• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Portland (OR) |OT|

D

Dr. Feel Good

Banned
After like what feels like fucking forever, I'm officially moving out to Portland and arriving July 25th. Locked down a place on border of Lloyd District and Sullivan's Gulch. Looking forward to being able to take a city bus to work.

The 2,000 mile drive from Wisconsin is going to be awful. Looking forward to living out there and starting to get into some of the areas a bit more.
 
H

Hop

That girl in the bunny hat
Dr. Feel Good said:
After like what feels like fucking forever, I'm officially moving out to Portland and arriving July 25th. Locked down a place on border of Lloyd District and Sullivan's Gulch. Looking forward to being able to take a city bus to work.

The 2,000 mile drive from Wisconsin is going to be awful. Looking forward to living out there and starting to get into some of the areas a bit more.
Click to expand...

Hooray, and welcome! So far, that's felt to me like a pretty balanced area to be living in, and I suspect you'll be totally sick of that mall pretty soon. :)

The drive can be awful, or it can be great, all depends how you manage it. Hopefully, there's something in my chronicles that you could find as useful insight. Definitely take it as slow as you can afford to, and tourist it up as much as you can. It'll make it way easier.

And as for my most recent adventure, thanks to everyone for the kind words. :) I found out from a recruiter last night that the unemployment rate for software professionals in Portland is apparently 1%. That's it. (Portland as a whole is 6.9%.) So that, plus the half-dozen calls and emails I got just by updating my Dice profile, have me overconfident that I'm going to be fine.
 
H

Hop

That girl in the bunny hat
Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
Yeah but that's just a promo price. It goes up in 3, 6, or 12 months. I went from 30 for the basic plan to 70 in 6 months.
Click to expand...

Yea, as I understood it you either go Comcast and constantly play The Rate Game or you go Century Link and get consistent meh.

(I went Comcast >_> )
 
D

Dr. Feel Good

Banned
Hop said:
Hooray, and welcome! So far, that's felt to me like a pretty balanced area to be living in, and I suspect you'll be totally sick of that mall pretty soon. :)

The drive can be awful, or it can be great, all depends how you manage it. Hopefully, there's something in my chronicles that you could find as useful insight. Definitely take it as slow as you can afford to, and tourist it up as much as you can. It'll make it way easier.

And as for my most recent adventure, thanks to everyone for the kind words. :) I found out from a recruiter last night that the unemployment rate for software professionals in Portland is apparently 1%. That's it. (Portland as a whole is 6.9%.) So that, plus the half-dozen calls and emails I got just by updating my Dice profile, have me overconfident that I'm going to be fine.
Click to expand...

Crazy that you ended up in the Sheboygan area on your drive, that's where I'm starting from. We've got a week planned out but were spending two days in Des Moines (girlfriend is from there) and then two days in Minneapolis (I'm from there) o say goodbyes and unload furniture. Then it looks like we're headed similar route... We're thinking one day to Mount Rushmore than another day to Bozeman Montana and then Spokane Washington and then finally going to Portland. Would you suggest that route? Recommendations?
 
H

Hop

That girl in the bunny hat
Dr. Feel Good said:
Crazy that you ended up in the Sheboygan area on your drive, that's where I'm starting from. We've got a week planned out but were spending two days in Des Moines (girlfriend is from there) and then two days in Minneapolis (I'm from there) o say goodbyes and unload furniture. Then it looks like we're headed similar route... We're thinking one day to Mount Rushmore than another day to Bozeman Montana and then Spokane Washington and then finally going to Portland. Would you suggest that route? Recommendations?
Click to expand...

Nice, you get past the whole "what do you do in Wisconsin" problem. :)

The route was pretty good, especially in terms of drive exhaustion. Might actually be a good idea to have the longest day first. Just make sure you've got good distractions for the long roads, South Dakota can drive you mad. And I recommend planning your lunchtimes, so you don't get stuck hungry somewhere far from food. There are spots that are about a half hour from town to town, if not more.
 
S

Sumidor

Member
Anyone coming to the Do-Over today? It's gonna be hot and muggy as hell. But I can never pass up a reason to drink on a Sunday afternoon.
 
R

reilo

learning some important life lessons from magical Negroes
Broken axle on my car has me stranded for a whole week when the weather is superb :|
 
G

Gallbaro

Banned
Not a Portlander(?), but I figured I would post this here.

What does a dying city look like? Brains are draining. The population is shrinking or aging, or both. Vibrant, creative class cool Portland is the antithesis of dying. Yesterday, journalist Annalyn Kurtz tweets: “See! The Portland labor force lost 25,000 workers in the last year. http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LAUMT41389006.”

What in the name of Richard Florida is going on here? The link will take you to the Bureau of Labor page with a bunch of employment data for Portland (select data recreated below). You can see the boom, the fuel for Portlandia. More recently, the labor force number plateaus. Recession. Financial crisis. You know the drill. What comes next? Will the boom pick back up?

portland-stats

As Kurtz notes, the year-over-year drop is dramatic. You might expect such a dive for a Rust Belt city, say Pittsburgh. But Pittsburgh’s labor force is growing, setting historical records seemingly every month. Pittsburgh is thriving. Portland is dying.

