Portland

[Z³]

Good chance I might go there,
At the very least, it sounds better than Lincon, NE.
Good place for the Crom hat.
I'd need a R.A.M.B.O. hoodie.

[Jenne]

Sadly, I have not been...though I went through the whole of Oregon from bottom to top via train twice.  One day I shall visit. 

[AFK]

Portland is a great city.  It has a great arts district.  Lot's of cute little shops.  It's right on the ocean so you get to experience the mariner culture without being in the sticks.  You are just a boat-ride away from Canada.  If you're into the night-life, there are plenty of bars and clubs to choose from whether you're into punk, rock, goth, jazz, standards, the gay scene, etc.  Portland has a great public transportation system and has some great progressive policies. 

Oh wait, you're talking about Left Coast Portland.  East Coast Portland is where it's at.  Though, I am a little biased. 

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

It's Portland, if Portland was:

1.  Always under construction.
2.  Completely devoid of highway markings (find Rt 44 yourselves, outsiders).
3.  Responsible for the rapper Nelly.
4.  Full of horrible ghettos of every description.
5.  Spent a shitpile of money on an arch.  WTF is that shit?  Who goes anywhere to look at an arch?

Oh, wait.  That's St Louis.  Close enough.

TGRR,
Knows they're both full of ticks.

1 - they have to keep re-building the fucking monkeys keep tearing it down....
2 - yeah well, I still get lost after 4 years.... in fact, they just opened a highway that has been closed since I moved here.  WTF is that?
3 - there is no apology that will suffice, they won't let us shoot him and he doesn't spend enough time here to get caught in a drive by...
4 - SIGH, yes, this is true.  I live in the heart of one of them and it sucks ass.....
5 - it's not an arch, it hold my ginormous bungee cord car launcher to fight the swamp yankee invasion.....

Now if only 3/4 of the population would die it might improve dramatically......

[East Coast Hustle]

allow me to be the dissenting opinion ITT:

Fuck Portland.

fucking hipster ecofascist asstards who don't know how to drive but insist on doing it at 10mph below the speed limit everywhere.

this is not a big city. It's barely a medium-sized city. And everyone here is not only very nice, they're so fucking nice that it's creepy and disconcerting. They're also, for the most part, completely not genuine about anything.

Of course, they're also, for the most part, not actually FROM Portland. The handful of actual natives, if you can find them, are good people, though they're a bit suspect for allowing their city to be overrun like it has been without any sort of violent retribution whatsoever.

positives:

climate is less horrible than most of the PNW due to being in the Willamette Valley

cost of living is very reasonable, housing is cheap. Of course, there are no jobs AT ALL, but if you're independently wealthy you can make your loot go a long way

There is an awesome real city less than 3 hours away.

the hipsters don't fight back when you kick them in the shins.

I'd love to hear what you have to say about Providence. Really. 

I've been there a few times, and though I don't have enough time spent there to have an informed opinion, it has long held a place as one of my favorite towns to drink in.

[East Coast Hustle]

Portland is a great city.  It has a great arts district.  Lot's of cute little shops.  It's right on the ocean so you get to experience the mariner culture without being in the sticks.  You are just a boat-ride away from Canada.  If you're into the night-life, there are plenty of bars and clubs to choose from whether you're into punk, rock, goth, jazz, standards, the gay scene, etc.  Portland has a great public transportation system and has some great progressive policies. 

Oh wait, you're talking about Left Coast Portland.  East Coast Portland is where it's at.  Though, I am a little biased. 

truth. I would have moved to that Portland if it weren't for the utterly miserable climate.

though, I'm not sure which public transportation system you're talking about, unless it's the cheap cabs or the fact that you can walk from one side of town to the other in a half-hour.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I love my town.  Even the transplants and the hipsters.

And people ARE genuine, they're just not genuine in the way you're used to. My friend Nick (formerly Sir Talksalot... yes, we're now friends) used to get really grumpy about how people aren't "real" here, and it turns out that what he means is that they're conflict-avoidant and not hostile like people where he's from. He perceives that as being "real".

So, yeah, it's a sort of gentle, stoney place in a way. And the driving thing gets annoying. But it's not that people are being fake... they really mean it. They seriously don't want to hurt any feelings or inconvenience anyone, and they feel bad if they do. And I can walk into most of the bars in my quadrant and get hugs from five or six different people, and you can make friends just by talking to someone a couple of times.

The economy's shit and there are no jobs. That part sucks, but unless you have an in somewhere, I don't see how that makes it worse than just about everywhere else.

Seattle is pretty nice, for a city which somehow manages to be fractionally larger than Portland and smells significantly worse, yet still remains 3x hickier, probably due to having about a 35% larger suburban area. It's sort of like if Portland had an extra Gresham.

[rygD]

Nigel and others, you almost make Portland, Oregon sound like a place I might like to visit.  Problem is I might like it, and it is too far north and a coastal region.  I have only had limited exposure to the weather of the left coast, but I prefer dry regions that are fairly warm and where I won't be so out of place that the freaks tell me I am weird.  This has happened up and down the east side of our country, as well as the midwest.  I know that NC (where I currently have a house) is full of superchristians trying to push their beliefs off on me, and that the rest of America may not be so bad.  What I liked in TX, AZ, and to some degree NM was that I was quite easily able to find crazy fuckers.  Usually they found me.  As long as they are my type of crazy, I like this.

