A place for people to gather and share their dislikes of this crazy awesome town.
134 thoughts on “Nothing is perfect”
zumpie
Wow Jim, are you sure you’ve lived anywhere other than PDX? Because your post is A) suspiciously typical wingnutery and B) painfully ill informed.
San Diego is 24% more expensive than Portland, with housing a whopping 62% higher. As for “high” taxes, yes in California (and thus San Diego), 4rh highest in the country.
For us, not so much. While we do have a high income tax, our property taxes are lowish and, of course, no sales tax. So overall, our liability is 40th of 50 states (overall low).
Next time try to actually do research about your fantasy locale, mmmmkay?
I went back to San Fran a couple weeks ago and the traffic was so refreshing. I had forgotten. There are so many more cars than in Portland, but somehow it just flows. People in Cali know how to use the space and take the lanes. The zipper works! In Portland people seem to actively impede traffic flow, maybe because they don’t want to be passed or left behind? The zipper is non-existent, people want to queue up ridiculously and it just doesn’t work once you have a certain traffic volume. I would take bay bridge rush hour over HWY26 tunnel commute any day.
First of all why does everyone here pronounce my me seedrick instead of Cedric? Second, I’m from Florida and this constant dark gloominess is crazy! And how does a major city not have a hip hop & R/B station? Finally, why when I’m walking close to the street does every single car freak out and stop? Like I’m gonna just run out in the road! I really am having a hard time adjusting to this white passive aggressive culture here. Smh
What a coincidence Cedric (I’d pronounce your name correctly). I’m ready to leave here and move to Florida! I really like the sun and southern people don’t bother me at all like many of our stuck up Portland neighbors.
I spent most of my life in Southern Oregon. While it had far superior outdoor recreation than Portland, I wanted to move to Portland because I wanted to be around like minded, considerate and tolerant people. I’ve been here three years now and have had a very rude awakening. The people here aren’t tolerant at all. They’re terribly judgmental. They look down their noses at others and act like they’re tolerant because they only use politically correct terms. I’ve discovered that the small town rednecks are way more accepting and are not afraid to speak their mind about a different opinion. Being liberal shouldn’t mean being narrow minded and hating anyone conservative.
You can’t hike or be in the outdoors here without running into others every two minutes. The rivers are cold, crowded and dirty. The trails are filled with wimpy yuppies who are out of shape but think they’re experiences trekkers because they wear the ugliest hiking Spandex gear and use fabricated walking sticks. I catch myself wanting to push these fake wimps off the cliff when I walk by them.
The weather is awful and seasonal affective disorder is a household term around here.
People here can’t drive and nobody realizes that the left lane is the fast lane and made for passing. You always get stuck behind some fake granola cruncher in a Prius or Subaru wagon going the same pace as the semi truck in the right lane next to them. These fake hippies would shit themselves if they were to experience nature without a guide and the latest equipment. Their idea of camping is renting a cabin with electricity, cable and internet.
Crime here isn’t too bad but kids from all walks of life are getting heroin. It’s an epidemic here. Prostitution is rampant here because of the heroin and meth problems and because there aren’t very many jobs and the ones available don’t pay worth a shit while to cost of living is ridiculous. People here are elitists and if you have an associates degree they will tell you that you’re not really college educated. They also act as if you’ve clubbed a baby seal if you don’t bring a reusable bag when buying groceries.
Not elitist, pretentious. There’s a difference – one wants to better himself and values things of quality, the other thinks he’s already there and is blind to the world around him. If Portlanders were elitist, we’d have things like clean rivers, a real concert hall, a decent symphony orchestra, and quality roads. Instead we have plastic bag bans, a corrupt mayor who just *happens* to be gay, studded snow tires on 4wd cars (when it never snows) and middle class bums pooping on the sidewalk to “make a point” about all the evil people with money.
I have lived here most of my life, and I couldn’t agree more!!! Yes, it is a great place to ride a bike too, for maybe two months out of the year! The other city I lived in was San Diego, and I now miss it more than ever!! If I’m going to pay this high cost of living and taxes, I would rather live in a city worth the money. And yes, I am a native to this area, sorry Portland, but you’re just traveling in the wrong direction!!!!
I have lived other places and every where else I lived I felt happier I just come back to Portland because my family has a house and my daughter loves it and when the rent gets to high out of state where do I end up back here, what do I dislike about Portland I hated it at three years old, my first sentance was I want to go outside no words just the sentense because I knew I wanted to leave Portand so bad the energy here is a nervous bad vibe that is asaultive and the people are so phoney with there polite one word gestures of friendships people don’t understand diversity, the only thing people do is watch a movie at home or go to Fred Meyers its a death trap here an emotional trap everyone smokes weed here just to bare living here or they would kill themselves and the suicide rate here is so high because its so depressing the sky the air the elevation its a valley so low you know this whole town was buried under water once because the cosmos knows it gave us a sign flood the place yet people live here with fake smiles or just real fears about truely being alive its a place of death where spirits live a more exicting life than people. Yah some night clubs can be fun but then you go home to your drafty house and feel like you cant lift yourself up out of bed the house is always so cold just like the people I have served my time 40 years of torture. Get me out of here me my cat and I guess my daughter will have to fend for herself she is trapped here cause of friends who she loves she admits she is very depressed here what a change when we came back Portland has ruined my life once again. It is not a liveable state. Once as a child we moved to Tacoma Washington it was fine its just Portland is drives me crazy I just want out of here this moment every second how can I break free! This is an emergency!
Maybe it’s coincidence but the two people I’ve met who grew up and lived in Portland most of their lives are virulent anti-Semites. I thought it was supposed to be a progressive place but these natives tell me they never met a Jew in their sixty plus years of living in Portland and on the planet earth. I guess there’s no Jews north of San Fran??? The jokes on one of them tho- her son moved out of town and married a New York Jew and made his mother come to temple for the wedding. Seems at least someone in the lily white Northwest isn’t in the Klan. Can’t wait til the couple have grandkids.Wonder how an anti Semite will like going to a bris?
I’m from the Portland area and miss it dearly. I think all of you have missed the whole point of the city and are too focused on clicks and cliches. Go out in the mountains with a few old school Portland hippies and get some fresh perspective about life. People are rude everywhere. There are nice people everywhere. If you don’t like what you see around you, get off your butt, and do something to make your little space in the city better. That’s what I like about Portland… forward minded free thinkers. If you can’t find any you might wanna start by looking in the mirror.
people are not rude everywhere. try texas, very friendly people everywhere I went there. nothing like portland where you could live here all your life and bearly have a friend. I lived in Brooklyn for 8 months and have better friends by far there, 4 great friends, I visit when I can. I had to return due to my house being here. My dream is to return to a great place. New York City.
Libertarian’s are liberals who suck. Come back over to the liberal team, I know it may seem boring and you really like being a contrarian but its just hurting all us real liberals.
I’ve been to every state west of the Mississippi, and much of the east. Lived in a dozen places. Just visited Portland for two days — I hate it! While Oregon is a pretty beautiful place, the traffic here is the worst I’ve been in — and I’ve been in some nasty Bay Area (California) traffic! There are nasty looking bums everywhere, more out-of-work and not looking to do anything people, loads of panhandlers, and really slow drivers… WTH is the deal with traffic that is stopped in all directions on the freeways here? You can keep this POS place to your little liberal freethinking minds all you want!
Thank god for jesus christ b/c this world sucks – and it’s just gonna get worse! Portland sucks b/c there’s so much fear here, but at least ppl don’t bother you for the most part. i’m moving to asia b/c fema has death camps for ppl who don’t accept the mark of the beast, the r.f.i.d. chip. But if we take the mark, we don’t have eternal life. So it’s better not to take it i think. But yeah portland sucks, but so does the rest of the world! So until jesus returns, we might as well get used to it.
I hate to say this but low-IQ is a wide-spread thing here in P-town. I’m not exaggerating. Hipster, Young Professionals, Soccer Moms, dikes and gays, it doesn’t matter. They all get their facts from Motherjones, the Nation, NPR, Rachel Madcow..etc and they all think Socialism is good for the planet and Obummer can’t do wrong. They think the Meek should inherit everything. I’m worried. The future of this town is looking bleak.
Wow, a wing nut who thinks that anyone who’s a progressive is stupid. How delightfully original, not to mention well reasoned. I’m sure the inconvenient fact that most red states are populated by less educated, poorer people or that Faux News’s information is routinely disproven by facts would do nothing to otherwise dissaude you.
I hear Boise just enchanting (if you like hot) this time of year, perhaps you’d be less worried about its future and might like to move there????
You must be kidding. I wish there was more N. Cal folks here–they are much more open, friendly, inclusive than the people I have met from Oregon (and Portland). I have never met such an incurious, cold bunch of folks. No, I did not move here and take a job away from another Oregonian. You can take your bigoted (and Christian evangelical) attitudes and keep them. I can’t wait to leave.
I have been lucky to live in several states, this by far has the most rude and crazy bunch of people I have ever worked with. Everything is a crisis, everyone is stupid and on the verge of being fired every week. Seriously, what would half of these people do if we had an emergency in Portland. Just picture it!! Seriously people, chill out.
Love this site. I’ve lived here for five years and I think this city gets worse with every year. It doesn’t help that I’ve now been to every version of the mellow quirky laid back boring Portland bar now. I thought Portland was a little oasis being from Detroit. But, the people here suck so much I would rather be back in Detroit. At least we know how to have fun and have good music. And sports teams and people with personalities.
I like the unable to walk on the sidewalk discussion. It is probably closely related to my personal hatred of how Portlanders board a plane. Are you in line? Are you up next? Are you just mulling around in an ignorant mob wondering what is going on? It never fails and you can be in any city anywhere in the country boarding a plain to Portland and it is the same mindless, mulling mob.
this must be the stupidest post / comment I have ever read. How can you still mistake plane with plain? Please enlighten me about what good music is… Personality? You want personality? Well buddy, you need one.
damn, i had no idea people though SF was rude. the first time i went, i was shocked at how overtly and genuinely nice people were there. i had no clue what i was doing or where i was driving in my obviously rent-a-car, which should have put a massive target on me. instead of being treated like a clueless out of towner, people were eager to help me get around town, invite me places that had things to do, tell me where all the good food spots were, invite me to come hang out with their friends at the bar (both male and female, gay and straight, so i know a lot of it was not just pickup ploys)…and it was all truly laid back. i figured being tshirt weather in late winter had something to do with the general happiness of the city, lol.
you want rude? go to seattle. people there think their shit doesn’t stink, like they’re some kind of grittier, realer, more original west coast version of new york. it is difficult to find people and areas where people are being genuinely nice. i can’t even count how much attitude radiates from seemingly all corners of that city, how quickly random strangers are to snipe off a sideswiping comment to you for absolutely no reason. neutoric city.
portlanders don’t strike me as particularly rude so much as they are…on their own planet. uncouth is a good word for it haha.
anyone saying the food is garbage here either doesn’t know what they are talking about, or has made no effort to find it. which, considering you can just walk into most random places and get good food, implies that you indeed just don’t know what you’re talking about. sorry, but if you can’t find good food here that betrays a dumbfounding cluelessness. i realize pdx is no nyc *rolls eyes* but there’s a reason this city is regarded as the next culinary mecca.
yeah, the foodie attitude can be awfully stinky here. and the food carts are hit and miss (i thought it was weird that one of the examples of the only good food cart in town is on 50th in se, when the one time i went to that truck was the nastiest inedible shit i have ever eaten from a food cart, anywhere) so they can be given a lot of credit where it’s not really due; i think people are simply excited about the concept and how many more options it opens up. i seriously recommend hitting up the grilled cheese grill in laurelhurst, it might just change your mind. awesome sammiches. the pod on belmont (& se 45th i believe?) has consistently good food as well, and i’ve liked every cart i’ve tried on se hawthorne and 9th-10thish.
cat–I’ve lived here for 14 years AND previously worked in hospitality—so it’s neither “lack of effort” or cluelessness. I probably know significantly more about food than you do, sorry. There isn’t “good food if you look for it” here—with a very few exceptions, it’s spin. Much like our status as a “destination city” even though there really isn’t all that much to do.
BTW, we’ve been “the next culinary mecca” for at least 20 years—it’s always been “on the brink” because we aren’t all that. At all. Honestly, while the restaurants are more expensive and the people less friendly, Seattle’s much better in that department.
I can make my own gourmet grilled cheese, thank you.
Born in NYC and just moved to Portland. I just can’t believe this place has hiptards. Why, dude? I left Brooklyn thinking that’s where they all moved to. I get it, they’re all different just like everyone else. You got a sweet tattoo and some tight pants, congratulations – mommy’s proud. What probably bothers me is their flagrant apathy and absolute disregard for common sense. I have close friends who play the part, with their nut squeezing jeans and ridiculous tattoos of trees and turtles and I always say to them, “let it go… be free my child.” I’m no Armani, but a completely recycled style is trash – be original, dress up in styrofoam or something.
People drive here like they’re blindfolded. Why do they have to tailgate? If you’re gonna pass me, pass me, don’t f’ing hover next to me. If I’m letting you go, don’t tell me to go instead, just go. If you’re at a stop sign and there’s traffic at the intersection, B-E Agressive. And I saw a dude drive the wrong way on a freakin highway? I see most of this everyday.
Anyway… I’m not bitter. I came to Oregon for the Cascades, camping and the surf. Compared to Fallujah, Portland isn’t that bad, but maybe I haven’t been here long enough.
What sucks most about Portland are the morons who actually believe this: Occupy portland was about “the financial devastation of the middle class by policies from the era of Reagan to today”
Must be why they spent months occupying government buildings and the pearl district instead of causing the middle class and poor taxpayers to have pay for damage to a public park. Oh wait…
I hate Portland and everything about it. From the constant protests by the people who have no clue what they’re protesting (i.e. Occupy Portland) to the effing elitists who think everything is better cause it’s in Portland. The city is an out of control turd hole with an incompetent mayor and idiots for citizens.
How can you not understand what Occupy Portland is protesting?
How about the financial devastation of the middle class by policies from the era of Reagan to today? Was that really so hard?
Portland has no elitists. Neither does Lake O. Nothing in Oregon qualifies as elite anything. What looks like an elitist is just another native afraid to look another human being in the face lest that human being strike up a conversation.
Horrors!
Oregon elitism is simply abject fear of being social.
a.grey, I think you and I have a LOT in common!!!! Agree completely about the food (and I used to work in hospitality). Probably the best “eat out” we’ve found is a burrito cart on 50th and Division. Otherwise, meh.
BTW, about parenting—1) I am one, so I know that you can raise your kids differently and it’ll be okay. 2) While there are certainly plenty of normal parents, everything I posted comes from the Urban Mamas blog (or the observation of my cousins, who embody every element above).
Good to meet someone who agrees about the “scene”. If you ever DARE to criticize and compare, everyone will whine about what a food snob you are.
Okay, honestly–I think this should be an entire piece of its own….but here goes. What I truly hate most are the uber PC/Wannabe Hippie Parents of Portland and their complete hypocrisy (and conformity)
I live in SE, so I see all of this tons: firstly, they’ve all persuaded themselves what individuals they are. Even though every freakin’ kid I meet seems to be named Zoe, Jake or Maya. But those are “creative” names. Even though they’ve become the equivalent of today’s Jennifer from the 60′s/70′s.
Moving past names, I hate how these same parents get all in a dither about “forcing traditional gender conformity” on their kids, so they dress them in “gender neutral” clothing. And endlessly insisting dolls are bad, Disney’s bad, but organized sports (which emphasize such non-hippie, circa 1950′s values as competitiveness and glorification of the jocktocracy) are good.
Along with sports competitiveness comes this need to push your kid in academics. Hey, I think it’s great for your child to perform well in school—but I also seriously doubt your 5 year old “loves” going to Kumon, year round school or any of the other tiger mom in disguise stuff you’re forcing on them.
Of course if your kid doesn’t enjoy wearing old clothes (not because of finances, but to appear more “earthy”), eating flavorless organic food, only enjoying gender neutral activities, having their lives micromanaged and generally lacking any actual fun—fear not! You can simply determine your kid has a psychiatric disorder and send them to a shrink for their “negativity”.
oh man… i can’t stand pdx-style “parenting”… i actually had a semi-argument with a mother who tried to validate the vegan diet she was forcing on her infant. ugh… if you wanna be a vegan, fine- just don’t force your pretentious dietary restrictions on your kids (or your pets, for that matter)… kids have entirely different dietary needs, and their parents should be charged with child abuse/endangerment.
i couldn’t reply to your reply on my other post about the local’s lack of manners, but i wasn’t necessarily implying that they were purposely rude (most people here are, at the very least, passingly nice), but just lacked basic couth, social graces, and common sense. no wonder drivers here are so bad… they barely know how to walk down the street. maybe it’s all the one-way streets that the city of portland loves to impose on drivers ^_^
and yes, the food here is mediocre at best. food carts, schmood farts… portlanders love to take already existing ideas, blow them all out of proportion and somehow claim them as their own. the worst one i’ve seen is the bbq place on se hawthorne that serves kimchi with a pulled pork bbg sandwich… really? why don’t i just bypass the middleman and stick a finger down my throat; the end result’s the same.
that said, there are a few spots (even a few food carts… gasp!) here that (almost) rival some of the places i haunted in nyc… small oases in a culinary desert.
there are quite a few things i love about this town, but i’ll be damned if people here seem to enjoy doing things in the most convoluted and annoying ways… gotta keep it “weird”, i guess… bleh. gimme “normal” any day.
post script… san fran is awful. i spent two weeks there once visiting friends. gorgeous scenery, but you can have the people… they make portlanders look like royalty in comparison.
is it just me, but are basic manners and couth not taught to the locals here? i’ve NEVER been in a city before where people don’t seem to understand the basic concept of walking down a sidewalk. every other place in america seems to understand that you STAY TO THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE SIDEWALK when walking, not too different that the basic rules of the road, right? not here in portland. i’ve noticed it’s usually more prevalent downtown amongst the more *ahem* white-trashy types who hang downtown & look like they rode the max in from Gresham/82nd/Vantucky to panhandle and score dope and meth. i live right across the river in SE and every day i come downtown, i deal with idiots for whom the basic concept of sidewalk rules are too hard to grasp. they look at you funny like you got in their way.
i swear, pdx has some of the most mannerless people i’ve ever run across… and yes, i’m talking about the natives, the in bred trash from the outer regions. i grew up in the south, and i swear that the white trash up here are more inbred than the breed that exists down south. people like to gloss over the fact that the south and the pacific nw are the two biggest strongholds for the white supremacist movement- remember the skinhead problem back in the 90′s and how bad it was?
maybe it’s the lack of vitamin d… or that their brains are waterlogged from birth from all the rain… or maybe it’s the piss-poor, under-funded education system… or the heroin and meth… or just plain redneck inbreeding. oregon is the alabama of the west coast.
btw… i moved here from nyc. try walking down the left side of the sidewalk there. you’ll learn a real quick lesson in basic manners after you’re forcefully shoved to the proper side.
