Cloudy - 3/7/2013

There are many things to like about Portland. It's a very walkable city, with lots of eateries, bars, and nightlife. And the people here are incredibly nice. The big challenge is weather-related. Not rain, really, as it doesn't flat out rain as much as you might expect. But the percentage of cloudy/overcast days is really quite sizable, except during the summer months. The rest of the year there are an awful lot of cloudy days. Having just recently relocated from Singapore, where it's sunny almost nonstop, I've found that transition to be quite challenging.

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uninteresting and unpleasant - 3/3/2013

Unlike 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.

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bla bla bla - 1/5/2013

I don't want to review my state.

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Portland is Not a Decent City - 11/26/2012

I'd like to start by qualifying my opinion of Portland. I grew up in Austin, went to school in West Texas, lived in Summit County, CO for 5 years, lived in denver for 5 years, and lived in Japan for a year and spent a season in Antarctica. I've traveled all over the world and have seen some really unique and "weird" places. Trust me, Portland is nowhere nearly as "hip" as I was lead to believe. The only thing "weird" about Portland is its complete lack of character. Just because you recycle and have a "Free Tibet" sticker on your dirty car doesn't make you a hippy. It makes you annoying. The in-your-face political correctness is nauseating. Everyone spouts about "diversity acceptance", but what they really mean is - We accept you if you're a caucasian, secular, gender-bending jobless freak. Portland sucks. Can't wait to leave.

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The Hotbabeville of the Northwest - 11/20/2012

I lived here for about 6 weeks in summer 2011, and this city has more sexy chicks than, I think any other city of comparable size. It also has a very high number of breweries and strip clubs. Bottom line is if you love hot babes and beer, you'll love Portland. Can't wait to go back one day.

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Have loved it and hated it - 10/28/2012

Why live here? Well, because there are many good things. Downtown is small, but it is probably the safest of the many, many cities I've seen in the U.S. The urban decay of the rust belt where I grew up is absent. I love the outdoors. I camp, hike and ski a lot. Had only one weekend at home this summer. We have an enormous back yard in the endless national and state forests (about 1/3 of this state is public land including the beaches - they belong to the people). No one will try to convert you to their way of thinking (though this is good - it's because they're completely disinterested). Our son has grown up here. He is in love and will probably marry his long time girlfriend and have children in the near future. I will stay here to be near he and his family. Why not live here? My story isn't the whole story, but that's all I've got. I moved here 16 years ago. I expected an adjustment period; that's normal. What I didn't expect was that all the surface niceties displayed while vacationing here did not speak to the challenges of acceptance here. Being a well-rounded open-minded person hinders this. Though I have friends, it took years to develop them. Having lived in south Florida where everyone is from somewhere else, the diversity was accepted by most of us and was pretty cool. It was fun exploring our differences. In Portland, most everyone is from somewhere else, but the cliquishness is nearly impenetrable. Well-rounded does not fit a specific enough demographic. Your choices to fit in here are: Latte sucking yuppie; hippie; earth child; sports loving Mormon; Christian hip; 4-wheeling redneck; or atheist intellectual. Being anything else or some a la carte combination of these standards presents an enigma to Portlanders. If they can't figure you out within narrowly pegged confines, you're just too perplexing. The lack of curiosity as concerns diversity is perplexing to me. Maybe it shouldn't be - it is soooo white here. There is little racial or ethnic diversity. I'm a dark complected Irish-German-Native American hybrid. I'm oddly exotic to the white people here (and most are oh so white). Countless times, I've encountered strangers at the hair salon or the grocery store who want to play 'let me guess your ancestry'. The political demographic is very liberal and that suits me. It's socially liberal, too - and that's acceptable - though I've been sometimes amazed at the assumption that everyone is promiscuous - I'm not (married for many years). The workplace is passive-aggressively competitive. You will be talked about, but you will rarely have a chance to communicate because no one is assertive enough to talk to you. I can only guess that life on the historic end of the trail was ridiculously individualistic and competitive. I don't know. Most people earn very low wages and the housing costs are high. That doesn't stop $15/hr earners from going to the spa at least once a month or sucking down $5 lattes every day. Keeping up with the Joneses is alive and well here. The traffic is ridiculous and it's foolhardy not to widen the interstates and improve the infrastructure. Public transportation is heralded as some great accomplishment, but the folks I work with who ride the trains have some pretty gnarly tales to tell about disgusting, violent and extremely nasty behavior on their daily commute. Most of them have to drive and take the trains. They don't do it for clean air. They do it because parking downtown runs $12 a day. The trains go only straight lines: one east and west and one north and south. Those who don't have a car usually can't afford one because wages are so low. It rains from the end of October until typically the 4th of July - nearly every day - usually a slow all day drizzle. But when the sun shines, it's a joyous place to be; the beauty is astounding. And you can see the mountain - Mt. Hood. Well, that's how I see it. But everyone's experience is their own. Live your life. If nothing else - I've experienced it and have had an adventure. I've learned and grown. And I have a lot of fun playing in the woods. I think I'll like it better when I retire - a little place near Mt. Hood maybe and Portland when I need to shop.

