Seattle or Portland: Which city should I move to?

In My Humble Opinion
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I believe you just sold me on moving there as soon as I can find a way to work there. I’ve seen that some of the Sno-Isle library system in WA has had a “greying” of the staff (and thus have been hiring), but is this even remotely true anywhere closer in to the Seattle and Portland metro areas?

We visited Seattle and the Puget Sound area last April, and we got a mixture of sunny days and “typical Seattle” days both out in the towns and in the city. The rain really isn’t bad at all compared to what I get in Florida*, and the “dreary gloomy” days aren’t so bad in the spring. The sunny days aren’t too bright** but the level of sun can make the entire landscape look idyllic when it does happen. (There were days while we were camping and hiking that reminded me of summertime in the Icelandic countryside as a kid; it was amazing.)

A lot of folks have mentioned traffic/parking in Seattle, and while the traffic is a little heavy at times, folks are pretty polite drivers around there.*** The parking, however, is a puzzle with fairly strict repercussions if you don’t figure out the rules and locations. There’s a decent amount of pay parking in some areas, whereas in other areas, you’re lucky if there are two open spots on the street. As a tourist who was camping, I was driving an SUV around Seattle for a couple of days, and the worst part was looking for parking and hoping that the oversized vehicle we were in would fit into the spots without inconveniencing others.

*Florida is the land of unpredictable sideways rain that will drench you regardless of what you’re wearing. In the summer, I expect it to rain for 20 minutes-3 hours almost every day. If it’s not doing this, we’re in a drought. In comparison, the rain in the PNW in my experience has been light, drizzly and almost a fine mist. Sure, it’ll get your clothes wet, but it’s not like you have to run for cover every time the sky opens up and hope you didn’t wear your good shoes that day.

**I’m one of those aforementioned vampires who’s stuck in Florida. The sun is almost always too bright for me around here, and I look forward to overcast days.

***I drive through Miami as part of my commute, and experience the evils of I-95 during Snowbird Season. It may not be a fair comparison, as we’ve got an abundance of jerks and tourists on our roads regularly, and I’ve become accustomed to driving behaviors that are not considered “okay” anywhere else in the state, let alone in the parts of WA where I traveled.

For those who mentioned Ames, Iowa: I have no real experience or knowledge of the place. Tell me about why you suggested it.

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Portland has the Portland Symphonic Orchestra and the Portland Symphonic Choir. There are many singing groups here, but I can’t name them for you. There are a number of operas done every year, with Tosca coming up next. I’m assuming Seattle has a similar scene.

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Missed the edit window:

I don’t think I mentioned that there is the Jazz Festival and the Blues on the Waterfront Festival every year. The blues event is huge. You can go sit on the banks of the Willamette River with a hundred thousand of your closest friends and hear great music in several venues. There is also the summer Concerts in the Park series, which is free. People bring their kids, dogs, food, blankets, chairs, and beer/wine and chill out on summer evenings listening to local groups. Then there are the Portland Zoo concerts, which sounds maybe odd, but it’s a great amphitheater (bring your own chairs) and they get great acts like Trombone Shorty and Pink Martini there. Some concerts there are free, most are ticketed.

There are several jazz clubs in town, and a performing arts center, several film festivals including an African Film Festival, which is going on right now, and a lot of staged works, both professional and amateur. Oh, and we have one of the few dedicated NPR jazz radio stations in the country.

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As to the nearby interesting geography, as in 1-1.5 hour drive, I would rate Portland much higher than Seattle. It’s much easier to get to the actual ocean from Portland. The Mt. Hood area is far superior to the Snoqualmie summit area. Especially in the summer.

The trip across the mountains to the sunshine zone is more interesting with a lot more places to visit. I’ve swum outdoors at Warm Springs, in January. And then there’s the gorge!

OTOH, it’s easy to get to Squim from Seattle. So they have that going for them.

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I don’t have anything to say particularly about either Portland or Seattle, but I could see being a (disappointed but enthusiastic) Mariners fan if I lived up there. Felix the Cat, Ichiro? Yeah, the team play small ball, which is of course a legitimate style, but it’s more like tiny, miniature golf ball with them – great contact hitter like Ichiro, but who else is going to finish the job? Didn’t they used to have…Ken Griffey Jr as DH? I don’t know how he did for the team, but I heard he retired – he must have been pretty old, anyway.

