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Rebroadcast: The Selling of Oregon
What better day than Black Friday — when everything is about selling and buying — to take another listen to our show on the Selling of Oregon? Whether you are dashing between malls or purposely staying home and avoiding the shopping chaos, this is a chance to think about what all those coffees and microbrews, books and bikes, that are being purchased today say about this place we call home.
You can read the original posts here or continue the conversation below.
Do you agree that Portland is the skateboarding capital of the world? How about the greenest city in the world? Is this one of the best arts destinations? Or one of the world's best biking cities? What message do you use when you're selling Oregon to friends and family? What tag line have you bought into?
GUESTS:
- Beatrice Cassina: Freelance writer based in Milan
- Holly Macfee: Director of Brand Strategy for Travel Oregon
- Andrew Collins: Freelance travel writer based in Portland
- Aaron Mesh: Screen Editor for Willamette Week
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Being from San Francisco I can relate to the New York lady that is having a hard time. And I moved to Vancouver so you can imagine! I am mixed race and feel very out of place. I work over here so feel stuck and don't get into Porltand often enough to be able to learn to love it. Bless Vancouver's heart but.....it is a cultural desert.
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The self-congratulation and superficiality of this discussion of "Oregon" is sad and ridiculous, for anyone who has lived here for longer than a few years. This program is about Portland and its puffed-up view of itself, not about Oregon. Drive out beyond 82nd, and there is another Portland of rundown trailer parks and poverty. Really look at people sleeping in doorways in Portland's precious downtown. The idea that Stumptown coffee could be "Very Important", in the face of such realities is offensive, at the very least.
And then take a look around Oregon. It is much more and much different than the New York Times, or for Pete's sake, Vogue, portrays. It is not a neat little square bounded by Portland, Hood River, Bend and Cannon Beach. There are beauties and realities far beyond those pretty places.
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I am a student at PNCA and have lived and worked in portland my entire life. I have experienced the issue of culture shock when going around the rest of the country. People often ask me in my travels where I'm from and they are delighted to hear about the unique culture of portland. When ever I come back to portland I am always relieved what an extremely progressive community it is. I have been all around the untited states and I feel that portland is the most forward thinking place I could live as far as our arts community, social issues, an our environmental standpoint. Ill always com back to portland because of this.
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Like PDXOutdoors, I too had to turn off the radio because I was on the verge of hurling it through the window into the street. It has long been my opinion that the only thing more annoying than Portland's hand-wringing, introspection and general inferiority complex is the tendency transplanted New Yorkers have of constantly framing their experiences in PDX as in contrast to (usually superior) New York. Please. If NY is so great, so dynamic, so diverse, so alive, then why did any of you move here to our podunk backwater to begin with? Portland is Portland, and it owes nothing to anyone who chooses to move here. Having a little pity party because our (somewhat laughable) "World Trade Center" strikes you as insensitive? Please go back to New York and tell everyone how ghastly it is here. That would be a huge service to all of us.
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I really enjoy and appreciate many things about Portland; culture, amenities, attractiveness, friendly people, certain planning aspects and how they've panned out. When I moved here 9 years ago, though I was single. Now I'm married and have one child and another on the way. I now realize that this is not a very easy place to be a starting out family. There is actually a great culture for new families with small children, but I can see the culture is not so great for pre-teens and teens. And there is inadequate public infrastructure for young families. The daycare situation is really awful, it is too expensive and scarce to make it comfortable and convenient for median income families, and statistically one of the worst in the country. Activities at community places are totally overcrowded. The City does not have family friendly policies or development. I'm sorry to say I'd rather be raising my family somewhere else, and there's a good chance I will move before we get into this public school system. Academic development/rigor is not highly valued and promoted in this City, and that makes me sad, but I won't compromise that for my kids. If I thought that it was improving, or that parental involvement was making a difference, I would stay and be involved, but from what I'm seeing and hearing, it's not.
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To the New Yorker: I'm an East Coast transplant of 10 years. I love Portland, but I think I can relate to the ex-NYC'er. First of all, this place does not compare to any place from which any person is from, esp. NYC. That is a culture thing that she has to find peace with through time and experience. However, I do say that even to this day, that native Oregonians are usually a little unable to deal with a more straightforward, expressive east coast style. I'm from the South and my good friend and coworker is from New Jersey. We both still find a soft-spoken, retiring (some say incommunicative) style in people who can't handle more passionate or blunt language. As to her comment that Portlanders are indifferent to 9/11 or the rest of the world: No one outside of NYC, or the Pentagon, or Pa will have the same experience. (What if the attacks had been in other cities besides NY? Would New Yorkers have the same perspective?) Many Portlanders are well-traveled, very intelligent and very interested in national and world events. And lastly, don't be too hard on native PNW'ers who refer to any place west of here (Chicago, for example) as "back east."