As the economy recovers, I argue that Pittsburgh is the place to be. Portland is the darling of the pre-recession economy. Talent production Pittsburgh is where we are headed.

Portland helped write the talent attraction playbook. The approach works as long as there are only a few winners, a short list of tech towns. Knowledge workers hail from somewhere, likely a Rust Belt birthplace. Why compete with Austin, San Francisco, and Los Angeles for software engineers when you can set up shop cheaply in Pittsburgh? Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) graduates are in high demand. The mountain is moving to Muhammad. Portland doesn’t have a CMU.
Click to expand...

http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/burgh-disapora/portland-is-dying-58046/
 
R

reilo

learning some important life lessons from magical Negroes
That was a bizarrely written article. Almost like a bad Google translation from another language.
 
K

killertofu

Member
Portland GAF- I am interested in your city. What areas are a decent spot for me to look at to live?

I'm currently in Los Angeles but am looking for jobs up the coast. Instead of driving back to Florida I'm thinking of planting myself somewhere and just going crazy with applications.
 
C

CPCunha

Member
How's the art gallery scene in Portland right now? I'm interested in having some kind of "exchange program" between Brazilian and American artists (contemporary) and Portland keeps popping up in conversations about it... would love to hear from actual residents.
 
W

whiterabbit

Member
Anyone wanna take me to the concerts Portugal the Man (weds) or Jimmy Eat World (coming up soon)? I'm running low on the bucks and still unemployed. :\
 
A

acksman

Member
Wish I had seen this thread before last week. Just got back from a business trip there.

Some incredible food and views.

Had to visit McMenamins Edgewood for some Terminator Stout. A vendor of ours took us out to Wildwood Restaurant, a great local sourced food restaurant.

Went out to one of the big waterfalls, name escapes me and wanted to try this Tad's Chicken and Dumplings place, but it was closed. We drove down the road a bit and ate at a place called Tippy Canoes, lol. It was all good.

We also got our Voodoo Doughnut.
 
I

IndianElephant

Neo Member
MCtalkfunny said:
Hey! Loving this thread been following it for a while. Though one thing I haven't seen been brought up is Portland's amazing comedy scene right now. There are a lot of bad shows in this city like any major scene. But the talent here is some of the best in the country right now.

I love performing here and work at helium quite often. As well as shows all around town. Don't want to come in here to promote my self but will say that tonight I'm opening for Ron Funches who's one of the best comics coming up right now at Mississippi studios. He's from Portland but moved to LA last year. He's fucking amazing.

But anywho I mostly want to know if you guys ever see shows around here? We have Helium, the bridgetown festival, monthly shows like Portland as Fuck and Funny over everything. Smaller clubs like curious comedy and the Brody etc....

Check out guys Ian Karmel, Sean Jordan, Shane Torres, Nathan Brannon, Tim Hammer, Zak Tosconi, Gabe Dinger, Barbra Holm, and my names Anthony Lopez.
Click to expand...

Holy shit you're Anthony Lopez? I've seen you at.. probably the Boiler Room a number of times. I have a lot of fond memories of that place.
 
M

maliedoo

Junior Member
@ Bridgeport Village
SummerConcerts_CenterEvents.jpg
 
W

whiterabbit

Member
I live right by there! I heard Apple Jam there 2 years ago. It's very memorable because it's Beatles music.

So is everyone going to Last Thursday again?
 
B

Bobby Roberts

Banned
Speakin' of burgers, my paper is sponsoring BURGER WEEK.

Basically, a bunch of crazy-ass, specially made burgers from a wide range of spots, for 5 bucks.

Like, for example, TILT's "The Big Tilt," which looks like this.

1374217877-big_tilt400.jpg
 
M

MCtalkfunny

Member
CPCunha said:
How's the art gallery scene in Portland right now? I'm interested in having some kind of "exchange program" between Brazilian and American artists (contemporary) and Portland keeps popping up in conversations about it... would love to hear from actual residents.
Click to expand...

The art gallery scene from what I can gather is pretty sweet here in Portland. My girlfriend works for a artist here and runs her gallery and first Thursday event every month. Don't know much about it but it seems to be a pretty thriving scene.

Just going to throw this out there but I went to Little big Burger for the first time a week or two ago and loved it. I was pretty drunk at the time but it hit the spot.

Speaking of drinking wanted to say I'm psyched as fuck for brewfest! Performing at helium this weekend so can't go till sun since I get pretty hammered when ever I go, but this is one of my favorite events of the year here. Usually go a few days a year so am going to have to make up for that on Sunday. Anyone else going?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Nintendo Switch will be in stock at Amazon Book Stores on 7/11 (Prime Only)
24
5K
Linkura replied
  • Locked
United States most dangerous neighborhoods in 2014: Top 25
2 3 4 5 6
257
30K
Sickness702 replied
Canada: Try out Mario Kart 8 at Best Buy on May 24
10
1K
Kazerei replied
  • Locked
Portland police catch "Hipster Bandit" as he bikes from bank robbery
33
5K
pigeon replied
  • Locked
Yelp's top 100 Restaurant List
2
95
7K
Drek replied
Top Bottom