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Please sell my wife on Portland, OR
Artereis
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Registered User regular
My wife and I are trying to move out west from Virginia. Most of our focus has been on the Seattle area, but I'm convinced we should look at Portland, too. We've loved Seattle on our visits, and Portland seems to have a lot of similar appeal, based on what I've read online. I'm sold on the city, but she needs a little more convincing. Can any of you help me out?
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It's true
Also, do either of you have jobs lined up/at least job searching in either place? The job market for a significant portion of the PNW varies from "eeeeehhhhh" to "really shitty" and the sooner you start looking the better off you'll be
Plus, it has Powell's Books.
These two enough are reason to prefer it to Seattle.
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Well, neither of us is willing to move without at least one job being lined up. My company has a branch in Portland with a position open that's right up her alley. I fully expect us to be split for at least awhile as a result of this.
I suppose I should expand on us a bit. We love microbrews and are big on natural areas, which Portland seems to have in spades. The green-ness of Portland is a big seller. Is the city itself really dull, or is it the weather that is causing most of the negative comments?
*Portland has substantially better public transportation, and is significantly easier to bike around; conversely, it's a bigger pain in the ass to drive there.
*Portland has substantially more homeless people than Seattle, but both have about what you'd expect for a West-Coast city.
*Portland has more hippies, more hipsters, more punks, and more anarchists; Seattle has more yuppies, but doesn't lack for the rest.
*Portland has slightly better weather.
*Seattle has a slightly better job market.
*Portland is significantly less diverse than Seattle, however both cities are pretty white.
*Portland's cost of living is a bit lower than Seattle's.
*Seattle has fewer kids per capita than any city in the U.S. other than San Francisco, though I suspect Portland isn't too far behind. Personally, I would hate to be a teenager here (or in Portland, for that matter).
*Seattle has the Seahawks, Mariners, the Storm (they're pretty much the only WNBA team that matters) and the Huskies (UW's football is okay, but their basketball is pretty good) Portland has the Trailblazers, the Beavers (AAA baseball), and the Ducks (UO's football team was pretty good last year).
*Seattle has a way better soccer team. Like, way better. Like, blows them out of the water better. :P
That being said, if you're looking for a Northwestern city where you can get half-a-dozen different microbrews at pretty much any bar, has large, beautiful parks and lots of plantlife, and is within a couple of hours of virgin wilderness, both cities are going to fit the bill pretty well.
Prrrrffffft. Timbers forever.
You mean the sun that's been beating down all summer? I could go for some rain, honestly. The weather isn't overbearing unless you live on the coast, which is a legitimate temperate rainforest.
I lived in the DC area for several years, each coast has its good points but there's nothing boring about Portland. Being outdoorsy helps. Like Usagi said, make sure you've got a job lined up.
True enough. The Timber's Army though...there's a fan base if there ever was one.
Zing.
100% of my experience with Beaverton involves trying to drive through it during rush hour.
And I agree with Usagi that it would be helpful to know why she is opposed to moving here. As a related tidbit, why are you so sold on it? Not trying to dissuade you, just curious what aspects of your online reading made you want to end up here.
-Ancient Dwarfish Proverb
There's plenty of park and rides for the light rail into the city. It's a little suburby for me, but it might be what you're looking for. Are you going to buy or rent?
I grew up in Beaverton. It's a nice suburb. Really this would work a whole lot better if you gave us a little info on what kinds of things you like/dislike. Basically what Usagi said.
I feel like most suburbs are going to be pretty similar. But anyways here's my quick impression of the town. Beaverton is a pretty typical suburb. It's got some ok restaraunts scattered around, nice movie theater, most of the chain shops, great library system, ect. Traffic can get pretty shitty at rush hour, but other than that it's pretty clear. It's pretty easy to get into portland (either taking the lightrail, or driving not during rush hour). Around 30 minutes depending on how far out you live. If you have any specific questions you can ask here or PM me.
As far as the seattle versus portland thing, the transit will be a million times better in portland. This can not be understated. The only other major difference would be the coast. If you like beaches the oregon coast is also a million times better than the washington coast. This is a fact. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise. Plus it's only 1 1/2ish away from beaverton, which makes for some pretty great weekend getaways.
Also, you should totally buy a plot of land in forest grove and build a house. Mostly because my dad is a building contractor who owns land and builds houses in forest grove; and I would like some sweet christmas presents this year.
