by Geon, Bryan
Table of Contents
Introduction
Neighborhoods and Communities
City of Portland
Downtown Portland and Environs
Downtown Portland
Goose Hollow
Old Town and the Pearl District
The West Hills
Southwest Portland
South Portland
Hillsdale and Multnomah Village
Bridlemile and Vermont Hills
Burlingame and the Tryon Creek Area
Outer Southwest Neighborhoods
Northwest Portland
Northwest–Nob Hill
Forest Park and Environs
Northeast Portland
Irvington, Sabin, and the Lloyd District
Alameda, Grant Park, and Hollywood
Beaumont Village, Wilshire Park, and Rose City Park
The Alberta Arts District and Concordia
Other Northeast Neighborhoods
Southeast Portland
Inner Southeast Portland
Laurelhurst
The Hawthorne, Belmont, and Division Street Districts
Mount Tabor
Sellwood & The Morelands
Reed, Creston-Kenilworth, and Woodstock
North Tabor, South Tabor, and Montavilla
Other Southeast Portland Neighborhoods
North Portland
Boise-Eliot, the North Mississippi District, King, and Overlook
Arbor Lodge and Kenton
St. Johns and University Park
Outer North Portland Neighborhoods
Outer East Portland
Surrounding Communities
Beaverton and Surrounding Areas
Beaverton
West Slope, Raleigh Hills, and Garden Home
North of the Sunset Highway: West Haven, Cedar Mill, Oak Hills, Bethany, and Rock Creek
Aloha
Southeastern Washington County
Tigard
Durham
Bull Mountain
King City
Tualatin
Sherwood
Western Washington County
Hillsboro
Cornelius
Forest Grove
Outlying Washington County Communities
Southwest Clackamas County
Dunthorpe and Riverdale
Lake Oswego
West Linn
Stafford
Wilsonville
Clackamas County—Southern Suburbs
Milwaukie
Oak Grove, Jennings Lodge, and Oatfield
Gladstone
Oregon City
Canby
Clackamas County—Southeastern Suburbs
Clackamas and Sunnyside
Happy Valley
Damascus
Outer Clackamas County
Gresham
Fairview, Wood Village, and Troutdale
Corbett and Springdale
Vancouver and Clark County
Vancouver
Camas
Washougal
Unincorporated Clark County: Hazel Dell, Lake Shore, Orchards, Felida, Salmon Creek, and Brush Prairie
Battle Ground
Ridgefield, La Center, and Woodland
Amboy and Yacolt
Other Outlying Communities
Columbia County and Sauvie Island
Yamhill County
Marion County
The Columbia Gorge
Finding a Place to Live
Moving and Storage
Money Matters
Getting Settled
Helpful Services
Shopping for the Home
Childcare and Education
Schools
Higher Education
Pets
Cultural Life
Sports and Recreation
Greenspaces
Getting Involved
Weather and Natural Disasters
Transportation
Green Living
Temporary Lodgings
Quick Getaways
A Portland Year
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
A Portland Reading List
Useful Phone Numbers and Websites
About the Author
Introduction
Welcome to Portland, one of the most livable urban areas in America! Call it Stumptown, Rose City, Rip City, Beervana, Bridgetown, Puddletown, Portlandia, or PDX, it’s your town now. (Just don’t call it Portland, or-eh-GONE. The state name is pronounced OR-uh-gun. Practice before you arrive.) Portland is located at the northern end of the fertile Willamette Valley, just over an hour east of the coast—it’s called the coast here, not the shore or the beach—and an equal distance west of the crest of the Cascade Mountains. The high desert is a two-hour drive to the east, and world-class wineries are 45 minutes to the southwest. Abundant recreational opportunities make the city a favorite of outdoor enthusiasts, and from the city’s West Hills, and even from some downtown office buildings, it’s possible to see the Columbia River Gorge and five snowcapped volcanoes: Mounts Hood, St. Helens, Adams, Rainier, and Jefferson. Top that, Topeka!