I don’t get many Mariners games on radio, but they are kind of fun to watch – if ultimately a masochistic act for fans, I guess.

Which is fine for me, because I like the Giants, and it’s not even close to a fair fight if you pit the worst day of even the Padres against the best day the Mariners ever had. But you got to admit, Ichiro is damned fun to watch at the plate and fielding. I guess he’s getting long in the tooth, but in my opinion, that’s bad for MLB as a whole.

Do people in Portland generally go in for the Mariners? I’d imagine there’s kind of a rivalry between the two cities, even though I know Portland doesn’t have a MLB team, and when I catch basketball on TV (rarely) the once-kinda-legendary Trailblazers don’t seem to be doing much.

I think Seattle has a lot more jazz music going on, though, from what I hear. But the Portland Opera has a good reputation nationally for putting on interesting productions. But then, Seattle has the famous Ring Cycle Wagner-fest – I’m sure other cities do too, but the Seattle one sticks out in my mind as being pretty well-known nationally.

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Griffey Jr was not a DH, seems to me the DH was Edgar Martinez. Around that time, the team had a tall pitcher called “The Big Unit” (Randy Johnson) and a short-stop named A-Rod. They seem to be more of a farm team for the big guys.

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Wait, what? Randy Johnson? A-Rod? Shows what I know. I’d better not move to Seattle and start spouting off at sports bars without doing my homework anytime soon.

Still like the Mariners though --gotta love an underdog.

Thanks for putting up with my hijack, people.

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Spam reported.

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I’ve been considering this very same dilemma of late. I moved to Seattle less than a year ago. I’d already spent almost a decade living in Bremerton, Tacoma and Olympia, and always loved the time I spent in the Emerald City whenever I was able to make it here. I love Washington State and figured that Seattle was a great place to settle in, especially since I wanted to attend grad school at UW.

Of course, you know what they say. You never know anybody till you’ve lived with them. Visiting Seattle and loving it is an entirely different experience from actually living in it. As a college graduate, I’m having a terrible time finding a job that accepts my liberal arts background, and it certainly isn’t for lack of trying. Perhaps computer geeks and healthcare professionals would fare better here, but I’m neither of those. My primary source of income has been temping, which is hardly enough to sustain my meager living requirements. As a result of not being able to find a job, I’m in the process of moving out of this crappy room I rent and am not yet sure where I’ll end up without having a reliable income to cover the cost of living in such an expensive city. No wonder there are so many homeless people here, many of whom I think are college grads. Since I don’t drive, I’m dependent on a public transportation system that’s over-priced and unreliable. Buses are often not on schedule, which makes getting to a temp job on time rather difficult. I also wouldn’t wish driving in the city on anyone, though I gather that’s probably life in any big city. In addition, though there seems to be a lot of stuff to do here, it can be tough to meet new friends to do things with. I used to think the “Seattle freeze” was just a myth, and maybe it’s just that I’m not shaking the hands of every stranger I pass on the street in the hopes of making one or two good friends. People generally seem nice around here, but I keep hearing about how it’s difficult to get to know people beyond a superficial acquaintanceship.

Gods bless it, but there are some lovely advantages to this metropolis. I was royally spoiled by the sight of the beautiful Olympic Mountains on the horizon. The city’s got access to some of the most gorgeous landscape that I’ve ever seen and hiked through. Seeing Mount Rainier in the distance is also a sight to behold. Just hope it doesn’t decide to erupt anytime soon, or we’ll be toast! Washington State, at least this side of the Olympics, is green. And don’t let anyone tell you that it rains all the time. Sure, there are the fall and spring rainy seasons. This spring, though, there’s hardly been any rain to speak of. We’ve had a lot more sunny days, occasionally with some humidity that can be uncomfortable (but far preferable to the East Coast where I moved from last year). If you can adapt to the rain when it does become excessive, then you’ll appreciate that it’s the reason why this state’s so green. Having to spend time indoors just means coming up with interesting and creative ways to keep yourself entertained. Winters are bearable. Not much in the way of snow, so you may need to venture outside of the city for any winter activities that require parkas and warm boots. This is also a city for the coffee drinker, though I’m a little disappointed that most of the corporate coffee shops like Starbucks and Tully’s are closed at 9 and some even don’t open up on the weekends. That’s when you need to seek out the local coffee houses that tend to offer a lot more in the way of warm atmosphere and fascinating local culture. And the first ever Starbucks in the world over in Pike Place Market may be a worthy stop for an afficianado like me, but prepare to stand in a line that can stretch out through the door.

