Would you move from the Bay Area to Portland again?

We live in San Jose and am contemplating a move up to the Portland area. We are looking for local input on weather, traffic, schools, or any other tips about the area. We visited last weekend and the weather was beautiful. Heard from some that the weather was normal and others that it is normally rainy at this time. We like to mountain bike, snowboard, go to the ocean, wine taste – so there seems to be a fit.

There’s a lot of praise for Portland from folks who have never lived there. On the surface it is a nice city, but underneath it might be a bit more of a culture shock. There is a terrible job market and there is an underlying dislike of outsiders here. It’s magnified a bit more against Californians, but as a whole, people in Oregon can be quite insular and small-town minded in general. They believe they live in the greatest place in the world, can’t understand why anyone would live a place such as San Jose, and would be resentful of you moving in and ruining it. You won’t get this told to your face–they claim to be too nice to complain out loud–but it’s a mentality that was perpetuated under former Gov. Tom McCall’s reign in the 80s and persists in many ways today with help from the media that tries so desperately to glorify anything that is local and disregard anything that’s not.

The weather is what it is. It doesn’t bother me at all, and it’s nice to have all 4 seasons–something you don’t get in California. It’s a great fit for you based on the activities you mention, and weather usually doesn’t get in the way of that too much.

Traffic in Portland will be nice compared to San Jose, despite what the locals tell you. There are bottlenecks on the highway, because it wasn’t designed for as many people as there are now in the city, but overall, the traffic is considerably less than the Bay Area.

The public schools in Oregon as a whole are weak. You have upscale suburban communities with nice enough schools, but the rest are poorly run and the teachers tend to be bitter. The union breeds a “work only as much as what you’re paid for” mentality, so you don’t get teachers willing to do much beyond their contractual duties. The Portland Public School system is a joke–poorly mismanaged and very weak in achievment. In many ways, Portland schools make schools in huge districts like Los Angeles look pretty good.

Mountain Bike Freestyle- Portland,OR

Comments are closed