Of course, Portland’s appeal transcends its spectacular setting. The city is known for its vibrant neighborhoods, activist urban planning, environmental awareness, progressive politics, coffeehouse and brewpub culture, and, yes, for its rain. So what’s it really like here? Well, though Portland enjoys more than its fair share of pleasant, well-preserved urban neighborhoods, connected to one another by bike lanes and transit, and benefits from a state law limiting the extent of urban sprawl, it is also afflicted with strip malls, traffic congestion, ill-conceived development, and other assorted maladies of the modern American metropolis. A key difference is that in Portland you can arrange your life so that you don’t have to deal with those problems. If you want to live in a close-in neighborhood, within walking distance of cafés and food markets, and ride your bike to work every day, you can. (You won’t necessarily be able to afford to buy a house in such a neighborhood, however.) If you prefer to live in a suburban community and move around by car, you can do that, too.
A word on politics: it is true that Portlanders on average are more liberal than the citizens of the typical American burg—when Money magazine rated Portland the country’s best place to live in 2000, it warned conservatives to stay away, and the views of most residents have not lurched to the right since then—but it is not the solidly left-wing monolith it is often portrayed to be. The city and its surrounding region boast a surprising diversity of political opinion, ranging from a vocal community of socially conservative evangelicals to proud anarchists, and from a strong libertarian contingent to a small community of Trotskyites. (The latter get nervous around ice picks.) In general, suburban communities tend to be more conservative than city neighborhoods, and inner Southeast Portland is more liberal than other parts of the city, but as a whole the region is probably no more liberal (or conservative) than any other large coastal metropolitan area.
When it comes to craft beer and coffee, most Portlanders sensibly put ideology aside. There are 74 breweries in the Portland met
ro area. Of these, 54 operate within city limits, giving Portland reportedly more breweries than any other city in the world. Oregonians spend more on craft beer than on Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors beers combined. And Portland’s coffee scene is every bit the equal of Seattle’s, with local roasters like Stumptown Coffee Roasters (www.stumptowncoffee.com) winning awards for both quality and sustainable business practices. Don’t miss the burgeoning tea scene, either, based on well-established local tea manufacturers as well as an increasing number of unique tea houses. Many Portlanders consider coffee (or tea) essential for coping with the rain.
Ah, the rain. While it’s true that Portland has its share of rainy days, much of the city’s precipitation falls in the form of a fine mist or drizzle. Often a day that starts out cloudy becomes bright and sunny by afternoon (or vice versa). Many locals will tell you that the rain is easier to cope with than the seemingly interminable parade of cloudy days we endure in late autumn and winter. Spring and fall have their share of bright days, however, and summers are reliably warm and sunny.
Whatever you think about the weather, it certainly doesn’t seem to be deterring new residents. Lured by Portland’s reputation, by job opportunities in certain industries, and even by the results of online relocation quiz sites like www.findyourspot.com and Find Your Own Best Place (www.bestplaces.net/fybp/), it seems like everyone knows someone who’s moving to Portland (or thinking about it). Portland’s regional government, Metro, estimates that at least 725,000 newcomers, and possibly many more, will arrive in the area by 2035.
Despite (and to some extent because of) the population influx, not everything is rosy in the Rose City. The region’s economy never fully recovered from a sharp recession in the early 2000s, and the Great Recession hit Oregon early and hard. The Portland metro area has subsequently seen strong job growth, but the state as a whole (and Clark County in southwest Washington) still has an unemployment rate above the national average. At the same time, Portland’s median income is comparatively low, at least compared to other large coastal cities.
Perhaps low incomes wouldn’t be a problem if you could still buy a home for $100,000, but those days are gone. Home prices in many areas have rebounded and median prices now match or exceed prices at the peak of the pre-crash housing bubble (which in Portland was roughly summer 2007). And good luck finding a stand-alone house in a desirable close-in neighborhood for anything close to the median price. The pre-2007 boom in housing prices produced a corresponding explosion in residential construction, with new infill development and condo towers changing the faces of many neighborhoods; with the recovery of the housing market, this process seems to have restarted and may even be accelerating.
The faces of Oregon’s residents are changing as well. Portland has had a vibrant African-American community since the First World War, and substantial Chinese and Japanese communities have been present since the nineteenth century, but the city is still, by some measures, the whitest major city in the country. Nonetheless, the metropolitan area is becoming more ethnically and racially diverse. The Hispanic population is fast-growing, and the area has also experienced substantial immigration from East and South Asia (especially Southeast Asia), Eastern Europe, and East and West Africa. Moreover, much of the growth in the nonwhite population has taken place in the suburbs, so the demographics of the entire region are changing. Still, while we are definitely becoming more diverse, the region has a long way to go before it mirrors the population mix in the United States as a whole.