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I think it's great that Portland is on the map for all sorts of quality of life issues, and for having innovative entrpreuers. But what about quality of mind? Portland Public Schools are notoriously underfunded (sometimes for mishandling money) and glaringly show the disparity of socio-econominc classes here. What do people plan to do who move into the "affordable" neighborhoods where the schools facilities are outmoded, classes are overcrowded and teachers have less and less freedom to teach in an innovative way?
Art Teacher for Equality
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Portland is a GREAT place. I visited first in 1961 and moved here in '63.
If the woman from New York is insulted at our naming of the World Trade Center, may I suggest she check when our Center was named. I am BORED to here with the New York 'gritchng' syndrome. Get over or go away.
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I agree, that lady was over the top.
I'm from Utah, and I feel that oregons main marketing problem is that they pitch the image of portland as being that of the entire state.
80% of the state is relatively unpretty desert. Perhaps I'm biased due to the beauty of Utah's deserts.
I also find people here to be impersonal and concerned with personal priorities.
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As far as Portland, there is wonderful creativity here and wonderful entrepreneurial spirit. The food and drink is to die for, and the quaint little neighborhoods, like NW 23rd, Mississippi, and Hawthorne are full of small businesses that are always pulling out the next stop. In addition, we are so close to so many amazing outdoor wonders...... The seastacks of the Oregon Coast, volcanoes like Mt Hood and Mt Jefferson, and the Gorge, just to name a slim few.
One thing I do know, you wouldn't want to drink the water out of the faucet in NYC! You also have a coast that is kept public and ski resorts that aren't allowed to take over the mountain with high rise hotels and condos.
And Oregon has a beautiful desert! Climbing at Smith Rock? Painted Hills? The Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge?
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/169/435300426_741d85ad67_b.jpg
(random backroad between Antelope and John Day)http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1340/1111071200_5bd15787ca_b.jpg
(Smith Rock-Monkey Face)http://farm1.static.flickr.com/184/435297308_cb59e60d23_b.jpg
(Painted Hills)http://farm1.static.flickr.com/218/478740622_f99127c8cb_b.jpg
(Elk Cove, Mt Hood)Of course, there are many things about the state, and the city, that are not perfect, but what place out there really is? I prefer not to focus on the negatives, but to love and enjoy what is good and getting better!! Get out there and really experience it! There is so much to see and do, and so many wonderful people to meet.
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Actually nyc has excellent tap water.
About the NYC lady, I don't know anyone who likes to hear someone rattle off statistics about how your city sucks. Of course they will take offense, and probably the resultant of why she doesn't have any friends.
I moved here from manhattan, which is a great place to be young in but not grow old in. And the idea of paying half a million for a studio apt was lamentable. My apt was going off stabilization and brooklyn was not something I was looking forward too. Most that go to NYC to start a career don't not intend to stay. I know dozens of people who are considering portland their destination after their exodus, plus NYTime loves portland. What is special about portland.
It rains alot but you don't need an umbrella, unlike NYC. A lot of old house not too expensive. Great mass transit. Mild winters. Summers are sunny not too hot and NO humidity!! Close skiing, hiking and ocean. Great beer and coffee. Its really unpretentious and not superficial or needy, which is unique for the west coast.
Portland sorta has a college town energy but without the students, yea. But this does not mean happiness, that only comes from making real connections with other people in the city.
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My wife and I are both born and raised NW, Ashland and Port Angeles, WA. We both went to school in the P-town area, and worked for 15 years after college. After that we got to live in HI and travel a bit, europe, NYC, midwest and South. The fact is that NW people are not very nice.
We love it here and recently returned for good, but I challenge natives to travel and not be pleasantly surprised at how friendly people are in other parts of the country. Even in rural Big Island, where they really don't want you to come live, the locals were still far friendlier on average than folks in the NW. Of course, I'm not talking about individuals, people are the same everywhere, but in a general sense, the price of NW independence is a not very open attitude. I reccomend to newcomers that they cultivate their own circle of friends and don't let the general vibe get you down.
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I just had to turn it off, because although I loved hearing from the folks who had interesting things to say about their perspective on Oregon, that one woman who complained about how Portland is insensitive because they call a building the World Trade Center. She was so annoyingly self-pitying that I had to turn off the radio. Yuck!