Oh yeah, depending on what floats your boat, we passed a law last November that will enable us to buy marijuana recreationally from licensed retailers. We just have to wait a whole frickin’ year before we can actually start openly purchasing our drug of choice. If pot’s not your thing, then you’ll need to be prepared to live in a city where the smell of bud is quite prevalent. It seems to me that anyone who can smoke it is now smoking it out in the open. If you’re seriously anti-drug, then Seattle is not the city for you.

It really helped to have spent some time here in order to learn what it was that I did NOT want. I loathe the suburbs and think that I’d be bored to tears in the rural towns, but Seattle has definitely taught me that I’m not designed for big city-living, either. The more I hear about Portland, the more I think it’s a better fit overall for me. Luckily, there’s a Bolt bus that goes between the two cities for fairly cheap, so I’m able to investigate Portland little by little and meet with the professor at Portland State University that I hope to mentor with in grad school. Now I look forward to reading the other responses and learning a bit more about Portland. :smiley:

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I have only experienced one event put on by the Seattle Symphony, but I hate to admit that I was kind of disappointed that Benaroya Hall turned out to be so small. I wasn’t even aware that, if I missed the bell at the end of intermission, I wouldn’t be able to return the seat that I paid $40 bucks to sit in. Can’t say the acoustics were that great, either.

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That’s a great way to put it. I dig Seattle, but I think I appreciated it a lot more when I had to hop a ferry over to spend a day here. I’d only been in Portland for a few hours during a road trip 25 years ago, but I’ve been hearing from a lot of people over the past several years that Portland is better overall.

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I grew up in Vancouver, and I thought that Vancouver and Seattle’s weather were nearly the same. However, I do not think that Vancouver has so frequent overcast skies. I Seattle generally more rainy than Vancouver?

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You just don’t understand what winter means. I have been in Seattle a lot and it has:

Rainy and overcast fall

Rainy and overcast spring

Road construction

No winter at all.

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I would choose Seattle. Seattle is much denser and more urban. Whenever I visit portland it feels really sleepy and the streets downtown are pretty quiet after 8 pm. Seattle has better ethnic food from my experience. The asian food I’ve had in portland tasted the same as the asian food I used to eat in the Midwest. Two things portland has going for it are: narrower streets that make it more walkable, and more rail transit making it’s other urban centers feel closer. Seattle is improving on both of these rapidly though. Many streets are taking away car lanes and parking lanes to add bike lanes and widen sidewalks. Also we are building new streetcar lines and expanding our light rail system which is much faster and more frequent than portland’s. it also holds a lot more people. The guy that said it takes 90 minutes to get to seattle from the suburbs using transit has no clue what he’s talking about. Redmond, Kirkland, Bellevue, issaquah, mercer island, Renton, tukwila, seatac, burien, bainbridge, Bremerton, lynnwood and edmunds all have transit lines that can get you to downtown in less than 45 minutes in some cases as little as 15 minutes.

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Nitpick. You can’t get from Bremerton to Seattle in less than 45 minutes. The ferry is an hour. Driving is 90 minutes.

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I looked it up, you are correct. I guess it just felt quicker the few times I took the ferry because I just love being on big boats.

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I lived in Portland … and I’ll tell you, if you’re a laid back Hippy, you’ll like Portland more, but if you’re a tight-assed obsessive compulsive pompous snob, you’ll like Seattle more. So, which are you?

I really miss Portland.

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Whoa whoa whoa. What? You went to the wrong place. There are strong Asian communities here and the food can be excellent if you know where to go.

Personally, I haven’t seen much to like about Seattle. I’m from NYC and now live in Portland. To me, Seattle just seems like a very ordinary city. There’s beautiful nature around it, for sure, but that’s not uncommon around here. Portland has a lot more charm to me.

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There’s a very old saying that goes: Portland was founded for farmers looking for a church, Seattle for lumberjacks looking for a whorehouse. That was a long time ago, but the legacy is still there.

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When I was in Portland, there seemed to be more topless bars than Las Vegas, so it’s got that going for it.