Edit: Also, depending on your field of work, beaverton has a pretty decent sized tech industry going. Obviously intel is there, but there's also quite a few other specialist technology buisnisess there. Plus nike headquaters is there, which is kind of cool. I don't know if you can tour it, but I was there for a soccer camp once and it has some amazing facilities. Technically it's not part of beaverton (it's unincorporated land or something?), but beaverton did try to annex it one time. That was pretty cool.
Portland proper has a more "European" and "communal" feeling than Seattle. What do I mean by this? Take downtown Seattle. Now take downtown Seattle after 5 pm. The vast majority of it closes up after 5, leaving you with very little to do. Sure there are bars and other bits of nightlife, but those are (in my experience) outside of downtown in places like Capitol Hill (which pretty much requires you to drive to in order to enjoy).
Now take Portland downtown. What happens after 5? Everything keeps on going. There is so much to do, all the time, and you can pretty much walk anywhere from the waterfront, up to the north end of the Pearl District, and all the way west to NW 23rd. The only nightlife section of the city that you would need to drive to would be Belmont/Hawthorne. It's hard to quantify, but downtown Portland coheres better than downtown Seattle does.
Plus, we don't have bend you over and spank you prices when it comes to downtown parking.
Seattle is more about neighborhood bars, Portland is more centralized. If I didn't work here, I would pretty much never go to downtown Seattle.
Virginia is terribly expensive. The two of us have a pretty healthy income and I don't feasibly see us owning property here, which I'd like to do at some point. Portland, and the Seattle region to a lesser extent, are far more affordable. I don't see us buying a house up front, but I like what I've seen of Portland housing prices.
Neither of us really likes Virginia's weather. The summers the four years we've lived here have been so hot that going outside just isn't remotely pleasant, and that normally starts in May and ends sometime in September/October. We grew up in places that had genuine winters, and Virginia has mostly ice. The last major storm that came through here with actual snow turned my 45 minute commute into a 9 hour one. We're willing to trade that for rain.
We like markets. There's a great one near our house and we were blown away by Pike Place. Does Oregon have decent farmers markets?
As I mentioned before, we're big on natural areas and hiking.
We liked the recyclable/compostable setup that Seattle had. We don't see anything like that out East.
Professionally, I'm a sales engineer for a software company. She's a PHR.
And I agree with you Than about the neighborhood bit of Seattle, because when I go to Seattle I hang out with friends/family in the U District, Wallingford, or Ballard.
Downtown portland has a farmers market that's 8 or 9 months long. It's pretty decent. Beaverton doesn't really have one, but a few of the neighboring towns do (like hillsboro). The suburb ones are pretty much just food though, where's the downtown one has the arts/crafts stuff too. Seattle really wins in the market scene though. Not only do you have pike's place, but every neighboorhood in seattle has a year round farmers market, and a lot of them are pretty great. Plus they are all on different days, so you could go to a farmers market pretty much every day. Seattle also seems to have more street fairs.
Both seattle and portland will have great hiking/natural areas. In, or close to, the city portland has more structured garden type areas. Structured meaning they are very nice parks meant for people to walk around and enjoy flowers/statues what not. Seattle is more about the typical park, where you have some grass, park benches, fields for sports, ect. Obviously both places will have some of both. If you're into it, the zoo by portland is a lot better then the zoo by seattle.
Further away from the city seattle is more about the mountain type hikes, where's portland is all about the waterfalls. Really though there are absolutely fabulous hikes all around portland and seattle. All around meaning within 1-2 hours.
Typically camping/backpacking sites are a little better in the seattle area, but they fill up really fast. Like you have to book the first day you can within the first hour, for the entire summer.
Business wise I'd say seattle is probably more software oriented, where portland is probably more hardware oriented.
Edit: Portland also has the omnimax/laser light show thing which is cool for certain semi-legal activities. It is also apparently very easy to get your medical marijuana card. Seattle has the boeing Imax theater though, which is pretty bad ass.
Agreed, like Than says, pretty much the only reason I go downtown is if I need something specific that I can't get out here or if I'm hanging out with people who happen to be visiting the city. Otherwise I can walk to pretty much anything I want or need here in Ballard (two grocery stores, an amazing year-round farmers market, my dentist, my optometrist, my bank, a shitton of bars/restaurants, etc.)
So could you two take a weekend trip to Portland? It sounds like she needs the experience of actually going to a location before she's convinced she wants to live there (which is a really smart idea, honestly, socializing yourself to the idea of living someplace site unseen is difficult at best).
It's worth noting that in the four years I've been here, we've had about five or six days of for-real snow, though. And after the first couple of days, people get their shit together pretty well.
