Living in Portland, we all know that. I just look at all the hipsters and grungy-types around town. Many of them have some serious spending money and pay a lot to look like shit.
That would be mildly amusing were it true, since about 80% of La Pine's population is over 60. The only drug problem they have is the criminal prices on their prescriptions. There is no drug problem to speak of in Beautiful Central Oregon other than the tourists and some highway busts of Mexicans moving meth from mexico to Portland via Hwy 97.
True, but I don't think a lot of them are pretending. Just look at their shoes. The shoes - that's how you know who's who and what's what.
Welcome to Beautiful Central Oregon, where the economic news is grim and the bottom is nowhere in sight. It’s no secret why: The one major engine behind the region’s fast-paced growth was the housing boom. When that evaporated, the reverberations slammed through the region hitting some of the biggest employers, like wood products manufacturing, particularly hard. Touring the wreckage of that storm driving down Brookswood Boulevard into a former pine forest that now hosts a swath of housing developments with names like Copper Canyon and Quail Pine.That home sold for $350,000. Now it’s on the market for $175,000. Short sale.” Hummel never intended to become a “certified distressed property expert” specializing in selling homes for less than is owed on their mortgages. But in Bend, she didn’t have much of a choice. No city in Oregon — or arguably, the nation — experienced a more dramatic reversal of fortunes during the Great Recession than Bend, the economic engine for Central Oregon. Home values got cut in half. Unemployment soared to over 16%. A once-promising aviation sector imploded. So did an overheated market for destination resorts. Brokers, builders and speculators once flush with cash woke up underwater and flailing. Banks renowned for their no-document, easy-money loans stopped lending. Layoffs led to notices of default; foreclosure brought bankruptcy. The final blow was the collapse of the local general aviation industry. Cessna shut down its local plant in April 2009. Epic Aircraft, the other major employer at the airport, went bankrupt. “Aviation was our diversification away from construction and wood products,” says Strobel. “We had thousands of employees out at Bend Airport. It was the largest aviation cluster in the state… It just completely fell apart in six months.”
When was that article written? It sounds very dated. Bend is currently doing pretty well. The vibe is drastically different than it was from 2008-2010 and it appears things are coming back. Then there are article like this, discussing how Bend is becoming the next great place for startups: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/223997
Really, Oregon has One medium city in Portland. Beaverton, LO, Hillsboro, Gresham .... all are just Portland burbs, not their own cities regardless of them being incorporated as such. Eugene 143k population, Salem 142 pop could be considered small cities. Bend 63K, Corvallis 53k pop, Medford 68K pop, Springfield 53k are large towns, but I can see someone claiming them as tiny cities. but to consider any of these 2k-25k towns as cities is just wrong. Doesnt mean they arent a great place to live, but they sure as hell aint cities.
A city is more than just the numbers, it's also that it's the central local. so Portland is central with Hillsboro, Beaverton and Gresham around it. So even though Hillsboro has a bunch of people, the town only exists as an offshoot to Portland. As far as free standing, how big is a city? Can you get dinner after 10PM, are there multiple high schools each with at least a thousand kids. Is there rush hour traffic? How many cultural sites are there, like museums, vet memorials, city art... Is there some anonymity to living there, you can crash your car without everyone at work knowing about it? How many floors are the taller buildings? How many cultures exist in that location? Yes, there is a size or population number, but there is also all the other things that make a city a city and there just isn't any way I can see to call Happy Valley a city. That doesn't mean it's not a wonderful place to live, just that it's not a city.
Well, I'd prefer a draft pick to a daft prick, but I certainly think in this case you nailed it. Furthermore, cityfolk are more handsome, have better taste, are smarter and most importantly, have much bigger dicks, even the women.
I have family in Milwaukie, OC, West Linn, and Lake Oswego and these would all be terrible places to live if they were not in close proximity to Portland.
I don't count Sherwood as being that close to Portland. I simply omitted Beaverton. I moved out of Portland in 2004 and never heard of Happy Valley.
If not for Portland, high-end suburbs of Portland, such as Lake Oswego and West Linn, would not exist. So, yeah, they kind of go hand-in-hand. But aside from that, I spend almost all of my time in and around the West Linn area (I barely even leave WL for work), and I love it.