Okay, seriously, you’re from NYC and you find Portlanders rude? Hey, I hail from New York, as well–and if you want to diss the food here, I’m with you. Ditto that no one seems able to use anything resembling common sense when bus riding. And yeah, they might walk on the “wrong” side of the street (which is less bad manners and more just not knowing any better, since they probably have only just discovered it IS possible to get somewhere by means other than a car).
BUT, New Yorkers are FAR ruder than people here. While there are things I hate here and things I love and still miss there, I couldn’t get over how impolite people were the last time I visited. Plus, if you want to see rude on the West Coast, go to San Francisco. Just appalling.
You are absolutely correct. Portlanders, perhaps it is all NorthWesterners, are cold and often outright mean. They are polite only the very surface but are venal just underneath.
I chalk it up to the subsistence existence of Portland natives and the abject fear it breeds. They have only ever scraped together a meager living from the land and that living has largely gone. Portlanders are deathly afraid of outsiders or of anything new. They may go for something derivative but never anything that is actually new.
When I meet a new person in Portland I try and find out if they are a native or have lived here a long time. If they have I immediately dismiss them…waste of time. I much prefer to spend all of my social (and business) time with transplants.
I recommend this process to all other transplants. Do not waste your time even talking to natives as they will never add to your enjoyment of life or your prosperity. It sounds HARSH but Portland is HARSH.
Portland sucks. I love how they are hippies and California started that stuff. But they hate Californians. LOL. They wish they were Californians, deep down. You guys can lie to yourselves about the weather if you want. I’d rather be broke in year round sun, than be rich under a nuclear holocaust sky.
California will ALWAYS be better than Portland. But you all can lie to yourself if you want.
The problem with the hippies is you’d think they were all about peace, love and acceptance. But the truth is, if you don’t believe what they believe, you are looked down upon. Does that sound like liberals? Or conservatives? Exactly. If you aren’t green and try to save the planet, you are an idiot. I hope these people get a life, rather than waste it on a false reality. Did you know that some volcano (forget where it is) spews out more CO2 in one day than the history of the human race has put in the atmosphere?
People are delusional and like to feel like they are “saving the world” and that they are “better” than another person if they aren’t enviornmental freaks. It’s a joke really. Not very nice, if you ask me. Californian’s are more accepting of different races, cultures and the way you look. Believe what you want, but you wish you were Californian’s.
Enjoy the year round winter, while I enjoy the year round summer. lol, portland sucks. I was there for a week and never saw a pretty girl and I never saw the sun. Have fun with all that. You can have your micro brews (i’ll take budweiser, same result-drunk).
For everyone that bitches about Portland…I would like to make you aware of a hell hole you might not have heard about. Its called Fargo, North Dakota. For every negative comment you make about Portland, think about that fact that you could be living there instead…
I’d have to pretty much agree…gonna write my own little thingy about it tho…at this point looking for friends among other disaffecteds sounds like the best bet!
Instead of whining about all of things that bother you about Portland why not try to make it better, its easy to sit on your ass and complain about how all the bums bother you and how there are drugs everywhere…etc. Why not get up and love on all these people, they have been broken down in life, so lets love on them and make them great so that in return they will help make Portland better, and i know that i cant be one to talk, i don’t help nearly as much as i should, but at least trying to do something is better than complaining when we have the power to change it.
wow, portland so quaint. hip newcomers did a good job of hiding the fact that pdx was recently a white trash skinhead town. where did they all go? the suburbs? wich are huge and gross and dwarf portland. pat yerselves on the back because some trustfund bearing white kids transformed a few square miles into some kind of vegan-emo theme park…its like a yuppie training camp…it should appeal to me, its almost like pdx is marketed towards people like me, but i cant stand it there…life doesnt seem authentic there. im happier farther away in the deep south, new orleans, austin, athens, savannah…harder to be vegan, etc. but the people have culture/traditions, foodways and folkways, plus whatever you have to throw in the gumbo pot. when all the fads wear away, what does portland have then? oh, the mountains and coast, not bad…shallow people…fine outdoors…
oh…people…
you’re bitching about Portland…try to live in Boise,ID…
To appreciate something you need to lose it first…
Portland is great because you have a choice here: you can be either a hipster or sophisticated intellectual, or LO mom… You can be all of that at once, you can be whatever you want.
I moved away from Portland five years ago. I have found that since I act like a Portlander, nobody likes me, and I have no friends. I had tons of friends in Portland! I am lonely and am moving back to where people are normal.
When I was looking for a change of scenery, a friend who has lived in PDX for a decade said, “come here, you’ll love it”. When I got here, all she did was say how much it sucks and how she can’t wait to move back to Texas.
What have I done? I feel the mistake and it burns. People are friendly until I tell them I moved from Texas, then they treat me like crap. Weird doesn’t so much describe Portland as disillusioned does.
Hey, since you’ve commented on Tigard and Lake O, why not Vantucky??? I spent the past 6 months working up there and GOD!!!! All the things we diss Portland over (dirty, drugs, white trash poverty) are there only 12 billion times more prevalent, afflicting a far larger portion of their meth-addled population.
Plus even though their businesses are failing, unemployment is painfully high and median incomes are lower, all those idiots happily vote against their own interests and support the puggies. And yes, houses are cheaper, but shouldn’t they be???
As for “but they have better schools than Portland” (the one argument I always hear), I taught at a tech school there. Their supposedly superior system gave rise to students who could barely handle 6/7 grade math, slept in class (and felt fully entitled to do so) and expected to be spoon fed all the test answers. I’m sure everyone did score well on standardized tests, since clearly their teachers gave them all the answers in advance.
We routinely pick on Gresham, but Vantucky is REALLY where that scary Barbie is from!
I don’t know – I grew up in Seattle and have lived in San Francisco, Austin, Washington DC, Amsterdam and Tokyo – in large cities most of my life. Since we moved to Vancouver, I’ve noticed that Portlanders regard Vancouver like many Americans regard Mexico – you look down on us but couldn’t live without us. We’re your steam vent – thousands of former Portlanders who grew disgruntled with Ptld (or who are priced out of it) move here. In fact, we help you keep the hip image by absorbing your unhip elements.
When not at work I’m a musician and writer, and have found plenty of creative collaborators up here. I try not to spread this around, though – we might become overcrowded and smug.
Yes, Ms. G, much better to remain a small, red neck ghetto. BTW, I’m not quite sure why PDX “needs” Vantucky, anyway—Gresham, East County, hell even parts of Tigard and Beaverton could easily perform Vancouver’s butt-boy duties. In fact they kinda already do.
Or Salem’s just an hour away and all but the same thing, anyway.
If only more people would STOP coming to Portland, Portland would actually be a better place for the people who are stuck here. Stop coming here with your BA and your Masters while working on your PHD. You won’t find a job outside of a coffee shop. Stop flooding the Portland job market with your degrees, I’m sick of it. And if nobody listens to this advice, or the countless other advice about a hyper-educated high unemployment rates of this town, I hope you suffer a truly miserable time. I hope the rain makes you sick. I hope you can’t afford MAX fair so you think you can sneak a little past the “Free Rail Zone” then get smacked with a $250 fine. In short, everyone from California who has moved here in the past 5 years seeking “a better life” have you found it? Probably not. Go home. Thanks!
It’s not that Portland is weird; it’s that the natives are socially inept: passively aggressive, paranoid, jealous, ungrateful and lack consideration of social queues taken for granted elsewhere. Sure, people here are friendly and nice, um, to your face. They don’t want to get to know you; they want to know your dirt. Being the small town that it is, newcomers should expect to be gossiped about and judged behind their back. That’s what I find strange, not the progressiveness or dog-friendliness. Lots of white people too. All the black and latino folks are tucked away on the east side and No-Po. I’ve heard the “N” word spoken here more than anywhere else. Geography and proximity to great adventures is wonderful. Good for active lifestyle.
Quoting from Paul Riddell on facebook:
Q: Hipster A is bicycling down NE Alberta in a clown suit while balancing a five-gallon jug of organic vinegar at a speed of 15 miles per hour. Hipster B is bicycling down Alberta buck naked while balancing a five-gallon jug of spring water at 17 miles per hour. When they run into each other because each thought the other should move out of his way because he’s way more important, what sound will the colliding jugs make?
A: “DOUCHE!”
This so perfectly true of Portland. This actually happened to me – but it was walking, me on the right side of a sidewalk, she on her left steaming toward me. This woman slammed into me and kept going. I turned, caught up to her and asked, essentially, “wtf?” She had this psychotic smile and wouldn’t acknowledge me so I bumped her back. Then she was like, “Oh help, help! That man! Oooph.”
How about the people moving here from the midwest and the south? Oh are they ok because they lack education? Why don’t you get an education and move the fuck away?
Love the blog – my boyfriend is in law school in New Orleans (where we live) and was looking for jobs in Portland. This blog effectively helped me to convince him to look elsewhere. Thanks so much!
I love this blog. Even the entries I don’t quite understand the anger behind because I don’t live in Portland are still interesting and entertaining. And my goodness, Lars has a lot of racist/bigoted followers. No shock there, though.
Will I’m pretty sure you’re NOT originally from the East Coat (let alone NYC, which, as I already stated, I am) and you also need some serious anger management therapy.
I know you’re not a New Yorker because you love cars and driving. Many REAL New Yorkers never learn to drive (again, I’m one of them) and rely solely on public transportation (or bike, it’s quite popular therw, too). We also regard Boston OR Philly (a cesspool, except for the Mainline) as vastly, even laughably inferior.
While I agree that the food here is lacking (the entire point of my post, BTW)—Portland has and does have arep as a food town. It just doesn’t live up to the hype.
As for your attack on all us “libruls”, every city you mentioned (except maybe Dallas) is just as progressive, if not more so. I can’t think of asingle Mis-Atlantic city that doesn’t invariably vote blue.
I’ve also been panhandled many, many times by white people in NYC—and what difference does it make what skin color someone has, anyway? It would seem by your infinitely ignorant posts your NY knowledge has been gleaned from a tourism pamphlets and your “visit” was a layover at JFK.
One fnal note: NYC has a lower minimum wage than Portland does, there are many, many poor people there. Just it hurts even more. And no, I wasn’t one of them.
Oh I forgot, San Francisco is another notable city to check out where you would be hard pushed to find a yokel or redneck (unlike Stumptown where you’re likely to run into one on virtually every block).
If you have to be in the midwest then really Chicago’s your only real option if you want any kind of sophistication and worldliness, otherwise it too is a cultural wilderness much like the rest of Oregon.
Sorry to be harsh on little Portland but the truth can sometimes hurt, and I’m only telling it as I see it. I’ve travelled the world and it has to be said that the USA is a vast country physically but lacks any real substance, it is a moral and cultural void (with the exception of the three cities I mentioned) and PDX is just a reflection of the larger picture.
Anouska, I’ll agree that NYC is far more sophsiticated (for what it’s worth) and I’ll never understand HOW we acquired our reputation as a food town (our restaurants really, really SUCK). And yes, people here are a bit provincial and xenophobic (though as a former New Yorker, there’s plenty of that in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island, too!)….BUT I have to disagree with your post after that.
SF, NYC and Chicago are filthy cities full of painfully rude people. And plenty of those cities’ inhabitants are far stinkier than the faux hippies here. I actually don’t even notice THAT many hippies here (and I live in SE)—everyone I see is either painfully suburban mall or dressed to go camping (permanently).
While I’ll agree neither of these are sartorial efforts I seek to emulate, they are, at least clean.
And while, no it isn’t nirvana here (nor is it anywhere) and we could certainly use some more entertainment (that isn’t stupid soccer and stadiums built with urban renewal funds/our $$$$ for the next 1,0000 years)—it’s a perfectly pleasant life. And (contrary to what everyone’s convinced themselves) for a coastal city, an affordable one.
Zumpie: Portland doesn’t HAVE a reputation for anything, let alone food. Your thinking of NYC – a great town full of great people and the best food. If you’re broke they will chew you up and spit you out though. Just how it should be.
Portland is a quaint, pretty little city. Some interesting architecture and nice greenery. It is, however, full of grubby hippies full of their own self-importance and bitter about their miserable social standing. I’ve never seen a city packed with so many unsophisticated, provincial yokels who believe that they are learned, hip and oh so well informed.
The only city in this God forsaken country even worth checking out is NYC. It is, at least, packed with culture, diversity and people who look as if they shower on a daily basis. New Yorkers might be perceived as rude and unfriendly but you know where you stand with them, they are authentic. The majority of Portlanders are passive aggressive, spacey and fake. The stinking hippies aren’t about peace and love, even though those are the virtues they apparently expound. They’re more interested in getting stoned or drunk, living in squalor and bitching about people with money. God, I hate this shithole… can’t wait to leave the cesspit of humanity that is PDX.
i’m a native of portland; born here and lived here all my life. i’m also not of drinking age, so i can’t write about that. but i do want to respond to some stuff i’ve been seeing pop up here.
1. the people: i’ve never had trouble getting to know people in this city. personally, i think it’s a lot friendlier than seattle or new york. what i’ve found is everyone will talk to you if you’re happy and they’re happy too. but not everyone is going to be your best friend all at once, and very few people are going to want to jump into your life upon the first meeting. but people are nice in general; that’s been my experience.
2. the fashion/lack thereof: portland is not a fashion mecca. neither, for that matter, is new york, paris, or london. in every city you’re going to find impeccably dressed people, cutting-edge fashionable people (which could fall under the next category of), people who simply don’t care and wear weird clothing, and people who should be wearing a little more. that’s just the way life is. if a city’s advertised as fashionable it’s because there’s a certain segment of people who are indeed classy and show it off and some newspaper/blogger/travel mag took note. that’s really it.
3. things to do: if you can’t find it, you’re looking in the wrong places. portland’s got theatre, art, music (we have a fantastic underground scene), bike trails, bookstores, interesting stores, etc etc and so forth. there is something to do in the city, you just need to look for it.
in fact, i think that can apply to a lot of things about portland (and perhaps cities in general). if you want to do something, you need to seek it out. people are not going to walk up to you and ask to be your friend; you are not going to get fliers in the mail telling you about all the goings-on in town (unless you’re on the mailing list of 1840918 businesses and organizations…). you have to look for it, but what’s there is absolutely amazing.
so yeah. some things suck, but it’s not like other cities don’t suck, either.
Alright, since this appears to be the catch-all post for random comments, I’ll spew my blarg here.
I’m tired of Portlanders and Oregonians in general bitching about Californians coming to town and screwing everything, from housing prices to traffic, right the hell up. First of all, the population is expanding everywhere – you’re not just going to make it go away with passive-aggressive comments on the internet. Do you wanna know why so many of us want to flee California? Because everyone else, from everywhere else, is coming HERE! And for the record, I’ve never heard anyone in California bitch about “those a-holes from Michigan.”
So why do Californians come to Portland? Is the real estate investment? Not likely… UGB and zoning laws put a nix on a lot of those McMansion plans. Is it the jobs or the weather? LOL! It sure as hell ain’t the hospitable attitude, as you’ve all made it abundantly clear what you think of us. No, what drives MANY Californians to your fare city is that they actually like the city! They don’t want to live somewhere “exactly like where they came from”… they want to live somewhere exactly like Portland. That’s as good as it gets folks. You don’t get a better kind of immigrant than that, and if you still have a problem with it, well it’s your problem, not ours.
I realize I’m making generalizations, but you need to understand that more people than you think are coming to Portland because they WANT to. The love it’s old neighborhoods, it’s funky neighborhoods, it’s trendy neighborhoods. They like it’s “weirdness”. (They probably don’t like the stinky hippies or the hipsters… that’s universal in its douchiness. Sorry.) So try not to be so reflexive when you here the word “California”, and we’ll try extra hard not to drive like a-holes when it’s raining.
Great link to the article about the Seattle Freeze. Yes, Portland is ice cold and not just to people, it is ice cold to businesses as well. This is why Oregon always has such a high unemployment rate and so few people in such a geographically large state.
I believe that both states suffer from the same cultural affliction. Natives of both states fled from populated areas to live alone in the woods. Those cultural tendencies have been passed down to the current population. These people do not mix well with others including each other.
Tree hugging is real except that it isn’t about the environment, people in Portland commune with trees because they can’t deal with other people including each other. That’s a pretty sad thing to say about people but it is true nonetheless.
I think the other cause of the deep freeze is that, at least in Oregon, natives have absolutely nothing interesting going on. There is nothing to do. Part of their lack of sociability is embarrassment that they have lived in the area their entire lives and haven’t found anything interesting to do.
Most Oregonians, I have found, do not travel far from where they started off as kids. They do not have any interest in other places, even as close as twenty miles away, and they have some deep seated fear of other people. I find Oregonians to be culturally very similar to people in the Deep South or Appalachia. I suspect their ancestors came from similar places.
It is best to ignore all native Oregonians whenever possible. Unfortunately, they populate the government so you have to deal with their listless, uninterested and often rude mentality every now and again but there is no reason to try and make friends with them. There are enough ‘outsiders’ from other places unless you need tons of friends.
