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I don't know how to put this, this will probably be long...I lived in Boulder CO for 6 years, loved how funky/unique/original the town felt. Nearly every city I go to anymore feels the same, but Boulder is bonafide different.
I moved to the most conservative part of Texas 2 years ago, and it has been quite the experience. Lots of ignorant, intolerant, racist statements, although people here are some of the nicest people I've ever met, at the same time.
Wanting to move and get a braek, my girlfriend and I have slowly honed in on Portland due to things we like...liberal-leaning, eco-friendly, outdoorsy people, not too big, not too small, etc. Same thing everyone else has said on here about Portland.
Here's are the 2 issues I have seen in a couple days of browsing these forums:
1. People who come to Portland seem extremely disenchanted upon finally moving there, that it is WAY too liberal, that the people are not kind in any way, that the weather is very hard to get used to, and that they couldn't find a job to save their life.
2. Many Portlanders seem to have a "Don't let the door hit you on the way out" attitude. The immediate vibe I saw on here, post after post, is that they would LOVE for you to leave, and that you really weren't ever invited there in the first place, and no thanks for even trying to make it work.
My question: What is the deal? Is this town really as bad as it sounds? Are the residents really that unhappy to see you come, and awaiting the day to see you leave?
I mean, BOULDER would always be referred to "The Republic" to people in Colorado, and there were lots of jokes about the people being crunchy and weird, but everyone usually agrees it is a great town, but too dang expensive to live in and a bit too weird. I never saw any of these issues in Boulder, which I thought was very similar to Portland, weather excluded. Could someone please clarify?
It's the difference between talking someone in person (your experiences in Boulder and Texas) and reading posts on the internet. Post on the internet tend to be highly biased, either toward the bad or good. Sometimes when someone posts about negative things, they go overboard. In real life, you'd just write them off as cranky, but on the internet people tend to snark back.
I suggest that if you read the Boulder forum or the Austin forum, for instance, you'll find the same thing.
I could say what you wrote is exactly what Portland is like but I won't.
What you need to do is what I did not do. You need to make a trip up here and spend at least one month, and spend the time as if you are a resident. Visiting and living anyplace are two very different experiences. That way you could see for yourself what Portland is really like and you would not be relying on other peoples impressions. Moving a long distance from familiar surroundings can be in many instances a very traumatic experience. The consequences can be devastating if one finds a place just does not feel right after moving there.
I would not depend on another person especially a total stranger you have never met for opinions. Not unless I had read enough of their posts, and had exchanged emails and developed some sort of trust with that person. You will find many people on city-data that meet that criteria of trust, and you will quickly know when you meet one and when you have not.
I personally do not care for this city and have lived here for 4 years, Im from Massachusetts. I do think the state of Oregon is a beautiful area of America though. Now thats me. You may be entirely different and love Portland to death, so my opinion would mean nothing and not fair to you.
I will recommend this though since you are not from this region of the country. Visit here and spend at least one month here if at all possible. One of those Extended Stay Motels is one way to do it. See if you really would want to live here or not. Do not depend on just visits of a few days or even a week as a tourist, to always give you the correct impression you need to make such a major decision. Try to spend as much time as you can here preferably in the rainy months.
I think that is the best information I can give you. I hope it helps. Best of Luck.
Posters here tend to be either boosters of their city, or are whiny mcwhiners who are drinking a cup of whine while they ***** and whine. Some of them seem positively out to sabotage the cities they are commenting on-there's one on any city board here, and usually several.
A: "City X is horrible, it's vicious, it's terrible here! Weather is bad, no jobs, stay away!"
B: "So why do you stay there and not move?"
A: "<silence/beat/beat?...it's horrible, it's [continued]"
I'm a native Oregonian (where Portland is the only city of any real size) and I went to graduate school in Boulder.
You'll like Portland, other than possibly the weather. It is pretty wet there-but not all the year; some folks never quite make the transition, and SAD is a real phenomenon there.
I have lived in Portland since last summer. These are my impressions:
- As someone else pointed out only a small very tiny fraction of Portland area's 2.2 million residents regularly post on this forum, so don't get the wrong idea of population sample being anything accurate on opinions of the larger population.
- Per NOAA weather and climate statistics, Portland's cloudy sky is on par with cities on the south shore of Lake Erie - Cleveland, OH; Rochester, NY etc.
- Yes, there is a segment of the new Arrivals who will not last as residents more than 5 years, and some will not last for more than 10 years. Many reasons for this, I am not going to sugar coat it, but this town does go stale on people, mainly because the people grow, mature, and change within themselves, Portland from what I can glean, remains Portland.
- I came from the "Rust Belt" east of the Mississippi, the weather is, so far, not a major problem I haven't dealt with before. I know of 2 people who claim to previously come from Southern California, and several months of cloud cover and drizzle rain for a few minutes a day is beyond comprehension.
- Use of marijuana for medical use, and with paperwork to backup medical usage claim, is legal in Oregon from a state enforcement perspective. (Federal Law enforcement not withstanding.) From my very limited knowledge, forget any rumor, local police do enforce non-medical use of dope laws. Some people's friends may be more into use of dope than others. You pick your own friends.
