Beautiful recreation, hypocritical people
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8/2/2022
Portland is a super unique place. It is both one of the greatest and one of the crappiest cities in the world. I'll try to explain...
The best reason to live in Portland is the proximity to the Cascades. You're close to Mt Hood, Mt St Helen's, Mt Adam's, relatively close to Bend, etc etc. If you like outdoor sports it's a paradise and there are advantages to living in the city and recreating elsewhere. The Columbia River Gorge is close too. The beach is beautiful to go to several times, but I wouldn't rate it close to Florida or Hawaii in that it's cold and not tropical. It is close though from Portland which is an advantage. Portland isn't near as expensive as San Francisco or Seattle. Culturally it's very similar to San Francisco.
I lived there for two years. I never had an issue with a homeless person living in SW Portland other than the fact my car and storage unit were broken in to. Don't ever leave even an empty backpack in your car. The homeless are generally taken care of so I don't feel like they are aggressive like in other cities. The police absolutely don't care about drugs, theft, homelessness etc. They only police for safety issues and I hear their response times are pretty slow. You're kinda on your own, but I just avoided shady people and was validating to them if I had to talk to them.
The taxes and cost of living are extremely high compared to other places not on the West Coast. It really pays to be broke and on charity here or be a high earning tech person or trust fund kid. Middle class people will absolutely not fair well in Portland. That leads me to my last major point. Despite the fact that I love the outdoors and agree with the voters here and many social justice issues where they are the first in the nation to take the Ivy League intellectual, progressive approach, you may also find the people to be extremely narrow minded and hypocritical. Portland is the least diverse city in the US and they talk about diversity CONSTANTLY. Its in a very fake and shallow way IMO but don't tell them that because it's very serious. My wife is a foreign professional and they let her volunteer at the hospital and then had her clean things for them for free in a very demeaning way. So I wouldn't say it's actually diversity friendly, but they will constantly use that as a reason to keep you from receiving opportunuty if you are a white, Cia gendered, straight male. I job searched there for two years with a professional degree and found absolutely Nada. Luckily I had family money and a remote job to NYC for a while. I just found the people there to be weird and kind of toxically judgmental as a pretty moderate white person. It's really a city made for liberal nerds who worship identity politics in a fake and hollow way.
With that said, I didn't think it was as bad as Portland is portrayed on the news on Fox etc. There were riots every day for months and it never bothered me. Don't go past about 80th street on the east side and avoid downtown. Downtown used to be beautiful and it's been destroyed during the George Floyd covid stuff. I'd still go there occasionally, but it's not the same. I'd still live there again, probably in the suburbs and just recreate and travel to other states to visit old friends. You can avoid the people if you want and just pay the arts taxes and crap to keep them from sending you to collections. The river is cool to have there and there are some arts festivals and all that I missed if it hadn't been covid time.
Tyler | Murrieta, CA