Oregonians are tolerable in small doses but there is no reason to invite them into your home. I have done business with the natives and will not make that same mistake twice either.
A word to the wise, treat Oregonians as an alien species. Tolerable, sometimes an interesting curiosity but nothing to let into your circle.
If we’re so terrible, leave. Oregon is Oregon because of us, not because of those that started moving here in the last fifteen years. We made the cool neighborhoods, the organic farms, preserved the natural resources everyone raves about, and we love it. I feel bad for you and your closed mind. As a native Oregonian I have traveled the world and seen much of what it has to offer and the people here have always been kind to me and those I am with. Maybe your trouble with us natives is that you have been such a rude human that they don’t want to deal with you.
There is nothing to do in the entire Portland area. Just how many times can you look at another tree?
Yes you can bike around the place but you risk getting hit by a car since there are so few separated bike lanes. Since it rains almost all year long (1000 hours a year, more than any other city in the country) you can only bike for about a month a year without wearing a raincoat.
Who wants to bike wearing a raincoat? Why aren’t there bike lanes separated by, you know, cement from, you know, the army of gas guzzling SUVs? There is always a report about some cyclist getting hit by a car. It isn’t a fair fight. The cyclist almost always dies.
Portland has NOTHING to do. NOTHING. There are some restaurants but they have all gone downhill in the last few decades. The well known ones have gloppy food. Too many ingredients in the dishes resulting in gloppy, brownish food.
I tell you, look at the Mayor of Portland. He NEVER smiles. He always looks ANGRY. If that is the visage of the Mayor of Portland, doesn’t that tell you everything? Portland is depressing.
Even with all of this, Portland is 1,000 times the city that Tigard is. Tigard is just gross. Tigard city government is useless. Tigard people are worthless.
In comparison to Tigard, Portland looks like Nirvana. Funny how that works.
Well having tried to make a go of it for 4 years here I certainly understand the comments. Jengee who married a 4th gen PDXer said ‘problem with people bitching about Portland is they didn’t grow up here and they just want it to be like where they came from’. Nope, you’re wrong about that. Your take is clouded by having married someone with an ‘in’. If you don’t have an ‘in’ you are OUT. People are friendly here, but forget personal relationships. Not happening.
See this http://tinyurl.com/pooey2
This is a great article. I’m going through the Portland freeze myself. I haven’t quite overcome it, even though I’m native!
6. Your shitty mass transit system. Hi, I’m the max, a retarded above ground train system that goes 10 mph through the city of Portland. Explain to me how it couldn’t go underground, you know, like how REAL CITIES do their mass transit.
7. Beer snobs. Wow, you have microbrews, good for you. Guess what, I can buy a European beer just as good as your shitty microbrew for just as much money. Just cause you made it doesn’t make it good.
8. Lack of fashion. Yes I said it, The women here dress like fucking slobs. Do they give a shit about how they look? You all look like you’re ready to go hiking rather then dress like a woman. It’s fucking gross.Go to NYC, then you’ll see how women should dress. It’s ok to show some skin and be proud you have tits and an ass. Rain Jackets are not the only option.
Holy shit, you’re a fucking idiot. I agree with a lot of what people are saying here but…
1. Most cities do not have underground transport. Fuck off back to New York, or better yet, try London. London is so awesome. Really, you’d love it.
2. The beer here is good. Better than 99% of what I drank in the UK and the rest of Europe.
3. Go back to New York. Portland, as far as how people dress daily, is on par with most European cities. But if you really want women stumbling around in barely there coverage in 30 degree weather, go to the UK. Then get glassed by their drunken Chav boyfriends. Or! Try Italy, and get glassed by their drunken Italian boyfriends. Or Spain… you get the idea.
Nope. That peson was right. You are fucked and wrong. I love this:
8. Lack of fashion. Yes I said it, The women here dress like fucking slobs. Do they give a shit about how they look? You all look like you’re ready to go hiking rather then dress like a woman. It’s fucking gross.Go to NYC, then you’ll see how women should dress. It’s ok to show some skin and be proud you have tits and an ass. Rain Jackets are not the only option.
It’s true. If you had ever been to NYC you would know that the dirty, homeless lesbian look is not IN there. I have been to Austria, Germany, France and England this year. It’s not big there either. There is nothing good, unique or European about the fashions of Portland. Everyone here is too broke or stupid to catch on to any trends anyway. Seattle does a much better job. But hey, the rest of the world has actually HEARD of Seattle. Not Portland. Go back to your farm and stop thinking you are hot shit because you live in the largest city in Oregon. It’s kinda like being the biggest turd in a toilet.
Well…All interesting posts. I’d have to say I love this website because I like to laugh at things that are annoying. I am one of those migrators who read books, articles, and blog posts of how grand everything is in Portland and after reading this site and living here for 2 years I’ve come to realize two things …
1) Portland is awesome. There is so much stuff to do. Yes it takes what seems to be an exhausting effort to do anything (Ever got up at 5am to hit the chair lift by 9 at Meadows?) but, at least its here. There is an amazing mix of city/outdoor life here, but that comes at the sacrifice of time and money spent. I’d lived in places where I had outdoor fun at my finger tips (literally a 5 minute drive on some obscure dirt road and I was all alone in the wilderness. That happens when you grow up in a mountain town of 1400 people). I’ve also lived in exciting cities with great restaraunts, bars, concerts, and loads of entertainment. Yet, I’ve never lived somewhere that mixes the two. I believe Portland does a great job of that.
2) People here are difficult. Clique-ish so hits the nail on the head. It’s ridiculous. I totally agree that people here are friendly but, on an extremely shallow level. Ask them if they’d like to carpool to the mountain on the weekend or get a beer while taking in a big sports event and … “My GOD, did I just insult this person? Why are they looking at me as if my upper lip dawns a puss-oozing herpe? I just simply asked if they’d want to hang out.”
I’m an extremely sociable person and love to be around people. I understand that not everyone is going to be my friend and, I too dislike a considerable amount of people (Hipsters, neo-con Meatheads, and Yuppies…to name a few) but, I have never been in a place where it is sooo hard to meet people.
For example, I walk my dog on average 5 times a day (he’s small..got a weak bladder). I have gotten to know what my neighboors look like on my walks. I could match each one of my block-mates’ face to their corresponding house. But, I don’t know anyones name. I have waved, smiled, struck up rehtorical conversation with just about everyone on my block but, as soon as we’re done exchanging pleasantries, they seem to retreat quicker than my own weazel in ice water.
Ok, so I have been reading all the hate about portland, and all the bitching. Its seriously the most pathetic shit in the world. Who the fuck cares. Some of us are from places that are literally a shit hole. Example: Ohio. FUCK OHIO. I haven’t been anywhere in the US besides Portland that i like better. I’ve been everywhere too. New York is way to fucking overrated. rich snobby assholes that have no consideration for anyone. so is LA and Chicago. Mostly everyone from these places are so fucking rude. Nobody gives a shit about anyone. Its all about fucking money. FUCK money. I chose to move here because i want to live happy. Portland is a place where you can ride your damn bicycle to wherever safely. yes the car traffic sucks, thats why you ride a bicycle and learn patience my young padawin. This place is just more friendlier than other places. yes there can be your typical asshole once in a while but the majority of the people here are pretty nice. i hate the suburbs, but who doesnt hate the suburbs around any city. there all the fucking same. yea there are your hipsters, so what, big fucking deal. Get the fuck over it. you cant make them leave, if they like it here then they like it here. learn to share this place with all kinds of people. stop being such a dumb ass and shut the fuck up. if you hate it here, pack up your shit and move the fuck away from here. we don’t need people here who are going to complain about life and how dirty you think it is here and how the transit sucks. who gives a shit. if you think it is dirty here, fucking visit new york, la, chicago, toledo, detroit, columbus, st. louis, kansas city, orlando, cleveland and hundreds of other places. how many cities are the bicycle capital of the United states? how many cities have trees in there city(alot of trees). how many cities have extremely beautiful scenery so close, such as the oregon coast, the gorge, mt hood. there is so much shit you can do here. and if you bitch about the rain, stop being a fucking pussy. its just water. thats why its so green here all year round. if you get depressed over the rain, please just leave. if you wanna see the sun. climb to the summit of any mountain around here. do realize humans only need little sun? and humans are mostly made of water. oh shit. ohhhh. ok well im done about this shit cuz its just retarded. so basically here is my advice to you.. you have choices since you are in america you know. 1 if you hate rain and get depressed over it please get the fuck outta here. 2 if you hate bicyclists get the fuck outta here. move to the fucking midwest you fat ass lazy fucker you needs a car in order to live happy and survive so you can drive to your walmart late at nite and buy all the fucking ice cream you want so you can fucking gain an ass load of weight that way you can buy a bigger car and get the handicapped spots because you need a fucking scooter to maneuver yourself around walmart. oh yeah. and 24hr fitness. you seriously wanna waste your money with that shit. get the fuck out from under the fucking shelter from the rain and go run that shit off, or ride your bike, if you know how to ride one. 24hr fitness… if you like to be a little hefty. be hefty. im not hating people who are fat. im just sick of people who are lazy and complain but dont do shit about it. instead of wasting your time with buying shit how about you give that money up for people who need that have no house to live in and feed them. half of these people probably arnt even from here. they come from other places because somehow they heard that in portland there are people who like to give and feed people and talk with them. i cant believe some of you people can think they are just smelly good for nothing people. alot of them yes are going through rough times with drugs and shit like that. and some lose there jobs because of this good for nothing fucking economy. do you realize if each and everyone american gave up one dollar, it would fucking end world hunger. you know some of these people have no place to go, no one to love them, nobody that even realize they even exist. everyone deserves second chances. this is rediculous, and this fucker whoever made up this fucking website has nothing better to do than hate on a city. a city, a pink building. who gives a shit, its a fucking pink building. if you care about nice buildings go to hong kong or dubai. somewhere far away from here please. 3 i heard something about success in this website. what is success? money? fame? your stupid little career? how big house your is? how nice your car is? success is a joke. its all about those material things. please if you drive a hummer. join the army so you can drive your damn hummer right into a fuckin landmine. thats why people here drive VWs asshole. and vovlvos. you can run the diesels on vegetable oil. guess what that shit grows in ohio, and those people who are running their car dont really have to pay shit for it and it gets you far. you can go drive out east to see the fuckin sun if you want. put 2 and 2 together. it makes since. wake up and smell all the starbucks thats on your corner. that way you can be intelligent and know you dont need alot of money to live and that portland is one of the greatest places ever. why do you think all the other cities are taking after us? think mcfly
No one is taking after Portland. No one cares about portland. Where do you people get this shit? I heard the other day that Portland considers itself to be “the most european city in the U.S.” Oh my god!!!! Apparently most of the people in this town have never been to the east coast: Philly, NYC, Boston: ALL built by EUROPEANS. It looks and feels NOTHING like Portland. This shit hole will always be a big Spokane or a half ass wanna be Seattle and thats all it will ever be. In my personal opinion it actually kind looks like Pittsburgh. But I can say things like that. I’ve actually been outside of the northwest.
jeimuzu: oh shit, I actually just took the time to read your little rant. You really like bikes huh?! I do like biking too. But driving is fun also, especially if you have a license. I take it that you don’t. Fat people, you fucking HATE THEM! WOW. Yeah, me too. Especially on airplanes. Not gonna argue with ya on that one. Here’s my big problem with everything you said: YOU ARE A HATER. A hater? Definition: Wants what he/she can’t have. Is mad it people that have what he/she will never have (is too lazy to work for what they REALLY want). I find that this is most of Portland. I hear people in this town bitching because Seattle is tying to be like Portland. NO. It isn’t. Seattle could give a shit. The rest of the world could also give shit.
jeimuzu: you were born and raised here. You have never spent more that a year ANYWHERE else. This is why you feel this way and this is why you will alway hate what you don’t understand and it is also why you hate people that have what you think you don’t wont. Portland: the only city where it’s cool to be a homeless WHITE guy that stands on the freeway onramp with a sign – the only city where I can stand ANYWHERE in the downtown area, smoking a cig, and know that I will be hit up for one at LEAST 5 times before I can finnish it, ALL BY WHITE PEOPLE!!!!! INSANE!!!
Fuck all you lazy, ignorant, hippy, liberal, Obama loving, knock kneed, bucktooth, smug ass, ugly, bearded, freak ass, sacks of shit! No one outside of Portland likes Portland and most of this world has never HEARD of Portland. They all think your Laking about Portland, Maine- a far better town. Yep town. Neither Portland is an actual city. These are actual cities:
L.A., New York, Chicago, Seattle, Miami, New Orleans, Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Um, that pretty much does it. Fuck you and die.
Well having tried to make a go of it for 4 years here I certainly understand the comments. Jengee who married a 4th gen PDXer said ‘problem with people bitching about Portland is they didn’t grow up here and they just want it to be like where they came from’. Nope, you’re wrong about that. Your take is clouded by having married someone with an ‘in’. If you don’t have an ‘in’ you are OUT. People are friendly here, but forget personal relationships. Not happening.
See this http://tinyurl.com/pooey2
Another bad habit of these natives, is their PDX version of live and let live. It should read ‘you can do whatever the f*ck you want, because I’m going to do whatever the f*ck I want, even if it means you can’t sleep’ Don’t dare ask a native to turn down a stereo or be considerate, those are fighting words. Passive aggression RULES this town. The overly kid friendly nature of Portland is VERY annoying, I’ve not seen a city with so many self indulgent parents. It is a sickness.
Here is a tip if you just located here. If you are trying to find a job, play down any excellent experience. Do not come off as professional. It may be best to feign a drooling problem, get a temporary tattoo, grow a second ass, don’t make eye contact, say you are in a band, talk about skate/snow boarding (if the 2nd ass doesn’t work out), and finally you MUST change your resume to say you went to the U of OR. They won’t check, they are too farking stupid. Speaking of stupid, no place has more left lane bandits, Erick is right about that, but wrong about food. OR foodstuffs esp during market season, it is one of the best in the US. Maybe it would help if you cook. The lack of rest choice has a lot to do with lack of ethnic diversity. Did all the natives come from Wisconsin ? One other odd thing is how many cases of men with underage girls there are, well I guess with the Mayor it is just younguns. The hair trigger the cops have is indeed very worrying, it must be the passive aggressive thing.
I do have empathy for the any gay guy that looks gay. I think saw one in four years. Bears. And they are pretty grizzly. There are even Lesbian bears in Portland, lots of them. Where else can you live and not have people barf when they see your 3 foot long mole hair braid ?
I still like Portland of course, but c’mon, you have to have known about the weather bit, are you completely ignorant ? The weather is not as bad as Seattle. Subaru Outbacks at least allow view of the traffic ahead unlike big ass SUVs you’ll find in Austin, Texass. Did you visit Portland first ? One visit would tell you how white it is. One nice thing is that white and blacks live together (for the most part) in NE, which is rare in most other cities. Fashion ? It is the pacific nw, what do expect ? For it to change ? My first week here I went to the symphony, 3 people in pajamas. Its just the way it is. You want style ? a 100sq ft apt awaits you in NYC.
I found that avoiding SE meant I didn’t have to endure sharing airspace with hippies and other self focused types. Moving from the close quarters NE to SW was a transforming experience. At that point, portland became a livable city. Still no one wanted to be friends.
So if you have a source income independent of Oregon, like the outdoors, like good food, perfect summers, don’t mind the gray, don’t need friends and want to live somewhere that at least is interesting, this may be the place.
A lot of you guys kinda sound like you’re here against your will. I’ll admit when I first moved here 15 years ago, I had a lot of the same complaints. It seemed like there were a lot of hippies and holier than thou attitude. The reason I did move here though was that it was a really really long way from Dallas/Austin Texas where I grew up and went to college. Yes, Austin is awesome. So is Portland. If your boyfriend “made” you move here and you hate it- make him move somewhere else. The funny thing I’ve noticed is when I moved here everyone was a drunken music whore just trying to get some. Now everyone seems to have knocked up/been knocked up and there are toddlers everywhere. But that’s because I go to grown up places. All the “kids” I work with in their 20′s don’t have the same complaints I do. My husband is a 4th generation Portlander. Our experiences don’t seem to fall in line with a lot of complaints on here. The only real complaints I have are the “So how’s your day going” question which is just stupid. I am behind a cash register, you are not. How do you think my day is going? I ring up retards and dipshits all day long. But that’s my choice. I hate people yet I work retail. I have a choice. All of you do. Hey gay guy- go to Ohio or Arkansas and see how well they treat you there. The problem with people bitching about Portland is they didn’t grow up here and they just want it to be like where they came from. If you don’t like a place, a job, a relationship you leave. Period. I believe the point of this website is to vent about the relatively benign annoyances of a city that you basically love. Having a problem with the heart in Oregon stickers? Yeah, I guess it’s really lame to have pride in the place you live. Don’t like smoky bars? They’re done. If you don’t like beer snobs, don’t go to those bars. There are plenty of bars where you can get a cheap beer. Sure we have waaaay too many homeless people and casual bikers who think they’re the norm and believe me I bitch about it daily. But most of you seem to be bitching more about the way the town makes you FEEL than any actual problems.
OK.
Portland sucks cause PORTLANDERS PRETEND IT DOESN’T SUCK! The stats:
-Portland ranks as the 27th most populated city in the US… but the suicide rate -among females- RANKS 4TH IN THE US!
-people happy here are just drunk. They typically won’t say drunken alcoholic: they’re into ‘the new microbrews’ or ‘the vintner scene in willAMMette valley’…
-people here say they’re pro-cycling then: bike w/o helmets, ride drunk & flout vehicular laws (til they’re hit and sue an auto driver).
-people here pretend to support environmental conservation yet maintain one of the worst recycling rates in the US: until this year they smoked in your face while eating, and they drive EVERYWHERE-not on streets but ON FREEWAYS, GENERATING TWICE THE LEVEL OF SMOG OUTPUT compared to driving at speeds of 50 mpg or less.
I lived in nyc my whole life -and traveled the world. i’m pretty confident that PDX has meaner, dumber, unfunner people than anywhere!