Local quirks, local lingo, local blogs, neighborhood web sites, urban planning, what to bring, address locator, Portland history
Local Quirks
You’ll see plenty of bumper stickers proclaiming a desire to “Keep Portland Weird!” (Never mind that this exhortation was lifted from a similar campaign in Austin, Texas.) Indeed, quirkiness (along with environmentalism) is the closest thing the city has to an official religion. The following are a few local quirks you should know about in advance:
You can’t pump your own gas in Oregon. It’s against the law. (The only other state with this restriction is New Jersey.)
There’s a nickel deposit on soft drink, beer, and water cans and bottles. Oregon was the first state in the country to pass a bottle bill.
Despite the rainy winter climate, most Portlanders don’t carry umbrellas, and some don’t even own one.
Voters in both Oregon and Washington have approved initiatives legalizing recreational marijuana use. Oregon is in the process of setting up a regulatory regime for sale and distribution, which should be finalized in 2016 (although possession of small quantities for personal use is legal as of mid-2015). Washington has already set up its system, and a number of stores are operating across the Columbia River. Local governments can regulate or choose to completely prohibit marijuana sales, and of course pot possession or sale (or transport across state lines, for Oregonians who just can’t wait) is still technically illegal under federal law.
The Oregon Supreme Court has interpreted the Oregon Constitution to protect nude dancing as expressive speech. As a result, Portland supposedly has more strip clubs per capita than any other city in the country. There is also an annual naked bike ride, attracting thousands of participants.
Many intersections in Eastside residential neighborhoods lack stop signs, resulting in trepidation for motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians alike.
Local Lingo
Portland lacks a distinctive local dialect, and most Oregonians do not have a discernible regional accent (unless they’ve brought one from somewhere else). Most slang is age-based, rather than regional—who knows what teenagers are talking about half the time?—but some localisms can throw off the newcomer. Here’s a handy guide to a few potentially confusing expressions and pronunciations:
Back East: Anywhere east of Denver.
Ban Roll-On Building: The 1000 Broadway office tower downtown, so called because of its distinctive white dome (most noticeable from a distance).
Big Pink: The US Bancorp Tower at Southwest Oak Street and Fifth Avenue downtown; this decidedly pinkish 42-story skyscraper is the second tallest building in Oregon.
Car Prowl: Theft from an automobile.
Civic Stadium: The old name for the stadium in Goose Hollow, now called Providence Park, where the Timbers soccer team plays; formerly, it was the home of the Portland Beavers minor-league baseball team, and was known over the years as Civic Stadium, PGE Park, and Jeld-Wen Field.
Civil War: The annual football game between in-state rivals University of Oregon (the Ducks) and Oregon State University (the Beavers).
Couch Street: It’s pronounced “cooch,” not like a sofa.
CRC: The Columbia River Crossing project, a multi-billion dollar plan to replace the current Interstate 5 bridge over the Columbia River. After hundreds of millions were spent on planning, the project was abandoned for lack of funding.
Doug Fir: The Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii), Oregon’s state tree. Also the name of a trendy bar and live music venue on East Burnside.
Freddy’s: The Fred Meyer one-stop-shopping chain, now owned by Ohio-based Kroger. Fred Meyer was an actual person, and long-time residents still refer to the market as “Freddy’s.”
Front Avenue: The old name for Naito Parkway, which runs along the Willamette River downtown.
Glisan Street: Almost universally pronounced “GLEE-son,” although a few purists insist that it should be pronounced “glisten.”
The Gorge: The Columbia River Gorge east of the city, where the Columbia cuts through the Cascade Mountains.
Gorge Winds: The strong east winds that sometimes blow through the Gorge and into the metropolitan area.
The Kicker: The somewhat controversial Oregon tax refund that is distributed during biennial budget cycles in which actual state revenues exceed projected revenues.
Macadam: The name for Highway 43 between downtown Portland and Lake Oswego. Pronounced “mac-AD-um.”
MAX: Metr
opolitan Area Express, Portland’s light rail system.
McLoughlin: The name of a major thoroughfare in Southeast Portland and the adjacent suburbs. Pronounced “McLofflin.”
NoPo: Hipster name for North Portland.
The Pearl: The Pearl District, a hot neighborhood of high-end condos, restaurants, and boutiques, a few blocks northwest of downtown Portland.