- Rumors are rumors, and there are some under 21 year olds who make it to Portland expecting to find in Downtown push carts with someone shouting: "Dope here, Get your Dope here, Fresh Local Organic Grown!" Trust me, it ain't going to happening.
- It really is disturbing to me to see a young person obviously just beyond High School age begging for money and obviously sleeping on the street, with signs of being an advance meth addict, a tweeker in slag terms. This is depressing to me and others that young people just beyond being a child, have come to a point they are without hope of recovery by the evil of meth.
- If I ever leave Portland it will because I can no longer tolerate the huge horde of homeless and street beggars in Portland. So far I am able to deal with the numbers, because I understand the Great Recession.
- There are jobs in Portland. Just a lot of applications for each job opening. You will need a very good credit score to get a job in Portland. It appears that it is legal in Portland for an employer to share a failure to pass a drug screening test with other employer's checking applicant's background. Fail once, and you don't work in Portland (that is personal opinion, no proof.)
- The politics of Oregon, in very simplistic terms, is dominated by the I-5 Corridor and the Willamette Valley. Portland by comparison to some rural areas on the eastern side of the state, is down right leftist. I have been told that Portland stands our as liberal due to comparison. I don't know since I have not lived in Berkeley CA, nor SF.
- I firmly believe that the core Politics (or politicians) of Portland are heavily influenced by the Politics of SF. I'm talking about the real voting and back-room politics here, not coffee shop slogan swapping by 20-somethings.
- I have never been to Boulder. The rumor I heard was boulder existed in an economic isolation, as hard core poverty usually ended up in Downtown Denver. I don't know. Does Boulder have the hard core unemployable with the drugs and sex-for-sale like parts of Denver? Portland has to deal with poverty as it is the largest population urban area in Oregon. And hard core poverty knows no racial boundaries.
- Portland is not for everyone. Just like New Orleans is not for everyone, or Los Vegas, Chicago, Atlanta, ..... And yes, people complain way too much about how they dislike Portland, the weather, the politics yada, yada, yada. I have lived in several states, this I know: having a strong personal social support network is more important than you can understand. Friends and romantic relations will influence anyone's opinion of where they are living. The tighter the bonds of friendship and romantic intimate relationships the more one is tied to a community.
- Portland, IMHO, seems to be a difficult place to quickly develop close tight friendship. Casual acquaintances are easy to come by in Portland, people are friendly, but not so easy to go deeper. This may be a West Coast / California influence thing, I don't know.
PNW-gal, I agree that the internet causes generalizations. When I see post after post after topic after topic of many different forums users complaining about how Portland is basically overrated, that starts to worry me. If this is just the people on the internet, then that means there are many people offline who feel similar, according to averages. And that has been from browsing topics on the first 2 pages of the Portland sub-forum.
Jimrob, I agree that I need to visit it for an extended period of time. Unfortunately, time and money to not permit at this point in time. Even when money will eventually permit, I doubt I'll have a month to visit, as I am currently lucky enough to have a job, with the usual 2 weeks vacation. If I were to quit and then do the one month visit, I would be using up my moving savings.
GeorgiaTransplant, the only reason I was compelled to make this topic was that I searched forums of similar towns to Portland, including Boulder, and did not find this trend of people regretting moving there and all having the same, common complaints. Also, there is not an attitude in Boulder of "Please leave, we won't miss you for a second!" which seems very apparent due to many native Portlander comments on this forum.
Phil, thanks for the plethora of info. I appreciate it. You really need to visit Boulder, you would probably love it. It doesn't have the problems you speak of, probably due to its large influx of money due to the college and IT/science/tourism industry there. There are beggars throughout the city at random corners, but not meth/tweaker types, just burnt out hippies or drunks who have fried their brain. The weather is too harsh in the winter to allow a decent homeless setting, so the bums are only out April to September. Also, there is virtually no crime.
PNW-gal, I agree that the internet causes generalizations. When I see post after post after topic after topic of many different forums users complaining about how Portland is basically overrated, that starts to worry me. If this is just the people on the internet, then that means there are many people offline who feel similar, according to averages. And that has been from browsing topics on the first 2 pages of the Portland sub-forum.
Portland suffers from what we may call "New York Times Syndrome." Although I no longer live in Portland, it's still one of my favorite cities (along with downtown Chicago), and I like a lot about it, but for some reason the travel, food, urban planning, outdoors columnists for the NYT decided that Portland was mecca for various things. You can read pages of love-lorn paeans to Portland on the NYT. Unfortunately, a lot of people did read them and Portland got an incredible word-of-mouth reputation for being a perfect place.
It isn't. But a lot of people come here thinking it is, and they're pretty darned bitter in their disappointment.
Everything you read is true and everything you read is not true because everything comes from different points of view and experiences. I know how difficult it is to live in a place for any length of time before making a permanent move but here is a suggestion.