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Glad I'm out of that town - 10/7/2012

I was so glad when it was time to leave this place. I was so glad that is my review on Portland, Nothing more needs to be said.

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This place is painful. - 9/29/2012

Painfully stupid. Let me tell ya about Portland. You know about the incessant rain. Yes it really is that bad. And yes it really does make you depressed. It lasts forever. Drabby drizzles all day long every single day for 10 months. Probably why the people here are so rude. When they're not being phony nice that is. The culture is very insular. Church people abound. If you don't believe in "their" God, you're either out or a prospect for conversion. Uh, I got my own philosophy on life thank ya very much. Which brings me to the lack of intelligence. It's mind-boggling! They think they're sooo sophisticated but it's more like the backwoods of Arkansas than not.You cannot get proper service here to save your life. I'm not talking about the restaurants. Other than their sad habit of aping the French, restaurants here are good. That much is true. I hate the roadkill and pets on the menus though. It's like backwoods hillbilly meets European wannabe. Boom! They open a restaurant. The organic local produce is phenomenal. I'm waiting for a truly forward-thinking chef to work with that and that only. Leave the poor battered backyard bunnies alone. There's a restaurant I wanna be a regular at. But this isn't what I meant about service. Unless you plan on building your own house and everything, you cannot find an intelligent human being to service your property to save your life. We have had a parade of boneheads traipse through our home on a nearly daily basis because it's a given that whoever we hire to do a particular job will no doubt screw it up and need another vendor to fix it! We wait FOREVER for these flakes. Half the time they don't show up! Or if they do it's on a schedule convenient to them. As in an hour earlier than agreed or later. Or they'll come in all gangbusters until they realize you are not going to buy anything from them, no "upgrades" until you service the current grade properly. Service? What's that? It's like a cesspool of adult children with very low IQs. DO NOT buy a house here. They cram 6 houses to every acre. Huge blobs of concrete where forest once was. And if you think you're getting a view, just wait. They'll come and fill in the land in front of you and put up a bazillion ugly houses and your pretty view is gone. The traffic is just as bad as Los Angeles too. I regret the day I decided to move up here. I need intelligence. I need people who care about the job they do. People of integrity. I need open-minded people. And I don't mean tats and bones in your ears. And most of all, I need just a little bit of space. GREED has completely overtaken the government. And INCOMPETENCE rules. In other words, if you're at all intelligent, with standards, you will be in pain trying to have a life here. Portland is for potheads and yuppies. Let those two factions duke it out. I'm bigger than that. Time to go!

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Keep Portland Weird - 9/14/2012

I lived in Everett, Washington for two years and would visit a friend in Portland any chance I had. At first Portland seemed really romantic. Everything was beautiful; the weather, the shops, the food and especially the people. We ate healthy food, biked or walked anywhere that we went, and listened to live music until it was time to sleep. Everyone had dreadlocks and wore secondhand clothes. We went to Voodoo Donuts and Saturday Market. We hung out at The Deli (which isn’t there anymore, I don’t think) and visited the Rose Garden. It was unique and definitely captured my attention. Folks were very kind and used words like "lovely" and "spiritual" and bragged about how open minded their city was. They would say things like "Portland is a place for anyone. We accept anyone. We love anyone." As if discrimination of any sort was out of the question. That made it all the more surprising when they found out that I was a Christian that grew up in Texas. I was the exact same person they had been so sweet to before, and now they were insulting me. Now I was "hateful" and "narrow minded" and they couldn't understand how I could thrive in a state that "suffocated my soul." I am not racist. I do not hate anyone that is different than me. I feel like I am called to love everyone, and so I try to do that. They didn’t believe me. Because I wore the title “Christian” I missed out on being their friends. From that point things were different. They tried to convert me to Buddhism, they would make negative comments about my being on Facebook or my phone, and scolded me for “doing that to my body” when I ate a powdered donut. They even tried to steal my clothes and called me materialistic when I said something about it. Isn’t Portland’s motto “Keep Portland Weird”? Well they do that by making anyone who isn’t their “kind” feel uncomfortable and unwelcome. I suppose that since I was what the world deemed "normal" I didn't fit in there. As long as you meet the right people, Portland is absolutely wonderful. I can't believe how beautiful and peaceful it is in the summer. It is definitely a place to visit, and maybe move, depending on the neighborhood. I can’t really tell you that you’d have a terrible experience; I didn’t. I still have incredibly fond memories of my visits there. I do love Portland, however, due to the overwhelming amount of negative judgment I received, I won’t be returning.

