Reviews & Comments
Portland, OR
uninteresting and unpleasant -
3/3/2013Unlike many people who hate Portland, I am politically quite liberal and do not mind rainy weather. In fact, rain in Portland is a plus because it keeps the annoying population indoors rather than wandering around being loud and horrible.
I thought I would enjoy this city: I moved here five years ago, a new young professional with some free time and a good attitude toward the place. I have always made friends pretty easily and have lived in some large cities in Europe as well as Seattle, San Francisco and some smaller Oregon towns. I like a rich grassroots culture (not when it's overly contrived though). I am curious and energetic and just fine with being a stranger in town. I love places with a sense of history and I like to be among educated and creative people. I thought Portland would be the place for me in Oregon, but it is far worse than some other Oregon cities and towns in my opinion.
It feels uneducated here and mind-bogglingly, fist-eatingly boring. The "fun" people have is a kind of hick, screaming-drunk fun that I call uptight leisure time. Lots of douchebag yupsters displaying what good and edgy consumers they are by showing off what cool places they go to eat Lots of mediocre innovation and DIY hobbies meant to show off how very Portland a person is. Far too many person crimes, far too rude a public. The city is big enough to be crowded, but one gets the impression that the people in crowds and traffic aren't used to having to share their space. The soulless "me-first" behavior becomes wearing. And there is this contingent of 35-year-olds trying way too hard to still be 23 and to be super off-beat cool, that creeps me out.
Art and culture here are unimpressive and not very accessible. There are some colleges, but none that radiates any academic vibe in the city.
I know a lot of people who love it here. In my experience, those people are often beer enthusiasts, lots of recently divorced men (it seems to be very well liked by recently-divorced men, so if you are one, you might give Portland a try I guess), people who like live music almost to the exclusion of any other activity (there is plenty of that), young graphic designers who love putting pictures of Portland on Tumblr, and people who grew up unexposed to anything very liberal and so they believe they are in some kind of liberal haven (I don't think it is, but it satisfies some people as such), and people who have this idea in their minds that Portland is THE cool place to be and they want to advertise that they're in Portland. (These people usually live in Tigard or Beaverton.) There are also some young families who like it here, maybe because the parents grew up here and remember when it was fun. But I find Portland so over-hyped-- everything is overblown, overpriced, under-serviced and neglected.
I should try to be fair and put in a plug. It might be fun to be in the restaurant business here: the restaurant scene does seem innovative, and Portland, though a city, is small enough so you could meet some regulars who are community people and could get some good community ties and interests, which always makes a place more livable. And again, if you are 22 and from pudunk-town-Oregon and you love beer but don't want to be too far from your parents in Podunk-town, you'll likely enjoy living here.
I'm afraid my overall impression of Portland is that it is needlessly inconvenient, uninspiring, cheesy and kind of dumb. But it is not an impossibly bad city, and if you really have good friends here, you can likely be pretty happy-- though it will be a bit inconvenient to get together with your friends unless you live or work in the same portion of the city. It is not a great place to come and be inspired and try to build a life. Maybe it used to be.