Piitsburgh Vibe... anything close to say Portland Oregon?

[TelecasterBlues]

Originally Posted by raubre

I have been thinking a lot lately about visiting Portland just to get the progressive vibe I have heard about the city. I love Pittsburgh (born and bred) but I just get sick ofd the local politics, the lack of progression (Pittsburgh is and I'm afraid will always be 20 years behind in the times) and the overobsession with the Steelers. Hopefully Pittsburgh can progress and live for now and not then.

Yeah I'd say the two are probably polar opposites if anything.

Pittsburgh vs Portland:

1. Historic/Old vs Modern/New
2. Pro Sports vs Modern Music/Art
3. Living Outside The City vs Living Inside the City
4. Rowhomes and Box Houses vs Condos and Lofts
5. Old School Democrats vs Liberal Democrats
6. Conservative Vibe/Styling vs Anything Goes/Vibrant
7. Family Oriented/College Kiddies vs Young Professional/Recent Grad Haven
8. Years of Factories/Coal/Steel vs Years of Preservation/Environmentalism/Clean Industry
9. Urban Density vs Green Space
10. Population Loss vs Population Explosion
11. Peaked Then vs Peaking Now
12. Yinzers vs Hipsters
13. Primanti's vs Organic Tofu
14. Ben Roethlisberger vs Modest Mouse
15. Dirt Cheap vs Dirt Cheap...For the West Coast.

The two have nothing in common outside of there being pretty green stuff to stare at. I think it's more like as if Pittsburgh is Portland in a parallel universe and vice versa. Both are nice, just for very different reasons and none of the same.

[greg42]

Originally Posted by TelecasterBlues

Pittsburgh vs Portland:

8. Years of Factories/Coal/Steel vs Years of Preservation/Environmentalism/Clean Industry

To pick on just one of those, two words: timber industry. The preservation, etc. is recent history while timber is one of Portland's traditional headquarters industries, complete with its main players acquired and/or moving away. The unemployment pattern is different, hitting the city less because the city itself is not so dependent upon this one industry, but it sure hits the rural areas hard.

Compare the factories with the clearcutting and you have the more realistic picture as opposed to the whitewashed picture where Portland was always full of environmentalists.

[Fiddlehead]

Originally Posted by raubre

I have been thinking a lot lately about visiting Portland just to get the progressive vibe I have heard about the city. I love Pittsburgh (born and bred) but I just get sick ofd the local politics, the lack of progression (Pittsburgh is and I'm afraid will always be 20 years behind in the times) and the overobsession with the Steelers. Hopefully Pittsburgh can progress and live for now and not then.

Definitely come out and visit. You might even decide to move here. But get a job offer first or bring a trust fund. Nothing is commoner than people who move to Oregon because it sounds idyllic only to find it is full of challenges. Our economy, for one, is in the crapper (10-17% employment, depending upon the location). Portland is an interesting city that has embraced a number of modern ideals, such as open space and light rail, etc. It is pretty clean, and surrounded by awesome scenery. However, Oregon is a state that is in the midst of some serious pain, and it does not have a consistent vision for its future. Ballot initiatives and demagoguery have ensured that the tax base cannot support education, nor fundamental services, and a culture of government welfare ( below cost timber sales and funneling of timber receipts to county coffers, or welfare payments in leiu of timber the last few years) has not been overcome. Don't kid yourself, Oregon has its liberal areas like Portland, Eugene, and Ashland, but most of the state is more like Idaho or even Kentucky than Puget Sound. We are in many ways like an Intermountain state (ranchers who shoot wolves for sport and graze their cattle for below cost on federal lands and logging companies who rule the roost politically, miners who create Superfund sites and walk, leaving you and I to foot the bill), with some exurban Californians mixed in, usually in McMansion developments, a hint of the Midwest in places colonized by the Oregon Trail, and even some KKK types that rolled in from the South for logging jobs in the early 1900s. It is without doubt a beautiful state, but we are extremely polarized politically and there is plenty of nonsense here as well. And due to the last decade of retiring California boomers, in many areas we have California real estate prices and Montana wages. Good luck trying to make that work.

Don't get me wrong, I like a number of things about Portland, but the city and Oregon as a whole have a heaping helping of problems too.

But one thing that will not put off a Pittsburgher is a wee bit of rain....

[Mclaurin]

We never had organized crime in the way Pittsburgh did. We never had the steel mills. But we never had the Steelers and Mr. Rogers didn't live here.

The east is the east. The west is the west. Pick what you want, but don't compare them.