I am looking for a new place to live and have started spending a week or so in the cities on my list. I don't hesitate to ask anyone and everyone how they like their city. I have spoken to waiters, people in my hotel, other passengers on the bus and any place where conversation can be possible.
People always seem to be happy to talk about where they live whether they feel good about it or bad. I also check out CD and find that often the opinions there differ from the ones I have been given in person. There is no fool proof way to find your ideal place before you move there. But I think that in-person chats along with researching websites can be of help.
The situation reminds me of the story of the blind men and the elephant: all have different opinions of the same thing depending on the part of the elephant they are touching. It's the same way listening to stories about various cities. That's why I think that "seeing" for yourself is the best way to go.
Here's are the 2 issues I have seen in a couple days of browsing these forums:
1. People who come to Portland seem extremely disenchanted upon finally moving there, that it is WAY too liberal, that the people are not kind in any way, that the weather is very hard to get used to, and that they couldn't find a job to save their life. Oregon tends to be RIDICULOUSLY liberal. IMO it stems from the years and years and years of struggle between the loggers and "the rest of us" who wanted to preserve our state's beauty (at least that was what everyone talked about when I was a really little kid) and also the fact that after the Haight in SF began to fall apart people started to come here to continue the summer of love in peace. It just never seemed to end for so many people and many were just happy with that (capitalism is a crime!) Even into the late 80's and early 90's when I was graduating high school; they installed a jukebox in our cafeteria and the only song people ever played was "Purple Haze" over and over and over. That was the same year that the student body almost unanimously voted our school to be the first nudist High School in Oregon (the administrators never even tried to veto it - they wanted us to believe that it's the voice of the people that really changes the world and not the voice of the administration - we were too chicken to show up nude anyway, but very proud that we had the option) It's true that it's not easy to make friends in Oregon -- I honestly can't say why that is except to say that I already have my friends and don't need any more than that....so see ya around, I guess. The weather is a shocker for most people and, honestly this is the complaint that bugs me the most. First of all, I would be figuring out the weather before I moved anywhere so I don't see why they have room to complain! But on the other hand, it really is a very unusual weather pattern and even when you explain it to people, they just don't get it: I don't know how much more clear I can be: it will be overcast most of the year, that means everyday. I just can't describe it better than that and yet they still say, "I knew it was going to rain more here but..." Please, I'm telling you now; if you need sunlight to be happy and sane, DON'T MOVE HERE (and please don't complain about the weather when it finally drives you away-frankly I'm sick of hearing about it) As for jobs: sorry, there aren't any. When I moved from Oregon to California I made 100 copies of my resume (just to start with) and saved enough to live on for 6 months until I found a job - I was so used to the usual Oregon job hunt! Of course the first place I applied to hired me...what was I so worried about!? Well, if you come to Oregon, be prepared to hand out AT LEAST 100 applications (I don't care if you are a PHD, apply at McDonalds if you need to because we have a lot of masters degree's working whatever they can get) See, the folks in Oregon are used to it so they deal with it but people coming from the outside expect that their degree is going to be useful somehow - you don't need a degree to work at micky d's. EVENTUALLY you'll get the position you're qualified for...but it may take a while (years?)
2. Many Portlanders seem to have a "Don't let the door hit you on the way out" attitude. The immediate vibe I saw on here, post after post, is that they would LOVE for you to leave, and that you really weren't ever invited there in the first place, and no thanks for even trying to make it work. If it's not been made clear yet, Oregon is a hard place to live for a lot of people; the weather, the economy, the difficulty in making new friends, etc...all the things you've mentioned. So why don't more of the Oregonians leave and go someplace easier to live? Because WE LOVE IT! So I suppose I could say the Oregon (and especially Portland!) is one of those places that you either LOVE or HATE. You can imagine that the folks who love it even BECAUSE of all the reasons that others hate it are going to be defensive and cold to people who say negative things about it. Why don't you insult my mom too? See, we don't want it to change we love it so much! It seems like the more "outsiders" come the more they try to change it into what THEY want it to be. I don't want it to change! I like that people are strange in Oregon. I like that Oregon is strange! If you are going to move here; be an Oregonian, don't come in and spread your non-strangeness all over and then decide the weather is too much for you and you're leaving. The more non-strangeness that rubs off here the sooner Oregon is going to end up being northern-northern California. We never want that to happen; be strange/ultra-liberal/ultra-independent-thinking/recycling/bicycle-friendly/eco-friendly/etc...or go home, please.
I lived in Clackamas long ago. My dad and my friend's dad used to go on right wing tirades about the Constitution, the IRS, and that kind of thing while we played Sega and all. I mean, why do people care so much what the politics of a city/area are? I never understand the obsession given that both parties are pretty much corrupt to the core. On top of that, someone's politics is not relevant to friendship imo, unless "friendship" consists of sitting around talking about Congress all day or something.
Additionally, there are very conservative people in Portland and very liberal people in rural Arkansas. I've met them personally. Be yourself and make no apologies for it.
p.s. Wouldn't you have to be an idiot to move to Oregon if you didn't like rain? I could understand how long-time residents would get a little annoyed at hearing those kinds of complaints.
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