Man About Town: Post-Portland Pondering

During my whole time in Portland, I was trying to get a handle on the identity of the city. Normally, when I've gone to cities before, you have a sense for the attitude of the city at

large. For example, Seattle very much still has a grunge attitude along with a coffee-drinking, bookstore-frequenting, software-writing kind of vibe. Vancouver has a cosmopolitan Canadian vibe: "eh"-saying, late-'90s-fashion-wearing, pedestrian-walking, downtown-living.

Portland is a problem. There's not a whole lot of vibe to Portland. Nevertheless, by the end of this post, I'm going to attempt it. But before then, an observation: to an outsider, Portland is billed on two things: 1.) Being a particularly "livable" city (although no one really knows what that means), and 2.) Having a world-class mass transit system. After spending more than two weeks living there, I have concluded that Portland is billed on those points because that's all there is to bill.

This is not necessarily a slight to the city, however. Probably one of the things that makes Portland so livable is the lack of tourists. But, there's really not a lot for a visitor to do.

You can tour the Portland underground (made famous by such TV networks as the History Channel, Discover Channel, E!, etc.)... or you can go down in your basement with a flashlight and tell ghost stories. They will both provide the same effect--the latter being notable cheaper an less likely to incur the wrath of more conservative historians who question the "historical" stories told about the shanghai underground.

The only other thing for a tourist to really do is ride and marvel at the Portland mass transit system. If you've been to another major city before coming to Portland, this experience will feel a lot like riding a bus. A slight exception should be made for the MAX

(Metropolitan Area Express). This feels a bit more like riding a European train because it's on rails. Put together, the bus system and the MAX (which includes an impressively long ride through a tunnel under Forest Park) make up Portland's famous mass transit system.

As nice as that sounds, imagine my frustration when, immediately upon arriving in Portland, I found that the public transit system couldn't take me to where I was staying. The house was well within Portland's urban growth boundary, but almost a 3 mile walk from the nearest public transit stop (only 1 mile if I left the house at 7am). Thankfully, my kind hosts had planned to pick me up.

Herein lies one of Portland's most redeeming qualities: I found the people there to be unusually kind.

I suppose they are famous for this as well, but it's harder to point at. Every single person I met, whether staying with them, purchasing from them, walking past them in the park or sharing a meal together, was impressively personable and polite. I think this is somewhat common in the Pacific Northwest, but Portland all the more so.

If I had to describe the general vibe I get from Portlanders, it would probably be such: they're easy-going, MAX-riding, home-beer-brewing, direction-giving, city-walking, Sunday-hiking, fleece-wearing, sleeping-in, outdoorsy types.

Now, unless you think I didn't like the city, let me say for the record that Portland is a unique, beautiful, and... nice city. Don't expect a tourist spot. Don't expect deep history. If you're looking for a nice, affordable place on the West Coast to settle down, this might be it.