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Biking in Portland - 9/2/2012

Commuting to work has never been better with excellent bike paths. My quality of life has gone way up

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Portland is composed of transplants - 8/28/2012

I am an oregon native, from eastern oregon and have been living portland for five years. I have met alot of people and most of these hipsters that you speak of are actually transplants from california or the midwest. I feel like Portland is home. I like the size and would not feel very comfortable living somewhere larger. I am educated, classy, and cultured. So alot of these "portlanders" are actually those who want to rebel and move from the midwest or wherever. They feel like they fit it in, cause there views are so "different" and "unique." Half if not more of the new hires at my work are from california.

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Great small city - 8/18/2012

OREGON IS A TREASURE. Portland. Is the shining centerpiece.

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Life in Portland - 5/30/2012

Portland is a great place for beginning families. Wonderful climate but can be somewhat wet in the spring. Winters have gotten warmer so it rains here but only a few miles away is snow and skiing.going the other direction is the pacific ocean but you'll need a wet suit! We tend to roll up the streets early here, not too many late night spots. Great food abounds in portland. This a bike friendly very green city. Great summer festivals, saturday markets, jazz festivals...lots to do. Housing has gotten a bit expensive, gas too, but no tax on the dollar.

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looking for someplace to settle more permanently - 4/22/2012

You state I must select a City and State, well I do not have a particular one, so this is difficult. I love many places.. . . Please note; I am interested in Washington State, Oregon, California, and Scottsdale, AZ area there abouts. Category, there are several things that effects my decision making process, and it is difficult to choose just one State or City of interest. It is complex, as I have humbly, traveled nationally & internationally. I also am at the ripe age of 60 + . . . So I hope you will give me a bit more time. I am of humble means. . . $$ I apologize as wright now I am unable to express locations. There are lots of factors for me to consider. Within the early next few months I shall need to relocate. I should be able to say more of what I am looking for in the very near future.. Sincerely, Kay,

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Negative Comments - 4/10/2012

I'm saddened to read the negative comments about P-Town. I currently live 16 miles south of San Francisco. At age 64, (age discrimination abounds here) I'm faced early retirment and relocating is inevitable. I've visited Portland several times, stayed downtown, attended the ballet, symphony, visited museums, parks and gardens etc. and was impressed. Portland's transportation was clean, safe, or at least during the day it was. And there were transit connections to the PDX airport. I hate to say this, but there are many dishonest and unfriendly people "EVERYWHERE" especially since the economic downturn. Finding the right neighborhood to live in any city is key. The downside for me with Portland would be the number of cloudy days -- so if I did move there, finding an apartment (near downtown or Northwest) with good light exposure would be a must.

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Disappointed - 3/7/2012

Well after 5 years of living here, I find myself disappointed by the people I meet. I've lived in other states and do not have trouble making friends. At first I thought the people here were just unique or 'eccentric'. Now I see that that is just a nice word for callous and unfriendly. I keep encountering people who claim to be liberal and for human rights etc, but are so cold and undependable in how they treat their friends or acquaintances! I don't get it! They're not just cautious, but suspicious of anyone who just says hi on the street, like you must be a serial killer if you acknowledge others. I'm not just talking a few times, this is a daily/weekly occurence for me and I'm pretty friendly and 'normal'. Perhaps too normal for this town. Go ahead and "keep Portland weird", but I'm heading for the south and some southern hospitality (and sunshine wouldn't hurt either). I guess I can only conclude it must be the 9 months of darkness that keeps people in their shell.

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Portland is a Small Town - 1/5/2012

I can only think that the people who say it rains too much in Portland must be from the South West. I reluctantly moved to Portland from Seattle seven years ago, only because I could not afford to buy a house in that real, beautiful, and exciting city, where the cost of housing is approaching New York City's. I had heard all of the talk about Portland, but have found much of it to be overplayed and exaggerated. Compared to Seattle, Vancouver BC, and New England, it does not rain a lot here at all. The summers are extremely long and dry (which my water bill will attest to). It rained only a very few days this past December, supposedly the wettest month of the year. And where are all of these well-educated hipsters I had read so much about? Not here in the Belmont District. Most of my neighbors are poorly educated rednecks. Most of the people I have met here over the years are very conservative and do not actually live in Portland, but in Beaverton or Lake Oswego. I wish that this wasn't the case, but that is my experience here. I would dearly love to know where all of these well-educated hip denizens of Portland are. The very few sociable and educated people I have met here are other 'foreigners'. The only actual Portlanders I have met have no class and are neither well-read nor culturally aware. An unbathed tatooed white trash drummer in a bad garage band is not, to my mind, a hipster. Is the definition of this term different in Portland?