With what Nigel was saying about the people not being total assholes, this is what I have liked about the southern states I have spent time in, with the exception of perhaps California.  When I moved up to New England I was not expecting the attitude that seems prevalent in that region.  I am already a bitter mother fucker, and I usually avoid aggression toward children, however if the fucking parents would do a little better at teaching them how to interact with adults in public I wouldn't feel like like beating the shit out of everyone I encountered.  And it wasn't in the "bad neighborhoods" so much as the suburbs and and wealthier parts of the cities.

I have never ventured to the north west, so maybe I will find a place I like in the mountains up there.

[Eater of Clowns]

Nigel and others, you almost make Portland, Oregon sound like a place I might like to visit.  Problem is I might like it, and it is too far north and a coastal region.  I have only had limited exposure to the weather of the left coast, but I prefer dry regions that are fairly warm and where I won't be so out of place that the freaks tell me I am weird.  This has happened up and down the east side of our country, as well as the midwest.  I know that NC (where I currently have a house) is full of superchristians trying to push their beliefs off on me, and that the rest of America may not be so bad.  What I liked in TX, AZ, and to some degree NM was that I was quite easily able to find crazy fuckers.  Usually they found me.  As long as they are my type of crazy, I like this.

With what Nigel was saying about the people not being total assholes, this is what I have liked about the southern states I have spent time in, with the exception of perhaps California.  When I moved up to New England I was not expecting the attitude that seems prevalent in that region.  I am already a bitter mother fucker, and I usually avoid aggression toward children, however if the fucking parents would do a little better at teaching them how to interact with adults in public I wouldn't feel like like beating the shit out of everyone I encountered.  And it wasn't in the "bad neighborhoods" so much as the suburbs and and wealthier parts of the cities.

I have never ventured to the north west, so maybe I will find a place I like in the mountains up there.

New England mentality - working as intended.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Sometimes people go missing in Portland, and sometimes they find TOO MANY bodies.  Or, to be specific, bodies that they can't match to a missing person report.  These bodies are called "floaters", and they happen when someone decides they have a need to step off of one of the many convenient bridges that are there for that purpose.

If the currents don't drag them away past Astoria, they wind up in eddy pools after being dragged along the bottom on their faces.  When you get them back, they have no face, no teeth, no fingerprints, and usually no remaining tattoos and/or scars.  Given that the city no longer has the cash to run DNA tests, the bodies remain unidentified, and are sent up the stack of the morgue's incinerator a year later.

So you have some missing people, and some found people...and either way, their families never learn what happened to them.

[rygD]

Thank you for that interesting bit of information, Roger.  I will make sure to add that to my list of considerations, it may be useful.

[Nast]

Thank you for that interesting bit of information, Roger.  I will make sure to add that to my list of considerations, it may be useful.

Bloated corpses aside, the food in Portland is quite good.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Thank you for that interesting bit of information, Roger.  I will make sure to add that to my list of considerations, it may be useful.

You're welcome.  Had you read the entire thread, you would have noticed that it is full of little nuggets of useful lore.

[rygD]

Nigel and others, you almost make Portland, Oregon sound like a place I might like to visit.  Problem is I might like it, and it is too far north and a coastal region.  I have only had limited exposure to the weather of the left coast, but I prefer dry regions that are fairly warm and where I won't be so out of place that the freaks tell me I am weird.  This has happened up and down the east side of our country, as well as the midwest.  I know that NC (where I currently have a house) is full of superchristians trying to push their beliefs off on me, and that the rest of America may not be so bad.  What I liked in TX, AZ, and to some degree NM was that I was quite easily able to find crazy fuckers.  Usually they found me.  As long as they are my type of crazy, I like this.

With what Nigel was saying about the people not being total assholes, this is what I have liked about the southern states I have spent time in, with the exception of perhaps California.  When I moved up to New England I was not expecting the attitude that seems prevalent in that region.  I am already a bitter mother fucker, and I usually avoid aggression toward children, however if the fucking parents would do a little better at teaching them how to interact with adults in public I wouldn't feel like like beating the shit out of everyone I encountered.  And it wasn't in the "bad neighborhoods" so much as the suburbs and and wealthier parts of the cities.

I have never ventured to the north west, so maybe I will find a place I like in the mountains up there.

New England mentality - working as intended.

The thing is I know it probably isn't all people there.  Perhaps that is just how you are supposed to be in public up there and I was just not familiar with it, as that is how it seems based on some of my wife's behaviour.  I  don't really feel like bothering with it much more anyway, due to the winters I experienced there.  Maybe everyone is pissed because it is so fucking cold most of the year.

[rygD]

Thank you for that interesting bit of information, Roger.  I will make sure to add that to my list of considerations, it may be useful.

You're welcome.  Had you read the entire thread, you would have noticed that it is full of little nuggets of useful lore.

I read through a majority of it.  I will take a look at the rest.