The “Snow” a.k.a. “The Great Storm Of _INSERT YEAR HERE_”
The “pathetic one to three inches” of snow we received this week closed the damn airport. Do you realize how important it is for my damned sister in law (that I live with) to leave this city is for the holidays? I need her to leave or I’m going to strangle her. I’m serious. Call the police and report me, because I swear to whatever may be holy that if she doesn’t leave me be for a couple of weeks I need to be arrested.
My bliss was delayed because nobody, NATIVE OR OTHERWISE, knows how to deal with “OMFGZ SNOW HELL FROM ABOVE!! WE’RE DOOMED!!!” in this city.
I hate this place.No one wants to make friends.They go out with all their friends in a group.People take their dogs everywhere,dogs belong in the park or in the backyard.Its so Gloomy,Rain,Hippie,Alternative people,Naked bike riding.Do Not Come Here.Oregon Sucks.
I’m glad to find this site, I hate Portland as well. I’ll give credit where credit is due. Portland has some really cool restaurants, coffeehouses, etc. I’ve lived all over the U.S. and in Japan. Portland has one of the most vibrant, alive, heppening downtowns I’ve seen. It’s also really cool to be in a very liberal city, one of the few places I’ve lived where I’ve never ever felt weird, threatened or intimidated because I’m gay(and by gay, I mean, obviously gay.)
I was feeling stuck here too due to a good job and a chance to do some creative arts things I’ve been wanting to do, but recently, I came into a small family inheritance and next year I am outta here.
I’m moving back to Austin, which is about ten times cooler than Portland. Here’s why:
1. People. People in the NW suck. They are rude, snotty and clique-ish. They don’t want to make new friends. If you try to smile and be friendly with them, they treat you like you are trying to get something out of them. Everyone is way too serious and pc, with a giant vegan stick up their butt. Everyone is trying so hard to be cool and prove to themselves that they live in a super cool city.
It’s all over the area. A friend of mine moved to Bellingham, WA, for a job and experienced the exact same thing. She was miserable and couldn’t make any friends. After a year and a half of misery, she moved to Denver, where she is really happy.
Austin, by contrast, has very friendly people. They are happy to meet you and want to hear all about you. They will invite you to have lunch with them or come to their next party. People in Austin just want to have fun. A friend of mine in Portland recently visited a friend of mine in Austin. She was blown away by the people. She mentioned that the people in Austin seem a little chubbier. My friend and I were like, hell yeah, they aren’t living on sushi and soy lattes and an occasional microbrew like Portland losers. People in Austin enjoy their nachos and ribs and margaritas. They stay out late and have a good time. They enjoy life.
2. The demographics. Portland is one of the youngest towns I’ve ever lived in, which is great if you’re in your twenties or thirties. Not so great if you are in your forties like me. In Austin, I could go to bars, coffeehouses, etc, where there were a mix of ages. I live in inner Portland and I go to so many places where it seems like everyone is 25. Strange.
3. The damn kids and dogs. I hate kids, I don’t want kids in my face 24/7. People here take their freaking kids everywhere and then don’t discipline them because they don’t want to stifle their
“expression” and they want to be cool parents. I can’t walk down the damn street without running into fifteen million strollers or parents with kids. In Austin, people keep their kids home at lot more. And their dogs. I love pets, but I want to meet your pet in your home or your yard, not at Hollywood video or god forbid, a restaurant, or coffeehouse. They’re supposed to be abiding by the state health dept rules. This usually means: no animals. Not everyone thinks your kid or pet is cute. If they give you “that look” it is because you are annoying them.
4. The weather. 9 months of gloom, doom, mold and wetness. Ugh. It makes me want to slit a wrist. Austin has 300 days per year of sunshine. Yes, it is hotter than hell for about three months out of the year and warm/sticky for much of the rest, but it’s better than gray and dreary. And in Austin, you can get out of your air conditioned car and go into your air conditioned apartment that has central air. Something else Portland doesn’t have.
I could go on: the over hyped, overly expensive transit system, the ugly industrial condos, etc. Go to hell, Portland.
damn. if I knew there were so many people who hated hipsters, the shitty moldy nasty weather, outbacks, pearl people, gentrification and the lack of diversity in this place I might have found a reason to stay. I have not met a single person who agrees with me on any of those points, they either don’t notice or don’t respond at all.. there’s another negative for you, people who have their heads so far up their own ass or so deep in some stupid hip scene they don’t even know where they are.
1. The 9-10 months of rain
2. The fact you fucking Oregon idiots always say “Our summer are so great!!” yea they are but guess what, it’s 2-3 months before it all turns to shit again you fucking idiots
3. LEARN TO FUCKING DRIVE. Left lane = fast, that means if you intend to drive the speed limit move the FUCK OVER.
4. No pro sports. Ok you have the Trailblazers, who have sucked for how long? Ducks vs. Beavers is amateur sports. Who gives a shit, seriously.
5. Lack of good food. No, you don’t have good food. Go to NY, you can find a better restaurant in a block for far less cheap then Portland. I don’t want gouda on my fucking pizza, give me a plain slice of tasty pizza, but you dumb fucking hippies can even pull that off.
6. Your shitty mass transit system. Hi, I’m the max, a retarded above ground train system that goes 10 mph through the city of Portland. Explain to me how it couldn’t go underground, you know, like how REAL CITIES do their mass transit.
7. Beer snobs. Wow, you have microbrews, good for you. Guess what, I can buy a European beer just as good as your shitty microbrew for just as much money. Just cause you made it doesn’t make it good.
8. Lack of fashion. Yes I said it, The women here dress like fucking slobs. Do they give a shit about how they look? You all look like you’re ready to go hiking rather then dress like a woman. It’s fucking gross.Go to NYC, then you’ll see how women should dress. It’s ok to show some skin and be proud you have tits and an ass. Rain Jackets are not the only option.
9. Nosy/Friendly people. No, I don’t give a shit about the weather, I don’t care about your weekend, I don’t want to tell you about mine, just move along with your business.
10. No Dunkin Donuts. Honestly. I don’t want to pay 5 bucks for your shitty latte. I want a wonderful 2.00 x-large coffee, plain. No heart shaped things in my coffee, no “organic” milk, give me my fucking normal coffee, for cheap.
11. “Oregonians” you’re all fucking brainwashed, get out some, you’ll see there are far better places then Portland. Just drive 3 hours north, Seattle blows Portland out of the water. You live in a tiny little town that offers no contribution to the United States. You are a black hole for hippies, bums, and people who generally suck.
I love this blog spot; it’s so edgy and dark. I am sooooo sick of Portland, OMG. I F*3king hate all the good restaurants. I mean f*$k, I can’t even find a good chain restaurant inside the city limits. I am so over summer here in Portland, 80′s degrees ever day just sucks. Has anybody been out to the Gorge? I cannot stand the nice hiking and biking trails with amazing views. I swear every time I go out there all I want to do is get on a computer log onto thingsaboutportlandthatsuck and bitch about it.
Let’s see, what else do I hate about Portland. The Oregon Coast, it sucks! It’s too clean and beautiful, there are no crowds…it’s almost like it is pristine or something, I just can’t handle it anymore.
I am livid about these micro-brews, there f#*king everywhere. All I want is a Zima, a Miller Light, or a Mike’s Hard; is that too hard ask?. These local tasty refreshing brews, make me want to move to LA, a place that doesn’t suck and I can bitch all the time…that would be awesome.
I generally love Portland. Having lived in many cities in the U.S., I know that Portland really is a gem in comparison. That said, we all have our Portland pet peeves. And mine is the, “I’m-in-my-30′s-but-still-acting-like-I’m-22″ attitude and lifestyle that seems so prevalent in P-town these days.
It’s like this, folks. If you’re 33, college-educated and reasonably intelligent, it really ISN’T cool that you still make $10/hour, and change employers like some people change underwear. Yeah, I know…you’re trying to be a hipster and are WAY too cool to ever think about having a – gasp! – “career”. And besides, there are happy hours at the Doug Fir to worry about! And updating and checking your Myspace page every 10 minutes takes time!
But when I see you quit another job (the second one this year) because you were treated SOOOOOO poorly (not really), and then complain that you don’t know how you’re going to pay rent this month, I want to smack you. Yeah, this routine was amusing when you were 25. But now that you’re heading into your mid-30′s, it’s not really so funny anymore. It’s a little pathetic, actually.
And before you know it, you’ll be 40. You’ll be “that old dude” (or dudette) at the Doug Fir. Your bank account will still be empty. You’ll see more and more unpleasant reminders that you’re really not 22 anymore. And at that point, you will be dangerously close to being labeled as one of “life’s losers”.
So, snap out of it “I’m-a-marginally-employed-33-year-old-Portland-hipster” person! Because deep down, I actually like you. I really do! You give this town some of it’s delicious flavor. But be aware that you are traveling down a road where the scenery won’t get prettier than it’s been. And going forward, consider taking a different road.
I have lived all over the country and LOVE portland! You people are only whining because you are pathetic. It is far too easy to bitch about where you live and blame it for being the reason your life sucks. The real reason is likely that you are just a pathetic human being with nothing valuable to bring to the table. There are far too many of you here already, so go back to southern california, or detriot, or vermont or where ever the hell you’re from!!!
- Reedies. Totally annoying, telling you what this town is all about. Or whatever fucking thing is all about. Every year there are new ones. It’s been going on for decades.
- They think the art and the scene is so hot here. Ask them where they’ve been. Oh, they know all about New York and London. They had a vacation there.
- Yeah, people say they love it but that’s because it wins by default. They don’t want to work as hard as it takes to live elsewhere. So they say it’s so cool instead.
- As to peeing in public without hitting a coffeeshop, you can’t pee in public, period. The cops kill you for that.
- Diversity talk. It’s total trash. If you really want diversity, don’t move here. Or if you move here, then shut up about it. When some people move to NE Portland, they congratulate themselves as if it’s a moral and ethical choice.
I need to rant about how much I hate Portland so badly I could scream! I apologize this is probably rambling, meaningless claptrap, but I hope there is someone else out there who can appreciate it, as I have appreciated the other postings on this site.
It was my boyfriend’s idea to move here. Believe me, I wanted nothing to do with it from the beginning. I grew up on the East coast already hating rain and cloudy weather, getting so depressed in the winter I could barely get out of bed. Now, I have to deal with the dark and dank 9-10 months out of the year. I really don’t know how much longer I can take it.
Also, I hate that it’s so terrible to hate or complain about Portland. Those heart Oregon stickers, and people talking about how much they love the rain… I don’t buy it. And what about all the trash everywhere? This has be one of the dirtiest cities I’ve ever seen–like eastern europe dirty. Oregon is so poor it can’t take care of the roads, and the government pours all its money into pub trans that I will never ever use. I hate pub trans. If that makes me a bad person, so be it. I don’t like sitting next smelly, dirty people, and I like to get places in a reasonable amount of time. Of course, all the construction throughout the city pretty much makes that impossible.
short list of things i hate about portland:
1. weather
2. dark, dank, damp, moldy
3. filthy, dirty, trash everywhere
4. state is too poor to maintain proper services (like trash collection)
5. there are only two states in the country that put less money into funding for the arts than oregon
6. their schools suck
7. no high-paying jobs in portland, only service industry crap
8. everyone talks about how much they love oregon and portland all the time
9. why is this city hip? why? because it’s supposed to be cheap?
10. myth that portland is soooo less expensive than anywhere else, therefore it’s worth enduring all the above-mentioned reasons this place is a dump.
While I have my own (see below) list of things I hate about Portland (even though I overall do like it here), I gotta say WHERE did you live on the East Coast??? Every Mid-Atlantic or Northern major city is waaaay dirtier than Portland and (except Phillie, which is a cess pool) much, much more expensive. And have far worse educational systems.
As for weather, I’ll take a warmish, rainy winter and a cool, dry summer happily over the sub zero/oven bake humidity weather of the East Coast any day.
And there are plenty of decent paying jobs (or were before the economy crashed)—and I even work in hospitality. My husband doesn’t and makes as much as he would in NYC.
And seriously, what eastern city are you from that you hate public transportation? Based on your comments, (other than being familiar with winter) I’d guess you’re from North Carloina or something.
I will agree that Portland is distinctly NOT hip or cool (and have never understood why it thinks it is). But I don’t really find that many people who say they love it here.
Now for MY list
1) Restaurants Suck. I have absolutely NO idea how we ever garned our rep as a food town. Because we definitely don’t deserve it. My family and I eat at home primarily because we almost always leave feeling completely unimpressed.
2) Ditto our hotels. I don’t know why we have tourists come here every year (and are THRILLED) to stay downtown in a faux boutique property, look at empty storefronts and eat our above mentioned crappy food. Doesn’t seem like a great vacation to me.
3) No theme parks. While I love going on waterfall hikes once the weather turns nice, it would be fun to actually have something a bit better than Oaks Park for thrill rides. Instead we have to drive to Federal Way for “family fun”.
4) As others have mentioned we only have an NBA team (sorry Timbers fans, MLS is still minor league!). Other cities our size have NFL, MLB AND NBA teams.
5) No one knows how to dress. Gotta agree with Erick on that one. I’ve never seen a city so full of people identically dressed in faded camping gear. Or middle aged parents who appear to be imitating thier toddlers’ outfits.
After I walk my girlfriend to work, I have to walk back home alone…and sometimes I feel lonely. Portland should institute a system of “companion walkers,” so I don’t have to get so blue.
And you can’t pee in public without hitting a coffeeshop.
How about addressing the uptight “Portland is for grownups, children are a nuisance” attitude that *everyone* tries so hard to maintain?
And by grownups I mean over privileged, white, “progressive” Pearlies, and the “hipsters”.
I’d rather walk across the Trimet free zone downtown than ride anything going through it. The street car smells like an ashtray that’s been used as a urinal. The buses are like a vomit stained traveling crack distribution system. I walk almost 2 miles a day to avoid the free zone.
I kind of like/kind of hate the “Portland Greeting” which is when one sees someone from their long-ago past and pretends not to see said someone because a) no time to “catch-up”, or b) doesn’t want to deal with said someone.
I hate Subaru Outbacks too – but what is with the rise in VWs?
I LOATHE the “industrial-condo” look of the developments in inner SE – blech.
Could you please address the problem of unruly brats in public? I’ve never seen a city so overrun with hippie or yuppie parents who let their kids run wild in restaurants and other public spaces. Discipline might squelch their precious angels’ creativity, and it clashes with their self-image of being cool parents.
A good starting place is the Urban Mama website or the Hip Mamas.
- The “I’m too cool to be working here and I’m not getting paid enough to work hard, but I’m going to bitch up a storm if I don’t get a raise because I’m working too hard at being cool” twits at Powell’s.
- The idiots pretending that St. Johns is somehow going to go from cesspit to hippie paradise, just because it’s “the last affordable neighborhood in Portland”.
- Oh, and the people who hear constructive criticism and justified gripes about Portland and whine “I’ve lived here ALL MY LIFE and I’ve NEVER seen what you’re describing.” Of course you haven’t seen the venues and publications that have gone under because everyone’s too busy stabbing each other in the back to be the first to get hired on full-time. Of course you haven’t seen the famed “Portland Coma”, where everybody whines about wanting to make a movie/start a magazine/open a club but won’t do a damn thing about it until someone else does all the work, where they then do their damnedest to steal the credit. Of course you don’t see that for all the noise about Portland’s progressive news coverage scene, almost everyone involved is in Portland because nobody else would be dumb enough to hire them. Oh, and of course you’ve never seen downtown bicyclists running down pedestrians or downtown pedestrians jaywalking into traffic and screaming at the motorists about not stopping in time. It’s kinda hard to see when your own colon is in the way.
I had such a list going in my head for future subjects for you — lets see if I can remember any of them:
-utter lack of diversity downtown
-insane amounts of cop shootings
-wimpy chinatown
-our “great public transport” shuts down too early to be of much help to bar- and music-goers
I’ll think of more, I had a long list going — the subject cracks me up because overall I think this is a great place to live
-Annoying transplants
-Subaru Outbacks
-Gentrification in N/NE
-”Keep Portland Weird” crap
-Those annoying stickers with the green heart in the Oregon outline… blech.
Wow Jim, are you sure you’ve lived anywhere other than PDX? Because your post is A) suspiciously typical wingnutery and B) painfully ill informed.
San Diego is 24% more expensive than Portland, with housing a whopping 62% higher. As for “high” taxes, yes in California (and thus San Diego), 4rh highest in the country.
For us, not so much. While we do have a high income tax, our property taxes are lowish and, of course, no sales tax. So overall, our liability is 40th of 50 states (overall low).
Next time try to actually do research about your fantasy locale, mmmmkay?
Oh also, Jim—we’re actually the cheapest major coastal city (after Philly) in the country. Far from perfect, but expensive isn’t one of our problems
I went back to San Fran a couple weeks ago and the traffic was so refreshing. I had forgotten. There are so many more cars than in Portland, but somehow it just flows. People in Cali know how to use the space and take the lanes. The zipper works! In Portland people seem to actively impede traffic flow, maybe because they don’t want to be passed or left behind? The zipper is non-existent, people want to queue up ridiculously and it just doesn’t work once you have a certain traffic volume. I would take bay bridge rush hour over HWY26 tunnel commute any day.
First of all why does everyone here pronounce my me seedrick instead of Cedric? Second, I’m from Florida and this constant dark gloominess is crazy! And how does a major city not have a hip hop & R/B station? Finally, why when I’m walking close to the street does every single car freak out and stop? Like I’m gonna just run out in the road! I really am having a hard time adjusting to this white passive aggressive culture here. Smh
What a coincidence Cedric (I’d pronounce your name correctly). I’m ready to leave here and move to Florida! I really like the sun and southern people don’t bother me at all like many of our stuck up Portland neighbors.
I would love to know how you’re adjusting. I lived there for 2.7 years and had to leave because of the passive agressive vibe.
