Portlanders generally have a pretty clear idea of what their city is all about. We tend to think of our fair metropolis as an eco-friendly utopia filled with a variety of poor dressers, umbrella haters and the food cart fixated.
Measuring our success
Portlanders generally have a pretty clear idea of what their city is all about. We tend to think of our fair metropolis as an eco-friendly utopia filled with a variety of poor dressers, umbrella haters and the food cart fixated.
But how does the rest of the country view us? As our gangly “little” city has grown into the magnificent place it is today, what kinds of messages have we been sending, and what’s getting through to the wretched souls not fortunate enough to live in our haven of awesomeness?
Well, one message we’ve been pretty clear getting out is our propensity for being environmentally obsessed. Whether it’s recycling or bicycling, we’re generally very proud of our forward-thinking “green” tendencies, and it’s clear that the rest of the world has received the memo.
Portland’s Forest Park is the largest park in the entire U.S. that actually has trees in it, leading to the city landing a spot on USA Today’s top 10 best U.S. cities for urban forests list. We also frequently get labeled the country’s best city for bicycling, and according to another USA Today report, 6 percent of our workforce bikes to work, and perhaps even more than that. You can usually identify these dedicated individuals by the puddles of rainwater around their desks.
Another message we’ve been pretty clear on is our citywide tendency to be craft beer connoisseurs: aka a bunch of happy drunks.
USA Today also named Portland one of the 10 best beer cities in the world. Not in the state, not in the country, but in the whole freaking world. Granted, USA Today might be a little biased toward, well, the USA, but making it on that list over places like San Francisco is a sweet victory that deserves a few celebratory rounds.
Evidently we’ve also been very good at publicizing the number of strip clubs we’ve managed to fit into our little corner of the world. Time Magazine touted Portland as the city with the most strip bars per capita in the country, a title that, though unsurprising, is pretty freaking noteworthy to non-Portlanders.
While nude dance shows are as common and accepted as a night of bowling to most of the locals I’ve met, this message might be part of the reason we get titles like Time’s “most promiscuous U.S. city.”
Those are all obvious Portland distinctions, but one not-so-obvious part of our identity is our thriving nerd culture. After comparing multiple cities and considering how many people there are per things like comic book stores, LARPing (Live Action Role-Playing) groups, computer stores and science museums, a Fox News columnist reported that Portland placed in the “top 10 most nerd-friendly cities in America.”
I tend to take all things Fox-related with a very big grain of salt, but all the graphic T-shirts, anime fiends and tech junkies in the city make me inclined to believe such a ranking.
Even more startling to the city that Portlandia termed the place “where young people go to retire” are all the things Forbes Magazine describes Portland as. We made it onto its list as the sixth-best place to live and launch a business; we’re somehow third on the “safest cities in America” list; and we’re evidently advancing into the future as the 10th “most wired city” in the country.
Unfortunately, all of that epic awesomeness has led to high-priced rent and overcrowding issues. Portland is, according to KGW News, one of the top 10 cities for rising rent. And we get to enjoy being the ninth worst city to drive in, according (again) to Forbes.
So I suppose there are a few messages we’ve managed to get out to the rest of the world about Portland, Oregon. To everyone not lucky enough to be here with us in our eccentric city, Portlanders probably seem to be promiscuous hippie nerds who spend their time drunk in titty bars and bicycling around forests that happen to be in the middle of the city, all the while avoiding staying inside our overpriced apartments and out of the rain like sane people.
Frankly, anyone thinking it wouldn’t be too far off the mark.
