Having grown up in Seattle years ago and been in Portland many times (years ago), your title sucked me in. Enjoyed your commentary, even though sad. I know people who have moved away from Portland due to what you describe. Haven’t yet looked it up but suspect a shrinking population and tax base.
I remember visiting Portland nearly two decades ago. That was the whitest downtown I have ever seen!
Makes me think Diversity IS something of a strength. Us southern whites who have grown up with a large black population are considerably saner than those who have grown up in whitopias.
Yep. You pretty much summed it up. It wasn't like this, even 10 years ago. Oregon was nice, more the thing you expected than the thing you found. Bend in particular wasn't like that. It was a dusty mid-size town on the wrong side of the mountains of no particular note. Then Portland got TDS, but hard, and a lot of the yuppies fled there and "improved" it.
Has a few nice breweries, or did; the attached restaurant at Worthy is a can't-miss, along with McMenamins there. Or I should say, was; not sure about it now. Haven't been back in a long time, since I made an obligatory pilgrimage to The Last Blockbuster with a friend when the one in Australia shut down and gave it its title.
Incidentally I always thought the inventory system was DOS based; is it really Unix? Once a long time ago I worked part-time at one. It's hilarious that they never changed it, even when they rolled out their Netflix competitor.
Always interesting to see what east coasters think of our cities. Portland's weird, the city is in its own little grey zone between a first-rate city and a second-rate one. Definitely one of the most advanced cases of urban rot out here. San Francisco is going the same way now, which is all the more tragic since SF was always so much more than the others (yes, I am biased). Los Angeles wants to, but LA is a creature unto itself and can never truly die. San Diego, at least, is fine
Having grown up in Seattle years ago and been in Portland many times (years ago), your title sucked me in. Enjoyed your commentary, even though sad. I know people who have moved away from Portland due to what you describe. Haven’t yet looked it up but suspect a shrinking population and tax base.
I remember visiting Portland nearly two decades ago. That was the whitest downtown I have ever seen!
Makes me think Diversity IS something of a strength. Us southern whites who have grown up with a large black population are considerably saner than those who have grown up in whitopias.
Yep. You pretty much summed it up. It wasn't like this, even 10 years ago. Oregon was nice, more the thing you expected than the thing you found. Bend in particular wasn't like that. It was a dusty mid-size town on the wrong side of the mountains of no particular note. Then Portland got TDS, but hard, and a lot of the yuppies fled there and "improved" it.
Has a few nice breweries, or did; the attached restaurant at Worthy is a can't-miss, along with McMenamins there. Or I should say, was; not sure about it now. Haven't been back in a long time, since I made an obligatory pilgrimage to The Last Blockbuster with a friend when the one in Australia shut down and gave it its title.
Incidentally I always thought the inventory system was DOS based; is it really Unix? Once a long time ago I worked part-time at one. It's hilarious that they never changed it, even when they rolled out their Netflix competitor.
A sad state on American cities, but well written.
Bleak but entertaining.
This was funny.
But did we ever get the 80s Magnum PI promised?
Art.
Always interesting to see what east coasters think of our cities. Portland's weird, the city is in its own little grey zone between a first-rate city and a second-rate one. Definitely one of the most advanced cases of urban rot out here. San Francisco is going the same way now, which is all the more tragic since SF was always so much more than the others (yes, I am biased). Los Angeles wants to, but LA is a creature unto itself and can never truly die. San Diego, at least, is fine
Things weren't this bad ten years ago.
What a wonderful read, thank you!