I spent most of my life in Southern Oregon. While it had far superior outdoor recreation than Portland, I wanted to move to Portland because I wanted to be around like minded, considerate and tolerant people. I’ve been here three years now and have had a very rude awakening. The people here aren’t tolerant at all. They’re terribly judgmental. They look down their noses at others and act like they’re tolerant because they only use politically correct terms. I’ve discovered that the small town rednecks are way more accepting and are not afraid to speak their mind about a different opinion. Being liberal shouldn’t mean being narrow minded and hating anyone conservative.
You can’t hike or be in the outdoors here without running into others every two minutes. The rivers are cold, crowded and dirty. The trails are filled with wimpy yuppies who are out of shape but think they’re experiences trekkers because they wear the ugliest hiking Spandex gear and use fabricated walking sticks. I catch myself wanting to push these fake wimps off the cliff when I walk by them.
The weather is awful and seasonal affective disorder is a household term around here.
People here can’t drive and nobody realizes that the left lane is the fast lane and made for passing. You always get stuck behind some fake granola cruncher in a Prius or Subaru wagon going the same pace as the semi truck in the right lane next to them. These fake hippies would shit themselves if they were to experience nature without a guide and the latest equipment. Their idea of camping is renting a cabin with electricity, cable and internet.
Crime here isn’t too bad but kids from all walks of life are getting heroin. It’s an epidemic here. Prostitution is rampant here because of the heroin and meth problems and because there aren’t very many jobs and the ones available don’t pay worth a shit while to cost of living is ridiculous. People here are elitists and if you have an associates degree they will tell you that you’re not really college educated. They also act as if you’ve clubbed a baby seal if you don’t bring a reusable bag when buying groceries.
Lmao!!!! 100% correct
Not elitist, pretentious. There’s a difference – one wants to better himself and values things of quality, the other thinks he’s already there and is blind to the world around him. If Portlanders were elitist, we’d have things like clean rivers, a real concert hall, a decent symphony orchestra, and quality roads. Instead we have plastic bag bans, a corrupt mayor who just *happens* to be gay, studded snow tires on 4wd cars (when it never snows) and middle class bums pooping on the sidewalk to “make a point” about all the evil people with money.
I have lived here most of my life, and I couldn’t agree more!!! Yes, it is a great place to ride a bike too, for maybe two months out of the year! The other city I lived in was San Diego, and I now miss it more than ever!! If I’m going to pay this high cost of living and taxes, I would rather live in a city worth the money. And yes, I am a native to this area, sorry Portland, but you’re just traveling in the wrong direction!!!!
I have lived other places and every where else I lived I felt happier I just come back to Portland because my family has a house and my daughter loves it and when the rent gets to high out of state where do I end up back here, what do I dislike about Portland I hated it at three years old, my first sentance was I want to go outside no words just the sentense because I knew I wanted to leave Portand so bad the energy here is a nervous bad vibe that is asaultive and the people are so phoney with there polite one word gestures of friendships people don’t understand diversity, the only thing people do is watch a movie at home or go to Fred Meyers its a death trap here an emotional trap everyone smokes weed here just to bare living here or they would kill themselves and the suicide rate here is so high because its so depressing the sky the air the elevation its a valley so low you know this whole town was buried under water once because the cosmos knows it gave us a sign flood the place yet people live here with fake smiles or just real fears about truely being alive its a place of death where spirits live a more exicting life than people. Yah some night clubs can be fun but then you go home to your drafty house and feel like you cant lift yourself up out of bed the house is always so cold just like the people I have served my time 40 years of torture. Get me out of here me my cat and I guess my daughter will have to fend for herself she is trapped here cause of friends who she loves she admits she is very depressed here what a change when we came back Portland has ruined my life once again. It is not a liveable state. Once as a child we moved to Tacoma Washington it was fine its just Portland is drives me crazy I just want out of here this moment every second how can I break free! This is an emergency!
Maybe it’s coincidence but the two people I’ve met who grew up and lived in Portland most of their lives are virulent anti-Semites. I thought it was supposed to be a progressive place but these natives tell me they never met a Jew in their sixty plus years of living in Portland and on the planet earth. I guess there’s no Jews north of San Fran??? The jokes on one of them tho- her son moved out of town and married a New York Jew and made his mother come to temple for the wedding. Seems at least someone in the lily white Northwest isn’t in the Klan. Can’t wait til the couple have grandkids.Wonder how an anti Semite will like going to a bris?
I’m from the Portland area and miss it dearly. I think all of you have missed the whole point of the city and are too focused on clicks and cliches. Go out in the mountains with a few old school Portland hippies and get some fresh perspective about life. People are rude everywhere. There are nice people everywhere. If you don’t like what you see around you, get off your butt, and do something to make your little space in the city better. That’s what I like about Portland… forward minded free thinkers. If you can’t find any you might wanna start by looking in the mirror.
people are not rude everywhere. try texas, very friendly people everywhere I went there. nothing like portland where you could live here all your life and bearly have a friend. I lived in Brooklyn for 8 months and have better friends by far there, 4 great friends, I visit when I can. I had to return due to my house being here. My dream is to return to a great place. New York City.
You don’t understand how bad this place is because your from here. I’ll take southern hospitality any day over this passive aggressive place
You guys should go to Bentley’s brew they will make you sick. There in Oak grove.
From reading through the replies: I must be either a fundamentalist christian or a conservative to hate Portland.
Well I’m a libertarian and I love the is damn city! Fuck y’all!
Libertarian’s are liberals who suck. Come back over to the liberal team, I know it may seem boring and you really like being a contrarian but its just hurting all us real liberals.
I am not a fundamentalist christian or conservative to think Portlland is a boring city. Maybe you haven’t traveled much.
You are forced to feel under the weather here. And you will feel that way. Some kind of curse perhaps.
Well…. I think it’s a cool town.
I’ve been to every state west of the Mississippi, and much of the east. Lived in a dozen places. Just visited Portland for two days — I hate it! While Oregon is a pretty beautiful place, the traffic here is the worst I’ve been in — and I’ve been in some nasty Bay Area (California) traffic! There are nasty looking bums everywhere, more out-of-work and not looking to do anything people, loads of panhandlers, and really slow drivers… WTH is the deal with traffic that is stopped in all directions on the freeways here? You can keep this POS place to your little liberal freethinking minds all you want!
Thank god for jesus christ b/c this world sucks – and it’s just gonna get worse! Portland sucks b/c there’s so much fear here, but at least ppl don’t bother you for the most part. i’m moving to asia b/c fema has death camps for ppl who don’t accept the mark of the beast, the r.f.i.d. chip. But if we take the mark, we don’t have eternal life. So it’s better not to take it i think. But yeah portland sucks, but so does the rest of the world! So until jesus returns, we might as well get used to it.
I hate to say this but low-IQ is a wide-spread thing here in P-town. I’m not exaggerating. Hipster, Young Professionals, Soccer Moms, dikes and gays, it doesn’t matter. They all get their facts from Motherjones, the Nation, NPR, Rachel Madcow..etc and they all think Socialism is good for the planet and Obummer can’t do wrong. They think the Meek should inherit everything. I’m worried. The future of this town is looking bleak.
Wow, a wing nut who thinks that anyone who’s a progressive is stupid. How delightfully original, not to mention well reasoned. I’m sure the inconvenient fact that most red states are populated by less educated, poorer people or that Faux News’s information is routinely disproven by facts would do nothing to otherwise dissaude you.
I hear Boise just enchanting (if you like hot) this time of year, perhaps you’d be less worried about its future and might like to move there????
Maybe you should move to Iran.
Future of U.S.A if OBUMMER is re-elected? Look at Portland’s state subsidized bumfuck culture
Looks like everybody who is too much of a mutant weirdo from North California wound up here. GAG!
Move to Iran, thanks, bye
You must be kidding. I wish there was more N. Cal folks here–they are much more open, friendly, inclusive than the people I have met from Oregon (and Portland). I have never met such an incurious, cold bunch of folks. No, I did not move here and take a job away from another Oregonian. You can take your bigoted (and Christian evangelical) attitudes and keep them. I can’t wait to leave.
Alacrity is a foreign concept here.
what the fuck are any of you people doing here?
what are you doing here?
apparently, your user name suits you well.
I have been lucky to live in several states, this by far has the most rude and crazy bunch of people I have ever worked with. Everything is a crisis, everyone is stupid and on the verge of being fired every week. Seriously, what would half of these people do if we had an emergency in Portland. Just picture it!! Seriously people, chill out.
Love this site. I’ve lived here for five years and I think this city gets worse with every year. It doesn’t help that I’ve now been to every version of the mellow quirky laid back boring Portland bar now. I thought Portland was a little oasis being from Detroit. But, the people here suck so much I would rather be back in Detroit. At least we know how to have fun and have good music. And sports teams and people with personalities.
I like the unable to walk on the sidewalk discussion. It is probably closely related to my personal hatred of how Portlanders board a plane. Are you in line? Are you up next? Are you just mulling around in an ignorant mob wondering what is going on? It never fails and you can be in any city anywhere in the country boarding a plain to Portland and it is the same mindless, mulling mob.
this must be the stupidest post / comment I have ever read. How can you still mistake plane with plain? Please enlighten me about what good music is… Personality? You want personality? Well buddy, you need one.
damn, i had no idea people though SF was rude. the first time i went, i was shocked at how overtly and genuinely nice people were there. i had no clue what i was doing or where i was driving in my obviously rent-a-car, which should have put a massive target on me. instead of being treated like a clueless out of towner, people were eager to help me get around town, invite me places that had things to do, tell me where all the good food spots were, invite me to come hang out with their friends at the bar (both male and female, gay and straight, so i know a lot of it was not just pickup ploys)…and it was all truly laid back. i figured being tshirt weather in late winter had something to do with the general happiness of the city, lol.
you want rude? go to seattle. people there think their shit doesn’t stink, like they’re some kind of grittier, realer, more original west coast version of new york. it is difficult to find people and areas where people are being genuinely nice. i can’t even count how much attitude radiates from seemingly all corners of that city, how quickly random strangers are to snipe off a sideswiping comment to you for absolutely no reason. neutoric city.
portlanders don’t strike me as particularly rude so much as they are…on their own planet. uncouth is a good word for it haha.
anyone saying the food is garbage here either doesn’t know what they are talking about, or has made no effort to find it. which, considering you can just walk into most random places and get good food, implies that you indeed just don’t know what you’re talking about. sorry, but if you can’t find good food here that betrays a dumbfounding cluelessness. i realize pdx is no nyc *rolls eyes* but there’s a reason this city is regarded as the next culinary mecca.
yeah, the foodie attitude can be awfully stinky here. and the food carts are hit and miss (i thought it was weird that one of the examples of the only good food cart in town is on 50th in se, when the one time i went to that truck was the nastiest inedible shit i have ever eaten from a food cart, anywhere) so they can be given a lot of credit where it’s not really due; i think people are simply excited about the concept and how many more options it opens up. i seriously recommend hitting up the grilled cheese grill in laurelhurst, it might just change your mind. awesome sammiches. the pod on belmont (& se 45th i believe?) has consistently good food as well, and i’ve liked every cart i’ve tried on se hawthorne and 9th-10thish.
cat–I’ve lived here for 14 years AND previously worked in hospitality—so it’s neither “lack of effort” or cluelessness. I probably know significantly more about food than you do, sorry. There isn’t “good food if you look for it” here—with a very few exceptions, it’s spin. Much like our status as a “destination city” even though there really isn’t all that much to do.
BTW, we’ve been “the next culinary mecca” for at least 20 years—it’s always been “on the brink” because we aren’t all that. At all. Honestly, while the restaurants are more expensive and the people less friendly, Seattle’s much better in that department.
I can make my own gourmet grilled cheese, thank you.
stinking hard-luck swamp. always has been. always will be.
Born in NYC and just moved to Portland. I just can’t believe this place has hiptards. Why, dude? I left Brooklyn thinking that’s where they all moved to. I get it, they’re all different just like everyone else. You got a sweet tattoo and some tight pants, congratulations – mommy’s proud. What probably bothers me is their flagrant apathy and absolute disregard for common sense. I have close friends who play the part, with their nut squeezing jeans and ridiculous tattoos of trees and turtles and I always say to them, “let it go… be free my child.” I’m no Armani, but a completely recycled style is trash – be original, dress up in styrofoam or something.
People drive here like they’re blindfolded. Why do they have to tailgate? If you’re gonna pass me, pass me, don’t f’ing hover next to me. If I’m letting you go, don’t tell me to go instead, just go. If you’re at a stop sign and there’s traffic at the intersection, B-E Agressive. And I saw a dude drive the wrong way on a freakin highway? I see most of this everyday.
Anyway… I’m not bitter. I came to Oregon for the Cascades, camping and the surf. Compared to Fallujah, Portland isn’t that bad, but maybe I haven’t been here long enough.
What sucks most about Portland are the morons who actually believe this: Occupy portland was about “the financial devastation of the middle class by policies from the era of Reagan to today”
Must be why they spent months occupying government buildings and the pearl district instead of causing the middle class and poor taxpayers to have pay for damage to a public park. Oh wait…
I hate Portland and everything about it. From the constant protests by the people who have no clue what they’re protesting (i.e. Occupy Portland) to the effing elitists who think everything is better cause it’s in Portland. The city is an out of control turd hole with an incompetent mayor and idiots for citizens.
Yes, all of Oregon sucks.
How can you not understand what Occupy Portland is protesting?
How about the financial devastation of the middle class by policies from the era of Reagan to today? Was that really so hard?
Portland has no elitists. Neither does Lake O. Nothing in Oregon qualifies as elite anything. What looks like an elitist is just another native afraid to look another human being in the face lest that human being strike up a conversation.
Horrors!
Oregon elitism is simply abject fear of being social.
a.grey, I think you and I have a LOT in common!!!! Agree completely about the food (and I used to work in hospitality). Probably the best “eat out” we’ve found is a burrito cart on 50th and Division. Otherwise, meh.
BTW, about parenting—1) I am one, so I know that you can raise your kids differently and it’ll be okay. 2) While there are certainly plenty of normal parents, everything I posted comes from the Urban Mamas blog (or the observation of my cousins, who embody every element above).
Good to meet someone who agrees about the “scene”. If you ever DARE to criticize and compare, everyone will whine about what a food snob you are.
Okay, honestly–I think this should be an entire piece of its own….but here goes. What I truly hate most are the uber PC/Wannabe Hippie Parents of Portland and their complete hypocrisy (and conformity)
I live in SE, so I see all of this tons: firstly, they’ve all persuaded themselves what individuals they are. Even though every freakin’ kid I meet seems to be named Zoe, Jake or Maya. But those are “creative” names. Even though they’ve become the equivalent of today’s Jennifer from the 60′s/70′s.
Moving past names, I hate how these same parents get all in a dither about “forcing traditional gender conformity” on their kids, so they dress them in “gender neutral” clothing. And endlessly insisting dolls are bad, Disney’s bad, but organized sports (which emphasize such non-hippie, circa 1950′s values as competitiveness and glorification of the jocktocracy) are good.
Along with sports competitiveness comes this need to push your kid in academics. Hey, I think it’s great for your child to perform well in school—but I also seriously doubt your 5 year old “loves” going to Kumon, year round school or any of the other tiger mom in disguise stuff you’re forcing on them.
Of course if your kid doesn’t enjoy wearing old clothes (not because of finances, but to appear more “earthy”), eating flavorless organic food, only enjoying gender neutral activities, having their lives micromanaged and generally lacking any actual fun—fear not! You can simply determine your kid has a psychiatric disorder and send them to a shrink for their “negativity”.
oh man… i can’t stand pdx-style “parenting”… i actually had a semi-argument with a mother who tried to validate the vegan diet she was forcing on her infant. ugh… if you wanna be a vegan, fine- just don’t force your pretentious dietary restrictions on your kids (or your pets, for that matter)… kids have entirely different dietary needs, and their parents should be charged with child abuse/endangerment.
i couldn’t reply to your reply on my other post about the local’s lack of manners, but i wasn’t necessarily implying that they were purposely rude (most people here are, at the very least, passingly nice), but just lacked basic couth, social graces, and common sense. no wonder drivers here are so bad… they barely know how to walk down the street. maybe it’s all the one-way streets that the city of portland loves to impose on drivers ^_^
and yes, the food here is mediocre at best. food carts, schmood farts… portlanders love to take already existing ideas, blow them all out of proportion and somehow claim them as their own. the worst one i’ve seen is the bbq place on se hawthorne that serves kimchi with a pulled pork bbg sandwich… really? why don’t i just bypass the middleman and stick a finger down my throat; the end result’s the same.
that said, there are a few spots (even a few food carts… gasp!) here that (almost) rival some of the places i haunted in nyc… small oases in a culinary desert.
there are quite a few things i love about this town, but i’ll be damned if people here seem to enjoy doing things in the most convoluted and annoying ways… gotta keep it “weird”, i guess… bleh. gimme “normal” any day.
post script… san fran is awful. i spent two weeks there once visiting friends. gorgeous scenery, but you can have the people… they make portlanders look like royalty in comparison.
George Carlin has a bit about that, the meaningless structure wannabe-hippie parents force on their kids.
Its pretty funny
is it just me, but are basic manners and couth not taught to the locals here? i’ve NEVER been in a city before where people don’t seem to understand the basic concept of walking down a sidewalk. every other place in america seems to understand that you STAY TO THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE SIDEWALK when walking, not too different that the basic rules of the road, right? not here in portland. i’ve noticed it’s usually more prevalent downtown amongst the more *ahem* white-trashy types who hang downtown & look like they rode the max in from Gresham/82nd/Vantucky to panhandle and score dope and meth. i live right across the river in SE and every day i come downtown, i deal with idiots for whom the basic concept of sidewalk rules are too hard to grasp. they look at you funny like you got in their way.
i swear, pdx has some of the most mannerless people i’ve ever run across… and yes, i’m talking about the natives, the in bred trash from the outer regions. i grew up in the south, and i swear that the white trash up here are more inbred than the breed that exists down south. people like to gloss over the fact that the south and the pacific nw are the two biggest strongholds for the white supremacist movement- remember the skinhead problem back in the 90′s and how bad it was?
maybe it’s the lack of vitamin d… or that their brains are waterlogged from birth from all the rain… or maybe it’s the piss-poor, under-funded education system… or the heroin and meth… or just plain redneck inbreeding. oregon is the alabama of the west coast.
btw… i moved here from nyc. try walking down the left side of the sidewalk there. you’ll learn a real quick lesson in basic manners after you’re forcefully shoved to the proper side.
