Reviews & Comments
Salem, OR
re: Salem is fine with me -
9/14/2017I moved here a year ago and I know this woman's post is almost a decade old, but I just find it hilarious that she wants us all to be cognizant of the humanity of people, but then call Salem the place that "real" people real love - even after giving Portland some strongly undue compliments. And this my friends is where my chief complaint about the simple folk of Salem comes in - the poster is correct. People are unassuming here, there is a lot of poverty but I don't sense it as much as libertarian vibes wanting to prevent an expanded tax base to give the children of this county the school the little humans truly deserve.
People here are willfully ignorant. I'm not talking political affiliation, specifically. I'm saying whatever they're into, they are tunnel visioned. And that's fine, but know what that means. It means they say in a folksy way that they live and let live, but really what they're saying is they don't care about anyone but themselves. You can see it in their tax base, you can see it in their cliques, you can see at city council. Portland has a really horrible history of discrimination much like the rest of Oregon that was founded as a white person state not much more than 120 years ago. But they're looking outward and trying to fix it. If you are a HUMAN BEING who cares about anything beyond yourself and your property taxes, Salem is NOT for you. I'm not even sure the lower middle class homeowners that live on $15/hr are complaining. They don't want your fancy influx from somewhere else, they don't want it to be better. They just wanna be left alone.
So that means you'll have space to do what you want, but you're not going to change a thing. My only hope for Salem is that the next generation all get college educations and evolve this disappointing place. It's beautiful, but most people I've met are extremely narrow minded, liberal or conservative. I think it's the crappy education system. Plus, there is no "inner city" here. It's called downtown, and it's meh, ok, with alot of potential.