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love it here - 12/27/2011

Great -- I love portland!!!

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I wish I could choose every category to comment on - 11/5/2011

I have way too many things to say about Pee-Town. The simplest: Don't believe a word anyone says. It rains here ALL THE TIME. When it isn't raining, we've got 80-90% cloud cover, 288 days a year. Talk about a shady place! <3

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Portland: All Hype and No Substance - 10/31/2011

After having lived in Seattle, Berlin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Cork, my husband and I moved to Portland six years ago. Although we had looked at houses on both coasts of the US, and I had wanted to return to Seattle (where we both grew up), my husband was enthusiatic about Portland's much vaunted arts scene and ostensibly green sensibilities, as well as its purported gloomy weather (we both love rain and storms). I reluctantly went along with the move, and it remains the worst mistake I have ever made. Having spent every summer of my childhood at a cabin near Mt Hood, I knew that, in spite of its reputation for gloom, Portland really doesn't have a comparatively high percentage of rainfall. The sky is almost always a uniformly glaring, migraine-inducing white, and summers are bone dry and can be hellishly hot - often over 100 degrees. Our first summer here, we experienced a high temperature of 107. We began making plans then to sell our house and leave - just as housing prices began to plummet. Whoever is responsible for PR in this city is an absolute genius, albeit shamefully deceptive. The so-called 'hip arts scene' we had heard so much about is non-existent. Somehow, Portlanders seem to confuse the term 'hip' with what would be called 'white trash' in most other cities. We had visions of spending weekends gallery and museum hopping, as we had done when we lived elsewhere, but there are no actual museums in Portland, and what galleries there are are almost entirely full of nothing but local unoriginal and derivative rubbish. Portland's Last Thursday Arts Walk is indistinguishable from a giant frat party - it has little to do with art, and everything to do with getting guttered on PBR and ralphing up in the street. Frame that. Our first two years in Portland, wanting to support the smudge of culture that did exist here, we secured a box at the opera, and subscribed to the symphony and the ballet as well. After two years of lacklustre performances, 1970s-style lighting and staging, and increasing dumbing-down of content in order to appeal to the majority hick demographic, we gave up and have not subscribed since. We now arrange our work schedules so that we can travel to Seattle or San Francisco for music and dance, though White Bird does bring many excellent dance performances to Portland from around the world. And there is a reason why house concerts, organized and booked by neighbors who have abandoned Portland's 'offical' cultural establishment, are increasingly popular here. As for the business environment, we have a small international repair business and work out of a workshop in our home. When we first moved to Portland, we had decided that, as we had always done, we would allow local customers to come to our house to obtain repairs by appointment rather than having to mail their items in. After enduring two years of time wasting no-shows, locals doorstepping us at 7.00 am, extreme rudeness, and customers reeking of alcohol or in mid-tweak, we'd had enough. We no longer take in work from locals. But even a large notice on our website, as well as a huge sign on our front door, has not stopped them, zombie-like, from trying to get in. We can never leave our front door open, and have had to install a panic button in addition to alarming the entire house. Maybe it is this lack of consideration or even a shred of intelligence that has contributed to the fact that Portland's shop clerks are so notoriously rude. Having dealt with the public here, I can only sympathize, and wonder if some mass scale lobotomizing chemical experiment hasn't at some time in the recent past been undertaken here. And as for Portland's celebrated green credentials - pure hubristic hype. Portland is a long way behind San Francisco, Seattle, Berlin, Copenhaven, and many, many other cities in recycling, environmental education, and transportation. From all that we had read before moving here, we thought that we would be able to do without a car in Portland. Instead, we had to buy a car after moving here. The entire SE part of the city is served by only a very small handful of filthy, poorly maintained buses on a scatter-shot schedule. The first thing I did when moving here was to call Metro and ask for a transit or bus map - but they do not even have such a thing. There are no schedules, time-wise or fare-wise, posted at bus stops. And there is no way of getting cross-town, from North to South, on East side public transport - one must go all the way downtown to transfer to another route, then travel back across the open sewer, er, Willamette River. We live in inner South East, and have to take three buses just to get to our 'local' Post Office. Neither the highly publicized Max nor the tram venture anywhere near SE Portland - a huge area of the city with almost no public transportation at all. In summation, I am trying to think of one nice thing to say about Portland, just one. But not a thing comes to mind. I only wish that we could have spent more time visiting Portland and researching the truth of what we read prior to moving here. Now we are stuck here until housing prices begin to ascend again. It can't happen soon enough for us.

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