Okay, seriously, you’re from NYC and you find Portlanders rude? Hey, I hail from New York, as well–and if you want to diss the food here, I’m with you. Ditto that no one seems able to use anything resembling common sense when bus riding. And yeah, they might walk on the “wrong” side of the street (which is less bad manners and more just not knowing any better, since they probably have only just discovered it IS possible to get somewhere by means other than a car).
BUT, New Yorkers are FAR ruder than people here. While there are things I hate here and things I love and still miss there, I couldn’t get over how impolite people were the last time I visited. Plus, if you want to see rude on the West Coast, go to San Francisco. Just appalling.
You are absolutely correct. Portlanders, perhaps it is all NorthWesterners, are cold and often outright mean. They are polite only the very surface but are venal just underneath.
I chalk it up to the subsistence existence of Portland natives and the abject fear it breeds. They have only ever scraped together a meager living from the land and that living has largely gone. Portlanders are deathly afraid of outsiders or of anything new. They may go for something derivative but never anything that is actually new.
When I meet a new person in Portland I try and find out if they are a native or have lived here a long time. If they have I immediately dismiss them…waste of time. I much prefer to spend all of my social (and business) time with transplants.
I recommend this process to all other transplants. Do not waste your time even talking to natives as they will never add to your enjoyment of life or your prosperity. It sounds HARSH but Portland is HARSH.
YOU ARE 100% CORRECT!
Portland sucks. I love how they are hippies and California started that stuff. But they hate Californians. LOL. They wish they were Californians, deep down. You guys can lie to yourselves about the weather if you want. I’d rather be broke in year round sun, than be rich under a nuclear holocaust sky.
California will ALWAYS be better than Portland. But you all can lie to yourself if you want.
The problem with the hippies is you’d think they were all about peace, love and acceptance. But the truth is, if you don’t believe what they believe, you are looked down upon. Does that sound like liberals? Or conservatives? Exactly. If you aren’t green and try to save the planet, you are an idiot. I hope these people get a life, rather than waste it on a false reality. Did you know that some volcano (forget where it is) spews out more CO2 in one day than the history of the human race has put in the atmosphere?
People are delusional and like to feel like they are “saving the world” and that they are “better” than another person if they aren’t enviornmental freaks. It’s a joke really. Not very nice, if you ask me. Californian’s are more accepting of different races, cultures and the way you look. Believe what you want, but you wish you were Californian’s.
Enjoy the year round winter, while I enjoy the year round summer. lol, portland sucks. I was there for a week and never saw a pretty girl and I never saw the sun. Have fun with all that. You can have your micro brews (i’ll take budweiser, same result-drunk).
“Did you know that some volcano (forget where it is) spews out more CO2 in one day than the history of the human race has put in the atmosphere?”
Hmm..yeah, we’re going to need a source on that. Or GTFO.
All the goddamn whiners.
For everyone that bitches about Portland…I would like to make you aware of a hell hole you might not have heard about. Its called Fargo, North Dakota. For every negative comment you make about Portland, think about that fact that you could be living there instead…
Exhibit A:
http://www.aolnews.com/2011/04/01/fargo-wins-title-as-americas-toughest-weather-city/
Exhibit B:
http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/fargo-ranked-as-second-drunkest-city-in-america/
Exhibit C:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fargo,_North_Dakota#Climate
Thank you, that is all.
This place should be eradicated
I’d have to pretty much agree…gonna write my own little thingy about it tho…at this point looking for friends among other disaffecteds sounds like the best bet!
Instead of whining about all of things that bother you about Portland why not try to make it better, its easy to sit on your ass and complain about how all the bums bother you and how there are drugs everywhere…etc. Why not get up and love on all these people, they have been broken down in life, so lets love on them and make them great so that in return they will help make Portland better, and i know that i cant be one to talk, i don’t help nearly as much as i should, but at least trying to do something is better than complaining when we have the power to change it.
wow, portland so quaint. hip newcomers did a good job of hiding the fact that pdx was recently a white trash skinhead town. where did they all go? the suburbs? wich are huge and gross and dwarf portland. pat yerselves on the back because some trustfund bearing white kids transformed a few square miles into some kind of vegan-emo theme park…its like a yuppie training camp…it should appeal to me, its almost like pdx is marketed towards people like me, but i cant stand it there…life doesnt seem authentic there. im happier farther away in the deep south, new orleans, austin, athens, savannah…harder to be vegan, etc. but the people have culture/traditions, foodways and folkways, plus whatever you have to throw in the gumbo pot. when all the fads wear away, what does portland have then? oh, the mountains and coast, not bad…shallow people…fine outdoors…
they went to gresham.
Hahahaha I love how people forget that or were never aware of it. Portland was a podunk Nazi shit hole until recently.
oh…people…
you’re bitching about Portland…try to live in Boise,ID…
To appreciate something you need to lose it first…
Portland is great because you have a choice here: you can be either a hipster or sophisticated intellectual, or LO mom… You can be all of that at once, you can be whatever you want.
Peace !
I moved away from Portland five years ago. I have found that since I act like a Portlander, nobody likes me, and I have no friends. I had tons of friends in Portland! I am lonely and am moving back to where people are normal.
No one likes you because Portlanders are full of shit. Try learning how to be normal.
“(1000 hours [of rain] a year, more than any other city in the country) ”
Where did you get that statistic? Out of your ass? Washington gets FAR more rain than Oregon.
Moving to Portland is the biggest mistake I have ever made in my entire life.
When I was looking for a change of scenery, a friend who has lived in PDX for a decade said, “come here, you’ll love it”. When I got here, all she did was say how much it sucks and how she can’t wait to move back to Texas.
What have I done? I feel the mistake and it burns. People are friendly until I tell them I moved from Texas, then they treat me like crap. Weird doesn’t so much describe Portland as disillusioned does.
Fags.
Hey, since you’ve commented on Tigard and Lake O, why not Vantucky??? I spent the past 6 months working up there and GOD!!!! All the things we diss Portland over (dirty, drugs, white trash poverty) are there only 12 billion times more prevalent, afflicting a far larger portion of their meth-addled population.
Plus even though their businesses are failing, unemployment is painfully high and median incomes are lower, all those idiots happily vote against their own interests and support the puggies. And yes, houses are cheaper, but shouldn’t they be???
As for “but they have better schools than Portland” (the one argument I always hear), I taught at a tech school there. Their supposedly superior system gave rise to students who could barely handle 6/7 grade math, slept in class (and felt fully entitled to do so) and expected to be spoon fed all the test answers. I’m sure everyone did score well on standardized tests, since clearly their teachers gave them all the answers in advance.
We routinely pick on Gresham, but Vantucky is REALLY where that scary Barbie is from!
I don’t know – I grew up in Seattle and have lived in San Francisco, Austin, Washington DC, Amsterdam and Tokyo – in large cities most of my life. Since we moved to Vancouver, I’ve noticed that Portlanders regard Vancouver like many Americans regard Mexico – you look down on us but couldn’t live without us. We’re your steam vent – thousands of former Portlanders who grew disgruntled with Ptld (or who are priced out of it) move here. In fact, we help you keep the hip image by absorbing your unhip elements.
When not at work I’m a musician and writer, and have found plenty of creative collaborators up here. I try not to spread this around, though – we might become overcrowded and smug.
Yes, Ms. G, much better to remain a small, red neck ghetto. BTW, I’m not quite sure why PDX “needs” Vantucky, anyway—Gresham, East County, hell even parts of Tigard and Beaverton could easily perform Vancouver’s butt-boy duties. In fact they kinda already do.
Or Salem’s just an hour away and all but the same thing, anyway.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
If only more people would STOP coming to Portland, Portland would actually be a better place for the people who are stuck here. Stop coming here with your BA and your Masters while working on your PHD. You won’t find a job outside of a coffee shop. Stop flooding the Portland job market with your degrees, I’m sick of it. And if nobody listens to this advice, or the countless other advice about a hyper-educated high unemployment rates of this town, I hope you suffer a truly miserable time. I hope the rain makes you sick. I hope you can’t afford MAX fair so you think you can sneak a little past the “Free Rail Zone” then get smacked with a $250 fine. In short, everyone from California who has moved here in the past 5 years seeking “a better life” have you found it? Probably not. Go home. Thanks!
It’s not that Portland is weird; it’s that the natives are socially inept: passively aggressive, paranoid, jealous, ungrateful and lack consideration of social queues taken for granted elsewhere. Sure, people here are friendly and nice, um, to your face. They don’t want to get to know you; they want to know your dirt. Being the small town that it is, newcomers should expect to be gossiped about and judged behind their back. That’s what I find strange, not the progressiveness or dog-friendliness. Lots of white people too. All the black and latino folks are tucked away on the east side and No-Po. I’ve heard the “N” word spoken here more than anywhere else. Geography and proximity to great adventures is wonderful. Good for active lifestyle.
Quoting from Paul Riddell on facebook:
Q: Hipster A is bicycling down NE Alberta in a clown suit while balancing a five-gallon jug of organic vinegar at a speed of 15 miles per hour. Hipster B is bicycling down Alberta buck naked while balancing a five-gallon jug of spring water at 17 miles per hour. When they run into each other because each thought the other should move out of his way because he’s way more important, what sound will the colliding jugs make?
A: “DOUCHE!”
This so perfectly true of Portland. This actually happened to me – but it was walking, me on the right side of a sidewalk, she on her left steaming toward me. This woman slammed into me and kept going. I turned, caught up to her and asked, essentially, “wtf?” She had this psychotic smile and wouldn’t acknowledge me so I bumped her back. Then she was like, “Oh help, help! That man! Oooph.”
“I’ve heard the “N” word spoken here more than anywhere else.” Spoken by who?
How about the people moving here from the midwest and the south? Oh are they ok because they lack education? Why don’t you get an education and move the fuck away?
Love the blog – my boyfriend is in law school in New Orleans (where we live) and was looking for jobs in Portland. This blog effectively helped me to convince him to look elsewhere. Thanks so much!
I love this blog. Even the entries I don’t quite understand the anger behind because I don’t live in Portland are still interesting and entertaining. And my goodness, Lars has a lot of racist/bigoted followers. No shock there, though.
Will I’m pretty sure you’re NOT originally from the East Coat (let alone NYC, which, as I already stated, I am) and you also need some serious anger management therapy.
I know you’re not a New Yorker because you love cars and driving. Many REAL New Yorkers never learn to drive (again, I’m one of them) and rely solely on public transportation (or bike, it’s quite popular therw, too). We also regard Boston OR Philly (a cesspool, except for the Mainline) as vastly, even laughably inferior.
While I agree that the food here is lacking (the entire point of my post, BTW)—Portland has and does have arep as a food town. It just doesn’t live up to the hype.
As for your attack on all us “libruls”, every city you mentioned (except maybe Dallas) is just as progressive, if not more so. I can’t think of asingle Mis-Atlantic city that doesn’t invariably vote blue.
I’ve also been panhandled many, many times by white people in NYC—and what difference does it make what skin color someone has, anyway? It would seem by your infinitely ignorant posts your NY knowledge has been gleaned from a tourism pamphlets and your “visit” was a layover at JFK.
One fnal note: NYC has a lower minimum wage than Portland does, there are many, many poor people there. Just it hurts even more. And no, I wasn’t one of them.
Oh I forgot, San Francisco is another notable city to check out where you would be hard pushed to find a yokel or redneck (unlike Stumptown where you’re likely to run into one on virtually every block).
If you have to be in the midwest then really Chicago’s your only real option if you want any kind of sophistication and worldliness, otherwise it too is a cultural wilderness much like the rest of Oregon.
Sorry to be harsh on little Portland but the truth can sometimes hurt, and I’m only telling it as I see it. I’ve travelled the world and it has to be said that the USA is a vast country physically but lacks any real substance, it is a moral and cultural void (with the exception of the three cities I mentioned) and PDX is just a reflection of the larger picture.
Anouska, I’ll agree that NYC is far more sophsiticated (for what it’s worth) and I’ll never understand HOW we acquired our reputation as a food town (our restaurants really, really SUCK). And yes, people here are a bit provincial and xenophobic (though as a former New Yorker, there’s plenty of that in Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island, too!)….BUT I have to disagree with your post after that.
SF, NYC and Chicago are filthy cities full of painfully rude people. And plenty of those cities’ inhabitants are far stinkier than the faux hippies here. I actually don’t even notice THAT many hippies here (and I live in SE)—everyone I see is either painfully suburban mall or dressed to go camping (permanently).
While I’ll agree neither of these are sartorial efforts I seek to emulate, they are, at least clean.
And while, no it isn’t nirvana here (nor is it anywhere) and we could certainly use some more entertainment (that isn’t stupid soccer and stadiums built with urban renewal funds/our $$$$ for the next 1,0000 years)—it’s a perfectly pleasant life. And (contrary to what everyone’s convinced themselves) for a coastal city, an affordable one.
Zumpie: Portland doesn’t HAVE a reputation for anything, let alone food. Your thinking of NYC – a great town full of great people and the best food. If you’re broke they will chew you up and spit you out though. Just how it should be.
Portland is a quaint, pretty little city. Some interesting architecture and nice greenery. It is, however, full of grubby hippies full of their own self-importance and bitter about their miserable social standing. I’ve never seen a city packed with so many unsophisticated, provincial yokels who believe that they are learned, hip and oh so well informed.
The only city in this God forsaken country even worth checking out is NYC. It is, at least, packed with culture, diversity and people who look as if they shower on a daily basis. New Yorkers might be perceived as rude and unfriendly but you know where you stand with them, they are authentic. The majority of Portlanders are passive aggressive, spacey and fake. The stinking hippies aren’t about peace and love, even though those are the virtues they apparently expound. They’re more interested in getting stoned or drunk, living in squalor and bitching about people with money. God, I hate this shithole… can’t wait to leave the cesspit of humanity that is PDX.
Well said. Portland sucks!
PDX is for podunk assholes
i’m a native of portland; born here and lived here all my life. i’m also not of drinking age, so i can’t write about that. but i do want to respond to some stuff i’ve been seeing pop up here.
1. the people: i’ve never had trouble getting to know people in this city. personally, i think it’s a lot friendlier than seattle or new york. what i’ve found is everyone will talk to you if you’re happy and they’re happy too. but not everyone is going to be your best friend all at once, and very few people are going to want to jump into your life upon the first meeting. but people are nice in general; that’s been my experience.
2. the fashion/lack thereof: portland is not a fashion mecca. neither, for that matter, is new york, paris, or london. in every city you’re going to find impeccably dressed people, cutting-edge fashionable people (which could fall under the next category of), people who simply don’t care and wear weird clothing, and people who should be wearing a little more. that’s just the way life is. if a city’s advertised as fashionable it’s because there’s a certain segment of people who are indeed classy and show it off and some newspaper/blogger/travel mag took note. that’s really it.
3. things to do: if you can’t find it, you’re looking in the wrong places. portland’s got theatre, art, music (we have a fantastic underground scene), bike trails, bookstores, interesting stores, etc etc and so forth. there is something to do in the city, you just need to look for it.
in fact, i think that can apply to a lot of things about portland (and perhaps cities in general). if you want to do something, you need to seek it out. people are not going to walk up to you and ask to be your friend; you are not going to get fliers in the mail telling you about all the goings-on in town (unless you’re on the mailing list of 1840918 businesses and organizations…). you have to look for it, but what’s there is absolutely amazing.
so yeah. some things suck, but it’s not like other cities don’t suck, either.
Alright, since this appears to be the catch-all post for random comments, I’ll spew my blarg here.
I’m tired of Portlanders and Oregonians in general bitching about Californians coming to town and screwing everything, from housing prices to traffic, right the hell up. First of all, the population is expanding everywhere – you’re not just going to make it go away with passive-aggressive comments on the internet. Do you wanna know why so many of us want to flee California? Because everyone else, from everywhere else, is coming HERE! And for the record, I’ve never heard anyone in California bitch about “those a-holes from Michigan.”
So why do Californians come to Portland? Is the real estate investment? Not likely… UGB and zoning laws put a nix on a lot of those McMansion plans. Is it the jobs or the weather? LOL! It sure as hell ain’t the hospitable attitude, as you’ve all made it abundantly clear what you think of us. No, what drives MANY Californians to your fare city is that they actually like the city! They don’t want to live somewhere “exactly like where they came from”… they want to live somewhere exactly like Portland. That’s as good as it gets folks. You don’t get a better kind of immigrant than that, and if you still have a problem with it, well it’s your problem, not ours.
I realize I’m making generalizations, but you need to understand that more people than you think are coming to Portland because they WANT to. The love it’s old neighborhoods, it’s funky neighborhoods, it’s trendy neighborhoods. They like it’s “weirdness”. (They probably don’t like the stinky hippies or the hipsters… that’s universal in its douchiness. Sorry.) So try not to be so reflexive when you here the word “California”, and we’ll try extra hard not to drive like a-holes when it’s raining.
Signed,
Your-Future-Neighbor
Great link to the article about the Seattle Freeze. Yes, Portland is ice cold and not just to people, it is ice cold to businesses as well. This is why Oregon always has such a high unemployment rate and so few people in such a geographically large state.
I believe that both states suffer from the same cultural affliction. Natives of both states fled from populated areas to live alone in the woods. Those cultural tendencies have been passed down to the current population. These people do not mix well with others including each other.
Tree hugging is real except that it isn’t about the environment, people in Portland commune with trees because they can’t deal with other people including each other. That’s a pretty sad thing to say about people but it is true nonetheless.
I think the other cause of the deep freeze is that, at least in Oregon, natives have absolutely nothing interesting going on. There is nothing to do. Part of their lack of sociability is embarrassment that they have lived in the area their entire lives and haven’t found anything interesting to do.
