah there are a lot of aggressive bicyclists in SF--usually bike messengers. It irritates me when I'm crossing the street in downtown SF and they nearly hit you because they go so fast and don't wait at lights like they're supposed to so they just blast through red lights. Though it seems like now that a lot more people are using Market to commute by bike than just a few years ago, bicicylists seem more sensible and careful around pedestrians.

c) there's a ton of aggressive homeless people in SF, it would be surprising to see somewhere where they are even more aggressive.

[Isebiel]

Originally Posted by mayorhaggar

(snip)
c) there's a ton of aggressive homeless people in SF, it would be surprising to see somewhere where they are even more aggressive.

Yeah... I do want to ask about that. I'll start a different topic, though.

Have you considered Denver? That's my next-best choice. Great city for biking, cutest little light rail trains in the world (not the best coverage, but they're working on it). Sunny and low-humidity, but gets cold in the winter, of course. Excellent, inexpensive restaurants. Never spotted any homeless people downtown.

Though... there were a lot of aggressive Greenpeace dudes looking for signatures.

[mayorhaggar]

I've never really been interested in Denver...just kinda sounds too western and not west coast enough for me.

[mdwstrnkid]

Originally Posted by Isebiel

The problem for me was (dun dun DUN!) the "homeless." Kind of ironic. Having looked back through some archives on these boards, I think I may have witnessed what people used to complain about in SF. (They may, in fact, have been the very same people, if the rumor about bussing homeless from SF to Portland in 2009 is true.)

I have no problem whatsoever with homeless people, other than feeling that the situation is unfortunate for them. BUT, the homeless in Portland were all over and they were extremely aggressive. Every time I got off the train outside the "free" zone there was a line of bums asking for train passes. The whole downtown area, by the city library and the square, was packed with gutterpunks sitting on the sidewalks and being mouthy. (They weren't even begging, they were just harassing people.) In one sandwich shop I saw someone get extremely aggressive when he was told the bathroom was for paying customers only. The riverside park was pretty much shoulder-to-shoulder with people who sure looked drugged-up, sprawled out on the grass. Every bus I went on had someone obviously crazy and occasionally violent.

I read up on the situation afterwards, and learned that (1) there was a huge surge in heroin trade in Portland that summer, with it being cheap and strong and there being no prosecution of people using/selling it, and (2) a law against blocking sidewalks had been overturned by the Oregon supreme court as suppressing free speech. So it's possible 2009 was just a really bad year in Portland and it's better now.

I visited Portland last summer and found that the homeless were much less aggressive than the homeless in SF. We spent four days in the downtown area and were not even approached once by a homeless person. For the most part, they seemed to keep to themselves.

Another observation: Portland, especially the downtown area, seemed to be much, much cleaner than that of San Francisco. In fact, I thought that Portland was one of the cleanest cities that I've ever visited.

[OakAve2OakLand]

Originally Posted by mayorhaggar

I've never really been interested in Denver...just kinda sounds too western and not west coast enough for me.

In my opinion, Denver is a great, young city with a bright future...and Boulder, 1/2 hour up to the road, definitely has a Nothern California vibe to it...healthy, lots of nature, eco-freindly, somewhat upscale, entrepreneurial (budding VC / tech / start-up community there - i.e. google "tech stars boulder").

BUT, I do see your point in it generally being a "Western" town, at least compared to the Bay Area. It's somehow a combination of Western / Midwestern / and a little bit West Coast all at the same time. But Denver / Boulder is still a young enough city that its identity is really still evolving to a large degree, and this is more heavily influenced by new transplants coming to the area than most older, more established cities of its size. Over the past 10 years or so, California and Texas have provided Colorado in general with a huge % of its transplants...fwiw.

Like I mentioned on here before, Denver / Boulder was a very honorable 2nd place for me personally in terms of my desired location. The Bay Area (esp. Oakland) edged it out for various reasons, but I probably could have been happy there as well. In fact, if I were maybe 5-10 years younger, Denver probably would have gotten the edge (much lower Cost of Living and cost of running a small business being a prime factor).

Colorado and California (in general, maybe especially the Bay Area) definitely have the active lifestyle / fitness thing in common. Cities in Colorado and California consistently rank in the Top 10 in the Fittest Cities / Fittest Towns category. If you feel at home in Oakland, I think you'll find a lot of kindred spirits in Denver as well.

On average, Denver / Boulder skews younger than the Bay Area...IMO, it's a perfect place for someone in their 20's and 30's, married or single...and again for 40+ marrieds. Maybe not so much for a 40-ish person (esp. guys) who is still single.

Last point on Denver...despite being a great city in and of itself...it is very isolated geographically. You have to drive a good 7-8 hours just to get to another metro of any size. This was a factor for me...as within 6-8 hours, the Bay Area has basically all of California...and more, at it's disposal.

Good luck, mayorhaggar, in your decision. Maybe take a little vaca to Denver / Boulder before ruling it out completely...I think you'll find a lot to enjoy.