I’ve lived in the “Rose City” for over 3 years now and personally I can’t wait until I can find a way out and move to another city.
While it’s become a hip place to live over the past 10 or 20 years, it’s totally overhyped. The food is mediocre. The public transit is EXTREMELY overrated. If you live more than 3 miles from downtown or want to go out to party after midnight, GOOD LUCK if you don’t have a car and can’t afford a cab.
The weather sucks. I enjoyed the weather in Montana way more when I lived there if that tells you anything. Do NOT listen to anyone who tells you Portland has a mild pleasant climate. 8-9 months of the year it’s either dark and cold or sunny and freezing cold, and the rest of the year it’s oppressively hot and nowhere seems to be air conditioned. Winter is just barely too warm for snow and insulation in apartments is subpar, so basically you will suffer as much as you would in a Northern winter except you almost never get to enjoy snow. Not to mention winter is so DARK here. Summers are not as mild as people think, it hits 100 degrees most years, nights are often uncomfortably balmy and it can get surprisingly hot and sticky despite what people will tell you about the wonderful “dry heat” we supposedly enjoy here. And it almost never rains in the summer and most buildings trap every ounce of heat, so there’s pretty much no relief from late June to early September. If you catch a cough there’s a good chance you’ll have it for the rest of the year.
Even worse, I suffer year-round respiratory problems due to the allergens and mold here. I actually get pneumonia the first year I moved here, and nearly ended up hospitalized. I feel like I constantly have a cold. I barely even know what it’s like to have clear sinuses.
Portland is not any more “close to nature” than your given eastern city. If you want to live near nature, live in a southern city like Atlanta or Asheville. And no, Forest Park doesn’t count as “nature” as it’s overgrown by ivy. There are no decent places to swim in Portland; you’d never want to swim in the ice cold and filthy Willamette let alone the Columbia. And the nature trails near Multnomah Falls are packed with hundreds of Chinese tourists any given day of the year. Skiing and snowboarding sucks in Oregon and you’ll never get to enjoy nature if you live without a car unless you have friends generous enough to give you a ride up. Just forget about a day trip to the Coast without a vehicle.
Portlanders are not friendly people and as a rule are terrified of strangers. People look at you funny if you say “good morning” or “hello” and the women are especially unfriendly. Portland is a horrible place to be single, especially if you’re a man. And I don’t understand why the attractive women here all have to ruin their bodies with 50 tattoos and huge gauge piercings. Whenever I leave Portland I’m always reminded that I’m actually attracted to the opposite sex.
Politically Portland is essentially a chavvy urban redneck city with a very large and outspoken vegan/feminist/“green”/yuppie center located mostly in the region bounded by Forest Park, 82nd St, Powell Blvd and Alberta St. This region is what I would term “Portlandia proper”. The rest of the city is no different from your typical Rust Belt city in Ohio and like Cleveland, has pathetic infrastructure and has been forgotten. There are even gravel roads in East Portland, parts of it are practically Third World.
It should be noted that the “leftists” here have no socialist consciousness whatsoever and are just as self-righteous and judgmental as your most bigoted right winger. They are “Whole Paycheck” liberals, not revolutionaries. They will talk about living in North Portland like it is some moral choice, and pat themselves on the back for living in a place that’s 20% black as opposed to 1% black. This is a perfect example of the “hipster racism” prevalent in a state that has a racial history that’s arguably uglier than Alabama’s. Oregon didn’t even allow black people to LIVE here for a long time, yet they are constantly asking their friends to check their “white privilege”.
People here have no ambition and the city itself produces almost no culture. What was the last famous music act to come out of Portland, freakin’ Quarterflash? This is the city that spawned Courtney Love and Tonya Harding. Even the most well known “Portland” indie bands the Shins and Modest Mouse moved here from other states.
While I’m certainly a fan of working to live as opposed to the other way around, the lack of opportunity here doesn’t give anyone a choice. This is a great city to be an addict but not a good place to become successful. The schools are terrible too. I didn’t live here as a kid, but from what I’ve heard the public schools are awful and I know from experience the colleges are terrible. PCC is a joke and so is Portland State. Unless you’re leet enough for Reed College I suggest either moving to Eugene or Corvallis (if you can tolerate living there) or just leaving the state entirely.
Back to the food. Why is it that in a city of 2 million, Panda Express is literally the best game in town for Chinese food? And does anyone really need a Thai place on every corner, each with more or less an identical menu? I have little interest in spending 10 bucks on a bunch of noodles anyway. Same with the food carts - yes there are hundreds of them, but most of them are clones of each other. I will give shoutouts to Kolbeh’s Persian lunch buffet and Dwaraka’s Indian lunch buffet but in general unless you’re a vegan and hate food anyway this is not a good city to be a “foodie”. Voodoo Donut is cool to show your friends in town but it doesn’t make up for the utter lack of great food in this city.
The most overrated thing about Portland though is definitely the transit. I have no idea how TriMet has reached this legendary Utopian status. I suppose the transit system used to be much better, not to mention much cheaper ($2.50 each way for a bus? REALLY?) but the fact is for a city of this size it’s mediocre at best. I guess this is America and in most cities just having one bus line will cause people to accuse the city government of being communist, but let’s face it. The MAX light rail is pretty much a very expensive toy. I’d say it goes no faster than twenty miles per hour on average and it’s completely useless to at least 90 percent of the people who live here. It costs $14 per person per ride to the taxpayers so it doesn’t even matter that most people don’t pay the $2.50 fare.
Buses at rush hours make me feel like I’m in India and don’t be surprised if you are sitting in that bus stop for 28 minutes. Oh yeah and if you’re in North Portland or anywhere outside of the Portlandia region and it’s past 10 PM, ha. Good luck getting home. The only thing worse than Trimet is Portland traffic, and despite the popularity of biking to work here, I would NEVER bike in Portland considering the drivers are crazy and our traffic is worse than most major cities in China.
Anyway, I can’t wait to live. I’d love to live somewhere like Boston or Virginia if I have to stay in the US but other than that, I’d love to move to the United Kingdom or Germany!