Most Oregonians, I have found, do not travel far from where they started off as kids. They do not have any interest in other places, even as close as twenty miles away, and they have some deep seated fear of other people. I find Oregonians to be culturally very similar to people in the Deep South or Appalachia. I suspect their ancestors came from similar places.
It is best to ignore all native Oregonians whenever possible. Unfortunately, they populate the government so you have to deal with their listless, uninterested and often rude mentality every now and again but there is no reason to try and make friends with them. There are enough ‘outsiders’ from other places unless you need tons of friends.
Oregonians are tolerable in small doses but there is no reason to invite them into your home. I have done business with the natives and will not make that same mistake twice either.
A word to the wise, treat Oregonians as an alien species. Tolerable, sometimes an interesting curiosity but nothing to let into your circle.
If we’re so terrible, leave. Oregon is Oregon because of us, not because of those that started moving here in the last fifteen years. We made the cool neighborhoods, the organic farms, preserved the natural resources everyone raves about, and we love it. I feel bad for you and your closed mind. As a native Oregonian I have traveled the world and seen much of what it has to offer and the people here have always been kind to me and those I am with. Maybe your trouble with us natives is that you have been such a rude human that they don’t want to deal with you.
There is nothing to do in the entire Portland area. Just how many times can you look at another tree?
Yes you can bike around the place but you risk getting hit by a car since there are so few separated bike lanes. Since it rains almost all year long (1000 hours a year, more than any other city in the country) you can only bike for about a month a year without wearing a raincoat.
Who wants to bike wearing a raincoat? Why aren’t there bike lanes separated by, you know, cement from, you know, the army of gas guzzling SUVs? There is always a report about some cyclist getting hit by a car. It isn’t a fair fight. The cyclist almost always dies.
Portland has NOTHING to do. NOTHING. There are some restaurants but they have all gone downhill in the last few decades. The well known ones have gloppy food. Too many ingredients in the dishes resulting in gloppy, brownish food.
I tell you, look at the Mayor of Portland. He NEVER smiles. He always looks ANGRY. If that is the visage of the Mayor of Portland, doesn’t that tell you everything? Portland is depressing.
Even with all of this, Portland is 1,000 times the city that Tigard is. Tigard is just gross. Tigard city government is useless. Tigard people are worthless.
In comparison to Tigard, Portland looks like Nirvana. Funny how that works.
Thanks you all…this site is fantastic. It makes me laugh every time.
I love things about Portland…but really, it’s more fun to hate. And Erik, you are the best.
Well having tried to make a go of it for 4 years here I certainly understand the comments. Jengee who married a 4th gen PDXer said ‘problem with people bitching about Portland is they didn’t grow up here and they just want it to be like where they came from’. Nope, you’re wrong about that. Your take is clouded by having married someone with an ‘in’. If you don’t have an ‘in’ you are OUT. People are friendly here, but forget personal relationships. Not happening.
See this http://tinyurl.com/pooey2
This is a great article. I’m going through the Portland freeze myself. I haven’t quite overcome it, even though I’m native!
6. Your shitty mass transit system. Hi, I’m the max, a retarded above ground train system that goes 10 mph through the city of Portland. Explain to me how it couldn’t go underground, you know, like how REAL CITIES do their mass transit.
7. Beer snobs. Wow, you have microbrews, good for you. Guess what, I can buy a European beer just as good as your shitty microbrew for just as much money. Just cause you made it doesn’t make it good.
8. Lack of fashion. Yes I said it, The women here dress like fucking slobs. Do they give a shit about how they look? You all look like you’re ready to go hiking rather then dress like a woman. It’s fucking gross.Go to NYC, then you’ll see how women should dress. It’s ok to show some skin and be proud you have tits and an ass. Rain Jackets are not the only option.
Holy shit, you’re a fucking idiot. I agree with a lot of what people are saying here but…
1. Most cities do not have underground transport. Fuck off back to New York, or better yet, try London. London is so awesome. Really, you’d love it.
2. The beer here is good. Better than 99% of what I drank in the UK and the rest of Europe.
3. Go back to New York. Portland, as far as how people dress daily, is on par with most European cities. But if you really want women stumbling around in barely there coverage in 30 degree weather, go to the UK. Then get glassed by their drunken Chav boyfriends.
Or! Try Italy, and get glassed by their drunken Italian boyfriends. Or Spain… you get the idea.
Nope. That peson was right. You are fucked and wrong. I love this:
8. Lack of fashion. Yes I said it, The women here dress like fucking slobs. Do they give a shit about how they look? You all look like you’re ready to go hiking rather then dress like a woman. It’s fucking gross.Go to NYC, then you’ll see how women should dress. It’s ok to show some skin and be proud you have tits and an ass. Rain Jackets are not the only option.
It’s true. If you had ever been to NYC you would know that the dirty, homeless lesbian look is not IN there. I have been to Austria, Germany, France and England this year. It’s not big there either. There is nothing good, unique or European about the fashions of Portland. Everyone here is too broke or stupid to catch on to any trends anyway. Seattle does a much better job. But hey, the rest of the world has actually HEARD of Seattle. Not Portland. Go back to your farm and stop thinking you are hot shit because you live in the largest city in Oregon. It’s kinda like being the biggest turd in a toilet.
The bloggers-the blogging-the blogs.
Well…All interesting posts. I’d have to say I love this website because I like to laugh at things that are annoying. I am one of those migrators who read books, articles, and blog posts of how grand everything is in Portland and after reading this site and living here for 2 years I’ve come to realize two things …
1) Portland is awesome. There is so much stuff to do. Yes it takes what seems to be an exhausting effort to do anything (Ever got up at 5am to hit the chair lift by 9 at Meadows?) but, at least its here. There is an amazing mix of city/outdoor life here, but that comes at the sacrifice of time and money spent. I’d lived in places where I had outdoor fun at my finger tips (literally a 5 minute drive on some obscure dirt road and I was all alone in the wilderness. That happens when you grow up in a mountain town of 1400 people). I’ve also lived in exciting cities with great restaraunts, bars, concerts, and loads of entertainment. Yet, I’ve never lived somewhere that mixes the two. I believe Portland does a great job of that.
2) People here are difficult. Clique-ish so hits the nail on the head. It’s ridiculous. I totally agree that people here are friendly but, on an extremely shallow level. Ask them if they’d like to carpool to the mountain on the weekend or get a beer while taking in a big sports event and … “My GOD, did I just insult this person? Why are they looking at me as if my upper lip dawns a puss-oozing herpe? I just simply asked if they’d want to hang out.”
I’m an extremely sociable person and love to be around people. I understand that not everyone is going to be my friend and, I too dislike a considerable amount of people (Hipsters, neo-con Meatheads, and Yuppies…to name a few) but, I have never been in a place where it is sooo hard to meet people.
For example, I walk my dog on average 5 times a day (he’s small..got a weak bladder). I have gotten to know what my neighboors look like on my walks. I could match each one of my block-mates’ face to their corresponding house. But, I don’t know anyones name. I have waved, smiled, struck up rehtorical conversation with just about everyone on my block but, as soon as we’re done exchanging pleasantries, they seem to retreat quicker than my own weazel in ice water.
Ok, so I have been reading all the hate about portland, and all the bitching. Its seriously the most pathetic shit in the world. Who the fuck cares. Some of us are from places that are literally a shit hole. Example: Ohio. FUCK OHIO. I haven’t been anywhere in the US besides Portland that i like better. I’ve been everywhere too. New York is way to fucking overrated. rich snobby assholes that have no consideration for anyone. so is LA and Chicago. Mostly everyone from these places are so fucking rude. Nobody gives a shit about anyone. Its all about fucking money. FUCK money. I chose to move here because i want to live happy. Portland is a place where you can ride your damn bicycle to wherever safely. yes the car traffic sucks, thats why you ride a bicycle and learn patience my young padawin. This place is just more friendlier than other places. yes there can be your typical asshole once in a while but the majority of the people here are pretty nice. i hate the suburbs, but who doesnt hate the suburbs around any city. there all the fucking same. yea there are your hipsters, so what, big fucking deal. Get the fuck over it. you cant make them leave, if they like it here then they like it here. learn to share this place with all kinds of people. stop being such a dumb ass and shut the fuck up. if you hate it here, pack up your shit and move the fuck away from here. we don’t need people here who are going to complain about life and how dirty you think it is here and how the transit sucks. who gives a shit. if you think it is dirty here, fucking visit new york, la, chicago, toledo, detroit, columbus, st. louis, kansas city, orlando, cleveland and hundreds of other places. how many cities are the bicycle capital of the United states? how many cities have trees in there city(alot of trees). how many cities have extremely beautiful scenery so close, such as the oregon coast, the gorge, mt hood. there is so much shit you can do here. and if you bitch about the rain, stop being a fucking pussy. its just water. thats why its so green here all year round. if you get depressed over the rain, please just leave. if you wanna see the sun. climb to the summit of any mountain around here. do realize humans only need little sun? and humans are mostly made of water. oh shit. ohhhh. ok well im done about this shit cuz its just retarded. so basically here is my advice to you.. you have choices since you are in america you know. 1 if you hate rain and get depressed over it please get the fuck outta here. 2 if you hate bicyclists get the fuck outta here. move to the fucking midwest you fat ass lazy fucker you needs a car in order to live happy and survive so you can drive to your walmart late at nite and buy all the fucking ice cream you want so you can fucking gain an ass load of weight that way you can buy a bigger car and get the handicapped spots because you need a fucking scooter to maneuver yourself around walmart. oh yeah. and 24hr fitness. you seriously wanna waste your money with that shit. get the fuck out from under the fucking shelter from the rain and go run that shit off, or ride your bike, if you know how to ride one. 24hr fitness… if you like to be a little hefty. be hefty. im not hating people who are fat. im just sick of people who are lazy and complain but dont do shit about it. instead of wasting your time with buying shit how about you give that money up for people who need that have no house to live in and feed them. half of these people probably arnt even from here. they come from other places because somehow they heard that in portland there are people who like to give and feed people and talk with them. i cant believe some of you people can think they are just smelly good for nothing people. alot of them yes are going through rough times with drugs and shit like that. and some lose there jobs because of this good for nothing fucking economy. do you realize if each and everyone american gave up one dollar, it would fucking end world hunger. you know some of these people have no place to go, no one to love them, nobody that even realize they even exist. everyone deserves second chances. this is rediculous, and this fucker whoever made up this fucking website has nothing better to do than hate on a city. a city, a pink building. who gives a shit, its a fucking pink building. if you care about nice buildings go to hong kong or dubai. somewhere far away from here please. 3 i heard something about success in this website. what is success? money? fame? your stupid little career? how big house your is? how nice your car is? success is a joke. its all about those material things. please if you drive a hummer. join the army so you can drive your damn hummer right into a fuckin landmine. thats why people here drive VWs asshole. and vovlvos. you can run the diesels on vegetable oil. guess what that shit grows in ohio, and those people who are running their car dont really have to pay shit for it and it gets you far. you can go drive out east to see the fuckin sun if you want. put 2 and 2 together. it makes since. wake up and smell all the starbucks thats on your corner. that way you can be intelligent and know you dont need alot of money to live and that portland is one of the greatest places ever. why do you think all the other cities are taking after us? think mcfly
No one is taking after Portland. No one cares about portland. Where do you people get this shit? I heard the other day that Portland considers itself to be “the most european city in the U.S.” Oh my god!!!! Apparently most of the people in this town have never been to the east coast: Philly, NYC, Boston: ALL built by EUROPEANS. It looks and feels NOTHING like Portland. This shit hole will always be a big Spokane or a half ass wanna be Seattle and thats all it will ever be. In my personal opinion it actually kind looks like Pittsburgh. But I can say things like that. I’ve actually been outside of the northwest.
jeimuzu: oh shit, I actually just took the time to read your little rant. You really like bikes huh?! I do like biking too. But driving is fun also, especially if you have a license. I take it that you don’t. Fat people, you fucking HATE THEM! WOW. Yeah, me too. Especially on airplanes. Not gonna argue with ya on that one. Here’s my big problem with everything you said: YOU ARE A HATER. A hater? Definition: Wants what he/she can’t have. Is mad it people that have what he/she will never have (is too lazy to work for what they REALLY want). I find that this is most of Portland. I hear people in this town bitching because Seattle is tying to be like Portland. NO. It isn’t. Seattle could give a shit. The rest of the world could also give shit.
jeimuzu: you were born and raised here. You have never spent more that a year ANYWHERE else. This is why you feel this way and this is why you will alway hate what you don’t understand and it is also why you hate people that have what you think you don’t wont. Portland: the only city where it’s cool to be a homeless WHITE guy that stands on the freeway onramp with a sign – the only city where I can stand ANYWHERE in the downtown area, smoking a cig, and know that I will be hit up for one at LEAST 5 times before I can finnish it, ALL BY WHITE PEOPLE!!!!! INSANE!!!
Fuck all you lazy, ignorant, hippy, liberal, Obama loving, knock kneed, bucktooth, smug ass, ugly, bearded, freak ass, sacks of shit! No one outside of Portland likes Portland and most of this world has never HEARD of Portland. They all think your Laking about Portland, Maine- a far better town. Yep town. Neither Portland is an actual city. These are actual cities:
L.A., New York, Chicago, Seattle, Miami, New Orleans, Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Um, that pretty much does it. Fuck you and die.
Well having tried to make a go of it for 4 years here I certainly understand the comments. Jengee who married a 4th gen PDXer said ‘problem with people bitching about Portland is they didn’t grow up here and they just want it to be like where they came from’. Nope, you’re wrong about that. Your take is clouded by having married someone with an ‘in’. If you don’t have an ‘in’ you are OUT. People are friendly here, but forget personal relationships. Not happening.
See this http://tinyurl.com/pooey2
Another bad habit of these natives, is their PDX version of live and let live. It should read ‘you can do whatever the f*ck you want, because I’m going to do whatever the f*ck I want, even if it means you can’t sleep’ Don’t dare ask a native to turn down a stereo or be considerate, those are fighting words. Passive aggression RULES this town. The overly kid friendly nature of Portland is VERY annoying, I’ve not seen a city with so many self indulgent parents. It is a sickness.
Here is a tip if you just located here. If you are trying to find a job, play down any excellent experience. Do not come off as professional. It may be best to feign a drooling problem, get a temporary tattoo, grow a second ass, don’t make eye contact, say you are in a band, talk about skate/snow boarding (if the 2nd ass doesn’t work out), and finally you MUST change your resume to say you went to the U of OR. They won’t check, they are too farking stupid. Speaking of stupid, no place has more left lane bandits, Erick is right about that, but wrong about food. OR foodstuffs esp during market season, it is one of the best in the US. Maybe it would help if you cook. The lack of rest choice has a lot to do with lack of ethnic diversity. Did all the natives come from Wisconsin ? One other odd thing is how many cases of men with underage girls there are, well I guess with the Mayor it is just younguns. The hair trigger the cops have is indeed very worrying, it must be the passive aggressive thing.
I do have empathy for the any gay guy that looks gay. I think saw one in four years. Bears. And they are pretty grizzly. There are even Lesbian bears in Portland, lots of them. Where else can you live and not have people barf when they see your 3 foot long mole hair braid ?
I still like Portland of course, but c’mon, you have to have known about the weather bit, are you completely ignorant ? The weather is not as bad as Seattle. Subaru Outbacks at least allow view of the traffic ahead unlike big ass SUVs you’ll find in Austin, Texass. Did you visit Portland first ? One visit would tell you how white it is. One nice thing is that white and blacks live together (for the most part) in NE, which is rare in most other cities. Fashion ? It is the pacific nw, what do expect ? For it to change ? My first week here I went to the symphony, 3 people in pajamas. Its just the way it is. You want style ? a 100sq ft apt awaits you in NYC.
I found that avoiding SE meant I didn’t have to endure sharing airspace with hippies and other self focused types. Moving from the close quarters NE to SW was a transforming experience. At that point, portland became a livable city. Still no one wanted to be friends.
So if you have a source income independent of Oregon, like the outdoors, like good food, perfect summers, don’t mind the gray, don’t need friends and want to live somewhere that at least is interesting, this may be the place.
A lot of you guys kinda sound like you’re here against your will. I’ll admit when I first moved here 15 years ago, I had a lot of the same complaints. It seemed like there were a lot of hippies and holier than thou attitude. The reason I did move here though was that it was a really really long way from Dallas/Austin Texas where I grew up and went to college. Yes, Austin is awesome. So is Portland. If your boyfriend “made” you move here and you hate it- make him move somewhere else. The funny thing I’ve noticed is when I moved here everyone was a drunken music whore just trying to get some. Now everyone seems to have knocked up/been knocked up and there are toddlers everywhere. But that’s because I go to grown up places. All the “kids” I work with in their 20′s don’t have the same complaints I do. My husband is a 4th generation Portlander. Our experiences don’t seem to fall in line with a lot of complaints on here. The only real complaints I have are the “So how’s your day going” question which is just stupid. I am behind a cash register, you are not. How do you think my day is going? I ring up retards and dipshits all day long. But that’s my choice. I hate people yet I work retail. I have a choice. All of you do. Hey gay guy- go to Ohio or Arkansas and see how well they treat you there. The problem with people bitching about Portland is they didn’t grow up here and they just want it to be like where they came from. If you don’t like a place, a job, a relationship you leave. Period. I believe the point of this website is to vent about the relatively benign annoyances of a city that you basically love. Having a problem with the heart in Oregon stickers? Yeah, I guess it’s really lame to have pride in the place you live. Don’t like smoky bars? They’re done. If you don’t like beer snobs, don’t go to those bars. There are plenty of bars where you can get a cheap beer. Sure we have waaaay too many homeless people and casual bikers who think they’re the norm and believe me I bitch about it daily. But most of you seem to be bitching more about the way the town makes you FEEL than any actual problems.
OK.
Portland sucks cause PORTLANDERS PRETEND IT DOESN’T SUCK! The stats:
-Portland ranks as the 27th most populated city in the US… but the suicide rate -among females- RANKS 4TH IN THE US!
