Relocating to Oregon

[Corporate ORphan]

Interesting video. We currently live in a big city where we are tired of the "entitlement" generation. For example, we were walking a few months ago and a young lady (about 20) hit the bag my husband was carrying as we walked down the side of a street in our subdivision (we do not have sidewalks). She broke the box that a bag of wine was in and it made a huge pop.

She acted like it was our fault! I'm surprised she even stopped. (I think the guy with her made her. He was a police cadet.) She didn't change her tune until we said she could give us her driver's license, etc. or the police would get it from her.

We are tired of living around that mentality. When we ask someone very nicely not walk their dog on our lawn they argue with us or sometimes cuss us out. We love dogs. We just hate mowing the lawn and stepping in dog poop.

I could go on and on....

[Corporate ORphan]

And our city is not that big anymore compared to somewhere like Chicago.

[haha]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Corporate ORphan Interesting video. We currently live in a big city where we are tired of the "entitlement" generation. For example, we were walking a few months ago and a young lady (about 20) hit the bag my husband was carrying as we walked down the side of a street in our subdivision (we do not have sidewalks). She broke the box that a bag of wine was in and it made a huge pop. She acted like it was our fault! I'm surprised she even stopped. (I think the guy with her made her. He was a police cadet.) She didn't change her tune until we said she could give us her driver's license, etc. or the police would get it from her. We are tired of living around that mentality. When we ask someone very nicely not walk their dog on our lawn they argue with us or sometimes cuss us out. We love dogs. We just hate mowing the lawn and stepping in dog poop. I could go on and on....

If you have enough money to live in a very upscale area you are likely to escape this. Otherwise, good luck!

Ha

[neihn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ItDontMeanAThing For another view on Portland. This is the opening of episode 1 of the IFC cable channel 6 episode series Portlandia. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVmq9dq6Nsg

Yeah, that's Portland. I have been living here for 27 years and still love it. My daughter really loves Portland, you could think of her as one of those people inthe video :-)

[wingfooted]

+1 on locating east of the Cascades.

We wanted a farm to mess around with so picked the Ontario area on the eastern border. Boise is our big city and nearest airport.

The winters are fairly mild, sometime it will get into single digits but only for a few days. Snow on the ground for a couple of weeks, then melts off. All high desert country.

The entire county is bigger than some states and has a population of 30,000.

[Major Tom]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ItDontMeanAThing For another view on Portland. This is the opening of episode 1 of the IFC cable channel 6 episode series Portlandia. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVmq9dq6Nsg

This is great! Thanks for the chuckles. I have friends who relocated from Los Angeles to Portland a couple of years ago and love it.

[Brat]

Ontario is nice if you want elbow room. It has an ag economy like SW Idaho. That is a two-edged sword because the employment base necessary to maintain an ag economy is dropping but it isn't subject to the business cycle.

Portland (my home)
Two great things about Portland is the sense of adventure and the ability to laugh at ourselves.

Sometimes it gets a little annoying. For example bike use is encouraged but many cyclists are headless of vehicles and pedestrians. I give them lots of space as they are messy to clean up off the street.

The city leaders provide drama and I expect that a couple of them will not survive the next election if anyone with an ounce of brains and leadership qualities steps up.

City employees do a decent job delivering services, I think they are more effective than their counterparts elsewhere and I haven't encountered 'little emperors' - yet.

The city and surrounding communities have lots of events that require little/no money to attend. Arts & Entertainment Portland Parks’ summer programs in full swing | East PDX News Portland Events Calendar — Travel Portland

Ontario is nice, but too quiet for me.

[calmloki]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brat .... Two great things about Portland is the sense of adventure and the ability to laugh at ourselves. Sometimes it gets a little annoying. For example bike use is encouraged but many cyclists are headless of vehicles and pedestrians. I give them lots of space as they are messy to clean up off the street. ....

I think many bike riders are headless, tending to ignore stop signs or ride several abreast on winding roads. Mo' bettah they realize that in a collision with a car, they, right or wrong, lose. Oregon bike riders, in this Green state, may feel more entitled than those in other states.

For beer drinkers it may be of interest that Portland has more micro-breweries and brew-pubs than any other city - something like 36?

[Brat]

About a week ago I observed the police giving a ticket to a cyclist in NW Portland. Given the location odds are he ran a stop sign. The neighborhood is very pro cyclist but concerned about their compliance with traffic laws.