[raubre]

Originally Posted by Fiddlehead

Definitely come out and visit. You might even decide to move here. But get a job offer first or bring a trust fund. Nothing is commoner than people who move to Oregon because it sounds idyllic only to find it is full of challenges. Our economy, for one, is in the crapper (10-17% employment, depending upon the location). Portland is an interesting city that has embraced a number of modern ideals, such as open space and light rail, etc. It is pretty clean, and surrounded by awesome scenery. However, Oregon is a state that is in the midst of some serious pain, and it does not have a consistent vision for its future. Ballot initiatives and demagoguery have ensured that the tax base cannot support education, nor fundamental services, and a culture of government welfare ( below cost timber sales and funneling of timber receipts to county coffers, or welfare payments in leiu of timber the last few years) has not been overcome. Don't kid yourself, Oregon has its liberal areas like Portland, Eugene, and Ashland, but most of the state is more like Idaho or even Kentucky than Puget Sound. We are in many ways like an Intermountain state (ranchers who shoot wolves for sport and graze their cattle for below cost on federal lands and logging companies who rule the roost politically, miners who create Superfund sites and walk, leaving you and I to foot the bill), with some exurban Californians mixed in, usually in McMansion developments, a hint of the Midwest in places colonized by the Oregon Trail, and even some KKK types that rolled in from the South for logging jobs in the early 1900s. It is without doubt a beautiful state, but we are extremely polarized politically and there is plenty of nonsense here as well. And due to the last decade of retiring California boomers, in many areas we have California real estate prices and Montana wages. Good luck trying to make that work.

Don't get me wrong, I like a number of things about Portland, but the city and Oregon as a whole have a heaping helping of problems too.

But one thing that will not put off a Pittsburgher is a wee bit of rain....

What I may do first is visit, decide if I like it, come back to Pittsburgh and see what jobs they would have in Portland. I have nothing near a trust fund, lol.

What is drawing me to Portland are my interests as a gay male who is also a music fan. I am 36 years old, love a variety of music, going to concerts and am a gay male. It seems hard to do alot of what I would like to do here in Pittsburgh. Portland gets better shows, the gay community seems more predominant, and of course Portland is more progressive. I love Pittsburgh and its history but I get frustrated alot about how non-progressive we are. Politicians get thier hand in the cookie jar too much, IMO.

[Impala26]

Originally Posted by greg42

To pick on just one of those, two words: timber industry. The preservation, etc. is recent history while timber is one of Portland's traditional headquarters industries, complete with its main players acquired and/or moving away. The unemployment pattern is different, hitting the city less because the city itself is not so dependent upon this one industry, but it sure hits the rural areas hard.

Compare the factories with the clearcutting and you have the more realistic picture as opposed to the whitewashed picture where Portland was always full of environmentalists.

This is certainly a good point. I often feel that people downplay the historical industries that ultimately made certain cities today prosperous. With the exception of many Southwestern U.S., most cities grew up on "older" industries and didn't begin as "preservationist/green" meccas.

I feel like most people forget that long before the steel boom, Pittsburgh's largest export was actually glass.

[BrianTH]

Along with glass, iron (not steel) was also a big deal in Pittsburgh in the early-19th Century (steel didn't take off until the widespread use of the Bessemer process started in the 1850s), and also other metals manufacturing. But I believe Pittsburgh's first big industry was actually boatbuilding, with the glass and metals stuff not really starting up until the beginning of the 19th Century.

[Impala26]

That's likely true as the settlement was pretty much a simple trade outpost for it's early history. I still thought I recalled reading that glass was the city's first major manufacturing industry, as early as the early 19th century.

And yes, Bessemer truly changed things. The iron industry before actually employed many "skilled" labor positions and actually paid quite well before the steel-making process changed significantly.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Impala26

That's likely true as the settlement was pretty much a simple trade outpost for it's early history. I still thought I recalled reading that glass was the city's first major manufacturing industry, as early as the early 19th century.

I suspect it depends on what you define as manufacturing. But here is a little blurb on Pittsburgh history courtesy of City Data:

https://www.city-data.com/us-cities/T...h-History.html

The first and largest industry emerging in the 1800s was boat building—both flatboats to transport waves of pioneers and goods downriver, and keelboats, which a strong crew could propel upstream as well.

In 1795 James O'Hara and Isaac Craig started a glass factory, an important development since glass was the hardest material to transport. Its success prompted other glass factories to crop up around the area, becoming its second biggest industry.

Incidentally, according to that writeup it was really the War of 1812 that set off the rapid expansion of the iron industry:

To supply iron needs for the War of 1812, foundries, rolling mills, machine shops, and forges sprang up on flat land along the rivers. With the growth of these factories and improved transportation, the population grew to allow Pittsburgh to incorporate as a city in 1816.

Finally, it claims:

Near the end of the 1800s, Birmingham, now Pittsburgh's South Side, had about 70 glass factories and was the world's largest supplier of glass.

So while steel took off in terms of relative industrial importance in the second half of the 19th Century, within the glass world itself Pittsburgh had remained very prominent.