-people happy here are just drunk. They typically won’t say drunken alcoholic: they’re into ‘the new microbrews’ or ‘the vintner scene in willAMMette valley’…
-people here say they’re pro-cycling then: bike w/o helmets, ride drunk & flout vehicular laws (til they’re hit and sue an auto driver).
-people here pretend to support environmental conservation yet maintain one of the worst recycling rates in the US: until this year they smoked in your face while eating, and they drive EVERYWHERE-not on streets but ON FREEWAYS, GENERATING TWICE THE LEVEL OF SMOG OUTPUT compared to driving at speeds of 50 mpg or less.
I lived in nyc my whole life -and traveled the world. i’m pretty confident that PDX has meaner, dumber, unfunner people than anywhere!
The “Snow” a.k.a. “The Great Storm Of _INSERT YEAR HERE_”
The “pathetic one to three inches” of snow we received this week closed the damn airport. Do you realize how important it is for my damned sister in law (that I live with) to leave this city is for the holidays? I need her to leave or I’m going to strangle her. I’m serious. Call the police and report me, because I swear to whatever may be holy that if she doesn’t leave me be for a couple of weeks I need to be arrested.
My bliss was delayed because nobody, NATIVE OR OTHERWISE, knows how to deal with “OMFGZ SNOW HELL FROM ABOVE!! WE’RE DOOMED!!!” in this city.
I hate this place.No one wants to make friends.They go out with all their friends in a group.People take their dogs everywhere,dogs belong in the park or in the backyard.Its so Gloomy,Rain,Hippie,Alternative people,Naked bike riding.Do Not Come Here.Oregon Sucks.
I’m glad to find this site, I hate Portland as well. I’ll give credit where credit is due. Portland has some really cool restaurants, coffeehouses, etc. I’ve lived all over the U.S. and in Japan. Portland has one of the most vibrant, alive, heppening downtowns I’ve seen. It’s also really cool to be in a very liberal city, one of the few places I’ve lived where I’ve never ever felt weird, threatened or intimidated because I’m gay(and by gay, I mean, obviously gay.)
I was feeling stuck here too due to a good job and a chance to do some creative arts things I’ve been wanting to do, but recently, I came into a small family inheritance and next year I am outta here.
I’m moving back to Austin, which is about ten times cooler than Portland. Here’s why:
1. People. People in the NW suck. They are rude, snotty and clique-ish. They don’t want to make new friends. If you try to smile and be friendly with them, they treat you like you are trying to get something out of them. Everyone is way too serious and pc, with a giant vegan stick up their butt. Everyone is trying so hard to be cool and prove to themselves that they live in a super cool city.
It’s all over the area. A friend of mine moved to Bellingham, WA, for a job and experienced the exact same thing. She was miserable and couldn’t make any friends. After a year and a half of misery, she moved to Denver, where she is really happy.
Austin, by contrast, has very friendly people. They are happy to meet you and want to hear all about you. They will invite you to have lunch with them or come to their next party. People in Austin just want to have fun. A friend of mine in Portland recently visited a friend of mine in Austin. She was blown away by the people. She mentioned that the people in Austin seem a little chubbier. My friend and I were like, hell yeah, they aren’t living on sushi and soy lattes and an occasional microbrew like Portland losers. People in Austin enjoy their nachos and ribs and margaritas. They stay out late and have a good time. They enjoy life.
2. The demographics. Portland is one of the youngest towns I’ve ever lived in, which is great if you’re in your twenties or thirties. Not so great if you are in your forties like me. In Austin, I could go to bars, coffeehouses, etc, where there were a mix of ages. I live in inner Portland and I go to so many places where it seems like everyone is 25. Strange.
3. The damn kids and dogs. I hate kids, I don’t want kids in my face 24/7. People here take their freaking kids everywhere and then don’t discipline them because they don’t want to stifle their
“expression” and they want to be cool parents. I can’t walk down the damn street without running into fifteen million strollers or parents with kids. In Austin, people keep their kids home at lot more. And their dogs. I love pets, but I want to meet your pet in your home or your yard, not at Hollywood video or god forbid, a restaurant, or coffeehouse. They’re supposed to be abiding by the state health dept rules. This usually means: no animals. Not everyone thinks your kid or pet is cute. If they give you “that look” it is because you are annoying them.
4. The weather. 9 months of gloom, doom, mold and wetness. Ugh. It makes me want to slit a wrist. Austin has 300 days per year of sunshine. Yes, it is hotter than hell for about three months out of the year and warm/sticky for much of the rest, but it’s better than gray and dreary. And in Austin, you can get out of your air conditioned car and go into your air conditioned apartment that has central air. Something else Portland doesn’t have.
I could go on: the over hyped, overly expensive transit system, the ugly industrial condos, etc. Go to hell, Portland.
Excellent suggestion, a completely predictable answer. Unfortunately for me my Job is great, but this town blows. Oh, and it’s a town.
Erick, you should probably move. Seriously.
damn. if I knew there were so many people who hated hipsters, the shitty moldy nasty weather, outbacks, pearl people, gentrification and the lack of diversity in this place I might have found a reason to stay. I have not met a single person who agrees with me on any of those points, they either don’t notice or don’t respond at all.. there’s another negative for you, people who have their heads so far up their own ass or so deep in some stupid hip scene they don’t even know where they are.
1. The 9-10 months of rain
2. The fact you fucking Oregon idiots always say “Our summer are so great!!” yea they are but guess what, it’s 2-3 months before it all turns to shit again you fucking idiots
3. LEARN TO FUCKING DRIVE. Left lane = fast, that means if you intend to drive the speed limit move the FUCK OVER.
4. No pro sports. Ok you have the Trailblazers, who have sucked for how long? Ducks vs. Beavers is amateur sports. Who gives a shit, seriously.
5. Lack of good food. No, you don’t have good food. Go to NY, you can find a better restaurant in a block for far less cheap then Portland. I don’t want gouda on my fucking pizza, give me a plain slice of tasty pizza, but you dumb fucking hippies can even pull that off.
6. Your shitty mass transit system. Hi, I’m the max, a retarded above ground train system that goes 10 mph through the city of Portland. Explain to me how it couldn’t go underground, you know, like how REAL CITIES do their mass transit.
7. Beer snobs. Wow, you have microbrews, good for you. Guess what, I can buy a European beer just as good as your shitty microbrew for just as much money. Just cause you made it doesn’t make it good.
8. Lack of fashion. Yes I said it, The women here dress like fucking slobs. Do they give a shit about how they look? You all look like you’re ready to go hiking rather then dress like a woman. It’s fucking gross.Go to NYC, then you’ll see how women should dress. It’s ok to show some skin and be proud you have tits and an ass. Rain Jackets are not the only option.
9. Nosy/Friendly people. No, I don’t give a shit about the weather, I don’t care about your weekend, I don’t want to tell you about mine, just move along with your business.
10. No Dunkin Donuts. Honestly. I don’t want to pay 5 bucks for your shitty latte. I want a wonderful 2.00 x-large coffee, plain. No heart shaped things in my coffee, no “organic” milk, give me my fucking normal coffee, for cheap.
11. “Oregonians” you’re all fucking brainwashed, get out some, you’ll see there are far better places then Portland. Just drive 3 hours north, Seattle blows Portland out of the water. You live in a tiny little town that offers no contribution to the United States. You are a black hole for hippies, bums, and people who generally suck.
“Those annoying stickers with the green heart in the Oregon outline… blech.”
Would somebody please tell me what those things are? Whats the story?
BTW, there needs to be a blog entry on Scientology in Portland.
I love this blog spot; it’s so edgy and dark. I am sooooo sick of Portland, OMG. I F*3king hate all the good restaurants. I mean f*$k, I can’t even find a good chain restaurant inside the city limits. I am so over summer here in Portland, 80′s degrees ever day just sucks. Has anybody been out to the Gorge? I cannot stand the nice hiking and biking trails with amazing views. I swear every time I go out there all I want to do is get on a computer log onto thingsaboutportlandthatsuck and bitch about it.
Let’s see, what else do I hate about Portland. The Oregon Coast, it sucks! It’s too clean and beautiful, there are no crowds…it’s almost like it is pristine or something, I just can’t handle it anymore.
I am livid about these micro-brews, there f#*king everywhere. All I want is a Zima, a Miller Light, or a Mike’s Hard; is that too hard ask?. These local tasty refreshing brews, make me want to move to LA, a place that doesn’t suck and I can bitch all the time…that would be awesome.
No thanks, trome I lived in New Jersey when I was in basic training in 1983 and it colder then shit in the winter
Major Wankers, all y’all.
go live in new jersey.
Who gets English degrees? I would kill to be a Subway Sandwich Artist.
Well, Piss Off, Then:
The diploma mill from where you stole your English degree must be so proud. So…bookstore drone or Subway sandwich jockey?
I generally love Portland. Having lived in many cities in the U.S., I know that Portland really is a gem in comparison. That said, we all have our Portland pet peeves. And mine is the, “I’m-in-my-30′s-but-still-acting-like-I’m-22″ attitude and lifestyle that seems so prevalent in P-town these days.
It’s like this, folks. If you’re 33, college-educated and reasonably intelligent, it really ISN’T cool that you still make $10/hour, and change employers like some people change underwear. Yeah, I know…you’re trying to be a hipster and are WAY too cool to ever think about having a – gasp! – “career”. And besides, there are happy hours at the Doug Fir to worry about! And updating and checking your Myspace page every 10 minutes takes time!
But when I see you quit another job (the second one this year) because you were treated SOOOOOO poorly (not really), and then complain that you don’t know how you’re going to pay rent this month, I want to smack you. Yeah, this routine was amusing when you were 25. But now that you’re heading into your mid-30′s, it’s not really so funny anymore. It’s a little pathetic, actually.
And before you know it, you’ll be 40. You’ll be “that old dude” (or dudette) at the Doug Fir. Your bank account will still be empty. You’ll see more and more unpleasant reminders that you’re really not 22 anymore. And at that point, you will be dangerously close to being labeled as one of “life’s losers”.
So, snap out of it “I’m-a-marginally-employed-33-year-old-Portland-hipster” person! Because deep down, I actually like you. I really do! You give this town some of it’s delicious flavor. But be aware that you are traveling down a road where the scenery won’t get prettier than it’s been. And going forward, consider taking a different road.
I have lived all over the country and LOVE portland! You people are only whining because you are pathetic. It is far too easy to bitch about where you live and blame it for being the reason your life sucks. The real reason is likely that you are just a pathetic human being with nothing valuable to bring to the table. There are far too many of you here already, so go back to southern california, or detriot, or vermont or where ever the hell you’re from!!!
- Reedies. Totally annoying, telling you what this town is all about. Or whatever fucking thing is all about. Every year there are new ones. It’s been going on for decades.
- They think the art and the scene is so hot here. Ask them where they’ve been. Oh, they know all about New York and London. They had a vacation there.
- Yeah, people say they love it but that’s because it wins by default. They don’t want to work as hard as it takes to live elsewhere. So they say it’s so cool instead.
- As to peeing in public without hitting a coffeeshop, you can’t pee in public, period. The cops kill you for that.
- Diversity talk. It’s total trash. If you really want diversity, don’t move here. Or if you move here, then shut up about it. When some people move to NE Portland, they congratulate themselves as if it’s a moral and ethical choice.
Trapped Transplant, I was once exactly in your position, with precisely your evaluation. Portland is Gary, Indiana with trees.
I need to rant about how much I hate Portland so badly I could scream! I apologize this is probably rambling, meaningless claptrap, but I hope there is someone else out there who can appreciate it, as I have appreciated the other postings on this site.
It was my boyfriend’s idea to move here. Believe me, I wanted nothing to do with it from the beginning. I grew up on the East coast already hating rain and cloudy weather, getting so depressed in the winter I could barely get out of bed. Now, I have to deal with the dark and dank 9-10 months out of the year. I really don’t know how much longer I can take it.
Also, I hate that it’s so terrible to hate or complain about Portland. Those heart Oregon stickers, and people talking about how much they love the rain… I don’t buy it. And what about all the trash everywhere? This has be one of the dirtiest cities I’ve ever seen–like eastern europe dirty. Oregon is so poor it can’t take care of the roads, and the government pours all its money into pub trans that I will never ever use. I hate pub trans. If that makes me a bad person, so be it. I don’t like sitting next smelly, dirty people, and I like to get places in a reasonable amount of time. Of course, all the construction throughout the city pretty much makes that impossible.
short list of things i hate about portland:
1. weather
2. dark, dank, damp, moldy
3. filthy, dirty, trash everywhere
4. state is too poor to maintain proper services (like trash collection)
5. there are only two states in the country that put less money into funding for the arts than oregon
6. their schools suck
7. no high-paying jobs in portland, only service industry crap
8. everyone talks about how much they love oregon and portland all the time
9. why is this city hip? why? because it’s supposed to be cheap?
10. myth that portland is soooo less expensive than anywhere else, therefore it’s worth enduring all the above-mentioned reasons this place is a dump.
Thank you all so much for letting me vent!
Trapped Transplant,
While I have my own (see below) list of things I hate about Portland (even though I overall do like it here), I gotta say WHERE did you live on the East Coast??? Every Mid-Atlantic or Northern major city is waaaay dirtier than Portland and (except Phillie, which is a cess pool) much, much more expensive. And have far worse educational systems.
As for weather, I’ll take a warmish, rainy winter and a cool, dry summer happily over the sub zero/oven bake humidity weather of the East Coast any day.
And there are plenty of decent paying jobs (or were before the economy crashed)—and I even work in hospitality. My husband doesn’t and makes as much as he would in NYC.
And seriously, what eastern city are you from that you hate public transportation? Based on your comments, (other than being familiar with winter) I’d guess you’re from North Carloina or something.
I will agree that Portland is distinctly NOT hip or cool (and have never understood why it thinks it is). But I don’t really find that many people who say they love it here.
Now for MY list
1) Restaurants Suck. I have absolutely NO idea how we ever garned our rep as a food town. Because we definitely don’t deserve it. My family and I eat at home primarily because we almost always leave feeling completely unimpressed.
2) Ditto our hotels. I don’t know why we have tourists come here every year (and are THRILLED) to stay downtown in a faux boutique property, look at empty storefronts and eat our above mentioned crappy food. Doesn’t seem like a great vacation to me.
3) No theme parks. While I love going on waterfall hikes once the weather turns nice, it would be fun to actually have something a bit better than Oaks Park for thrill rides. Instead we have to drive to Federal Way for “family fun”.
4) As others have mentioned we only have an NBA team (sorry Timbers fans, MLS is still minor league!). Other cities our size have NFL, MLB AND NBA teams.
5) No one knows how to dress. Gotta agree with Erick on that one. I’ve never seen a city so full of people identically dressed in faded camping gear. Or middle aged parents who appear to be imitating thier toddlers’ outfits.
Two things:
After I walk my girlfriend to work, I have to walk back home alone…and sometimes I feel lonely. Portland should institute a system of “companion walkers,” so I don’t have to get so blue.
And you can’t pee in public without hitting a coffeeshop.
How about addressing the uptight “Portland is for grownups, children are a nuisance” attitude that *everyone* tries so hard to maintain?
And by grownups I mean over privileged, white, “progressive” Pearlies, and the “hipsters”.
I’d rather walk across the Trimet free zone downtown than ride anything going through it. The street car smells like an ashtray that’s been used as a urinal. The buses are like a vomit stained traveling crack distribution system. I walk almost 2 miles a day to avoid the free zone.
I kind of like/kind of hate the “Portland Greeting” which is when one sees someone from their long-ago past and pretends not to see said someone because a) no time to “catch-up”, or b) doesn’t want to deal with said someone.
I hate Subaru Outbacks too – but what is with the rise in VWs?
I LOATHE the “industrial-condo” look of the developments in inner SE – blech.
I thought of another one. Pan handlers and signature gatherers downtown.
Could you please address the problem of unruly brats in public? I’ve never seen a city so overrun with hippie or yuppie parents who let their kids run wild in restaurants and other public spaces. Discipline might squelch their precious angels’ creativity, and it clashes with their self-image of being cool parents.
A good starting place is the Urban Mama website or the Hip Mamas.
Okay, how about these:
- The “I’m too cool to be working here and I’m not getting paid enough to work hard, but I’m going to bitch up a storm if I don’t get a raise because I’m working too hard at being cool” twits at Powell’s.
- The idiots pretending that St. Johns is somehow going to go from cesspit to hippie paradise, just because it’s “the last affordable neighborhood in Portland”.
- Oh, and the people who hear constructive criticism and justified gripes about Portland and whine “I’ve lived here ALL MY LIFE and I’ve NEVER seen what you’re describing.” Of course you haven’t seen the venues and publications that have gone under because everyone’s too busy stabbing each other in the back to be the first to get hired on full-time. Of course you haven’t seen the famed “Portland Coma”, where everybody whines about wanting to make a movie/start a magazine/open a club but won’t do a damn thing about it until someone else does all the work, where they then do their damnedest to steal the credit. Of course you don’t see that for all the noise about Portland’s progressive news coverage scene, almost everyone involved is in Portland because nobody else would be dumb enough to hire them. Oh, and of course you’ve never seen downtown bicyclists running down pedestrians or downtown pedestrians jaywalking into traffic and screaming at the motorists about not stopping in time. It’s kinda hard to see when your own colon is in the way.
I had such a list going in my head for future subjects for you — lets see if I can remember any of them:
-utter lack of diversity downtown
-insane amounts of cop shootings
-wimpy chinatown
-our “great public transport” shuts down too early to be of much help to bar- and music-goers
I’ll think of more, I had a long list going — the subject cracks me up because overall I think this is a great place to live
I hate Portland and plan to relocate back to my homeland. Don’t worry about this transplant staying, I couldn’t even settle roots here.
Please focus on the following:
-Annoying transplants
-Subaru Outbacks
-Gentrification in N/NE
-”Keep Portland Weird” crap
-Those annoying stickers with the green heart in the Oregon outline… blech.