regul

How would you describe the burritos on layaway here in the US?

He's basically said the same thing about China, too.

I have two friends who had the same idea about the homesteading thing and they moved to Tillamook, which is about an hour from Portland towards the coast. It's politically purple, and you can occasionally find affordable houses a bit outside of downtown on bigger plots like they did. They're not actually homesteaders, though. They both work remote, they just have chickens and some vegetable plots.

You might also be able to find something similar, space-wise, in Oregon's wine country mostly centered around McMinnville. Lots of those homes just seem like bubble-era mcmansions though, I've never looked too hard.

As Femboy_Stalin said, most of these apply to any city in the US, so it sounds like your friend is maybe just jaded about life in the States (fair).

For actual Portland-specific points:

• Portland is very white, that's true. There are pockets of diversity, but yeah.
• Old hippies are a negative, if you've ever dealt with old hippies before. Hippy politics were never incredibly radical, and have remained so. They're libs who sometimes pretend they're not, I guess.
• The neglected bike boulevard thing probably means that the city has very little in the way of grade-separated bike paths. Mostly the bike network is low-traffic shared streets a block or two off of main thoroughfares, but they always intersect eventually with the thoroughfares and introduce conflict points with cars.

But yeah everything else is true everywhere in the US, I think.

If Bull Run gets too low I believe we supplement it with groundwater from a Columbia aquifer. You can tell usually because the water goes from the tastiest water of all time to exceedingly mid.

Any time Portland gets anyone left of center in there's a huge backlash and swing back to the right. Our AG used to be a Republican until 2016, for example. The mayor has been doing his best to stop using homeless money on rental assistance and public housing. And of course the local news outlets just put out constant hit pieces.

I've been pretty jealous of Seattle with Sawant and their new mayor.

I love Oregon in general and Portland in particular.

There are better housing options than the one you shared. I have an artist friend who was recently able to get a new 2/1 townhome for like $250k.

The green space is truly top tier. There are so many trees. It's lovely.

The politics are not as good as you'd hope, maybe, but better than a lot of places in the US. We just drastically diluted the business lobby's stranglehold on city council, so that should be improving.

The lack of sun does fuck people up, for sure. Sun sets at like 4 in the middle of winter. I just deal with it by having winter hobbies like skiing (good skiing within an hour and a half of downtown) and whitewater kayaking (good whitewater the same distance away).

On the flip side, during the summer there's only sun. If you haven't lived on the West Coast you might not be used to it, but it simply does not rain at all in the summer. Could be good or bad depending on your perspective. We do have some water security, but it can fluctuate a lot. With the severe lack of snow this winter we'll almost certainly be in a drought and have a pretty bad fire season.

The public transit is still pretty good for a city its size, but has been dying a death of a thousand cuts due to austerity. I find a bike is the best way to get around town, but you'll have to be prepared to ride on shared streets: there aren't as many separated bike paths like MPLS.

I think people mostly move because the rent is really high compared to wages. A lot of artists moved to Olympia, Washington, but I can't really speak about it. Astoria is great if you can handle it being cold and cloudy most of the year. Salem is like tiny Portland with worse amenities. Eugene is home to the University of Oregon, which is huge, and basically dominates the priorities of the city. Ashland is a tiny but cute town known for its Shakespeare festival. East of the Cascades you get into turbo-racism country and I would definitely avoid living there. Bend has okay politics but is incredibly unaffordable except for retirees and the bike infra is bad.

Willamette is safe to swim in except for during very heavy rains when the mixed sewer system gets full and sewage will go into the river (only happens once or twice a year, and only during the winter, when you probably don't want to be swimming anyway) and during algal blooms when it's very warm out (a capitalist created basically an algae breeding ground and has been ordered by the state to fix it, but is slow walking it obviously).

There's a public swimming dock on the river. It gets really popular on the days over 90. This past summer there were organized group bike rides every Wednesday to go swim at the river.

I think this is just lib fanfiction.

They should be encouraging it! It helps the trade deficit they hate so much!

Isn't it more supposed to be evocative of the time period of the bubble years?

Cory Lewandowski has the opportunity to do something incredibly funny.

At the very least I want one of these dipshits to Plaxico Burress themselves.