[Corporate ORphan]

One of things that I heard about Portland is you can get by without taking your car out much. You can live where you can walk to most things or take public transportation that is safe and on time.

Is that true?

[neihn]

Right. Public transportation in Portland can take you anywhere, even to the airport. If I have to, I could live without car. Everything I want is within walking distance, from gym, super market, movies theater, sport bar, etc...

[Brat]

Public transit after 11 PM is infrequent. NYC we are not.

[Corporate ORphan]

Is it mostly in the inner city? We hadn't really considered Portland because we didn't want the hassles of a big city but maybe now after hearing from different people one of the burbs might fit what we want?

WE like to walk to places but we would also like to be not so close to our neighbors. WE realize that those are probably two conflicting goals.

[Retire Soon]

We relocated to Bend in 2006 to escape the fast pace of San Diego County where we had lived for 35 years. There are no freeways in Central Oregon, which we do not miss at all. The air is clean and the skies are blue. The annual precipitation and number of sunny days is close to what we had in San Diego. We enjoy the four seasons and being close to snow parks.

It's nice not to have to pump your own gas and to no longer pay almost 10 cents on the dollar for sales tax. We enjoy walking our dog along the beautiful Deschutes River and in the numerous well-manicured city parks.

Even though it's high desert, a large part of the city is shaded by Ponderosa Pines. Bend is home to several small theaters, a community college, and an open air amphitheater that features concerts by well-known artists.

The people are friendly and many of the residents are transplants from California and other states. It is a very clean city with a low crime rate. Traffic moves very smoothly with fewer traffic lights because of our ultra efficient roundabouts. Bend is a city with a population of about 76,000, but with a small town feel.

[neihn]

People in Portland are so friendly, people wave at you , 'Hi there', 'how are you?', 'it's nice out', are the phases that you may hear walking down the street.

Even driving, you will see people yeild for your changing lane, you don't really need to speed up to change lane, just flick the blinker and people will yeild. Talk about civility :-)

I lived in Beaverton (Portland metro), it is 12 miles from the city center. You can park you car in park and ride and hop on the light rail - that would take you to most places that you want to go in Portland.
TriMet: MAX Light Rail Service

[Brat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Corporate ORphan Is it mostly in the inner city? We hadn't really considered Portland because we didn't want the hassles of a big city but maybe now after hearing from different people one of the burbs might fit what we want? WE like to walk to places but we would also like to be not so close to our neighbors. WE realize that those are probably two conflicting goals.

Yes, I can't think of a place where you can have both.

We were in Hillsboro (Portland suburb with Intel as its anchor) Saturday. My has that town grown up! You might be able to find a larger lot with an older home there.

There are homes in Portland metro that abut Forest Park but walkable to NW 23rd.

[neihn]

Okay, now the weather. People should know about the rain and grey sky in Portland. It could rain/drizzle for couple weeks straight, however, only a few days of snow if you are lucky :-). Spring and smmer are fantastic, we have a few days of 90+ in the summer and totally bearable, I know people live here for years yet never installed air conditioner. Very mild weather.

Oh one more thing for ski lover. Mt Hood is the only place that opens year round, just 1.5 hour from Portland. Yes, you can ski, snowboard in the summer with your shirt off and get tan at the same time.

http://www.timberlinelodge.com/

If you love wind surfing - just one hour away from Portland the best place in the world for this sport

Windsurfing in Oregon | Oregon

Welcome to Oregon folks :-)

[Corporate ORphan]

Thanks for the additional ideas. We have friends in Bend and agree, it was a nice place but we don't like the idea of living in the desert. We want to be able to garden, either have our own or join a community one.

[Corporate ORphan]

I checked out Hillsboro on the internet and it sounded good until I saw the air quality rating isn't very good! What's going on there? It's worst than Portland and not much better than here.

[Brat]

Beats me. I noticed a forest of cranes on our drive out there, maybe the construction of the new Intel plant is stirring up a lot of dust. A chip fab plant needs clean air so that shouldn't last long.

We had a couple days of hot weather (ok, ok - two days of sun ) so that may have been a factor.

Last night Portland had an electrical storm that seemed to hang out to the east (where the air currents start to raise to go over the Cascades). We doubtless had a few showers with that too. That would have improved our air quality today. Hillsboro is in the Tualitan Valley, to the west of Portland. The may not have experienced those showers.

That DEQ website is great. Notice that the link to Eugene's air quality data is at the bottom of the page. In typical U of O Green Beanie fashion they want to do their own thing.