I'll reiterate what Jebus and Usagi said about farmers markets in Seattle: they're pretty much all year-round (or close to it), and most neighborhoods have one. There are something like five within two miles of my apartment.
From the sounds of it, you're really not going to be unhappy in either place. And for all the shit Seattleites like to give Portlanders, and Portlanders like to give Seattleites, the two cities are pretty similar.
Portland has some beautiful areas, but not enough beautiful days to enjoy them. If you want outdoorsy, I'd pick Denver in a heartbeat.
Mt. Hood has the only year round American ski-slope, which is like the one redeeming factor of Portland. Depends on whether you snowboard/ski though.
Honestly, our main problem is probably being yuppies and despising hippies. We culturally didn't jive with the city.
Summer skiing is not worth it unless you are more of a beginner, or doing one of the schools. It is however an interesting experience to be skiing in shorts and a t-shirt.
you can drink at strip clubs in Portland.
Seriously, though: taxation. Oregon goes the income tax route, and likewise has to be planned for. Washington employs a sales tax, which is somewhere around 9.3%. Both should factor into your decision.
Basically this. There are minor differences, but they're basically the same city, give or take. I lived in Seattle for three years and I've been in Portland for eight. I prefer Portland for its food and drink and it is slightly cheaper to live in. Seattle does have a few more perks because of its size (cheaper to fly out of, etc...) though.
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Oregon has a slightly lower gas tax rate (30c/gal vs. 37.5c/gal, but some counties in Oregon levy an additional 1-5c/gal), but not by enough to explain the differences. Probably, at some level, just comes down to gas is more expensive here because it's always been more expensive here and there's not any specific control that would normalize the two.
That being said, if you want to do outdoorsy stuff, Seattle can't be beat. There are tons of hikes nearby, and the Olympic Peninsula is a pretty short drive away. Being closer to Vancouver BC is pretty nice as well. However, I'm inclined to think the people in Seattle are more likely to give the cold shoulder.
Overall, can't go wrong with either city I think.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2005/0213/cover.html
Caveats aside: growing up hick, I desperately, desperately wanted a real city, and Portland is small. Population wise, its supposed to be about the same size as Seattle (~580k vs. about 700k), but in terms of and admittedly abstract feel, Seattle is just vastly larger, more urban place. Seattle is much more dense than Portland, since it has both more people and more water in about the same area --we're not talking NYC/Manhattan levels of density, or even Chicago density however. I found that that increased density translates into a much more urban, neighborhood centric experience and is one of the things I like best about both Seattle and Chicago. Transit wise, I'll actually say its a wash. In terms of metro-area commuting, Tri-met is a vastly better service, and the MAX system is excellent, but Tri-Met provides no owl service which means if you're going out after dark, your driving. I always have always found Seattle much more pleasant to be someone who does a lot of his traveling on foot --again, better neighborhood vibes and fewer random gaps between places of interest. I lived much of my time in Seattle, all my time in SF, and the first several years in Chicago without a car; I don't think I could have done that in Seattle. Even now, my wife and I only have one car, and won't get another one until we start a family and even then it will be more for convenience and an expression of the fact that we can afford it as a luxury than any real need.
RE: the Seattle cold shoulder thing: There is possibly something too that, although some of that is just a NW thing. Neither city is as randomly unfriendly as San Francisco, and neither is nearly as welcoming as Chicago, but its not difficult to make friends in any of them, if you're outgoing enough to meet people with common interests.
For the other stuff, in many ways they are very similar cities. I like being next too large bodies of water, which pulls toward Seattle. But all the good stuff about the PNW is true about both places, and there is lots of really great stuff about the PNW, the beer, the food, the environment. The weather can really grind on some people, but if it doesn't, its great: rarely too hot and when it is hot, very rarely humid, and never cold the way I have come to understand cold as a midwesterner. I started out meaning to try and write an even handed compare/contrast, and ended up talking about how much I love Seattle --it seems much as I love Chicago, I still miss it. Still, they are both great cities and I think that most people, especially those people who wouldn't be moving dangerously close to their sometimes boundary challenged parents, would be very happy in either.
But I think the most important thing is to spend some time in Portland before you decide. Finally, unlike some larger cities, its not all that difficult to live in the city proper and get to at least some of the suburbs: in Seattle, I worked for Sierra On-Line in Bellevue (doing tech support) and lived in West Seattle, and my commute was a breeze. I had a reverse commute in Portland, with the new MAX line, I can't imagine its hard.
tl;dr: Both very nice, I like Seattle better, try before you buy.