Help me find a new place to live

[Li'll Divvil]

Doe Maar!!!!

Gods, I was in highschool when those guys were popular

[Marleh]

Crime all depends on where you live. Portland is not a huge city, but the next really big city is a 5 hour drive away, so it attracts trouble from a sizable area. It has a lot of bedroom communities, some that are very quiet, and some that used to be. The MAX, our light-rail system, has carried gang activity out into the suburbs so there is more than there used to be, as compared to the random frying-pan violence. The different police and county sheriff's tasks forces are working to quelch that, but its an ongoing problem.

We do not have sales tax, instead we have a lot of other taxes to make up for that loss of revenue, so you may want to do a bit of research on that front. Our housing market was one of the huge bubbles, and has still not really settled down yet, some of the prices being asked for tiny "townhouses" are just laughable, then right down the street is a house being flipped for a very good price, so prices are jumbled. The Home Owner's Associations around here would make any Valokian cackle with glee.

As for the weather, overcast does not necessarily mean that there's no sun at all, just very... diluted amounts of it. In the winter and spring (and fall and summer) we will get a marine layer, like a very thin fog bank that flows over the valley for days at a time but does not settle in like fog, you can see blue through it, so its not horribly oppressing unless you begin to dwell on it.

To counter that, first, Portland has a lot of micro-breweries. More per person than anywhere else in the US, I'm told. Same with coffee shops, which are really just a way to get out of the house on a dreary winter night when the sun sets at 4:30. There's a reason that lots of bands come to the Seattle-Portland area to try get their break, because there's so many small venues all over the place.

During the summer there are lots of outdoor activities everywhere, biking, hiking, canoeing, boating. But during the winter not so much, so there are a LOT of indoor, well in other places they would call them hobbies, but here they are called artisan crafts. Pottery, sculpture, painting, woodworking, glassblowing, metal working, quilting, weaving, and any other craft you can think of, all organized into groups and guilds and classes. And these are usually all taking place in someone's garage or family room. My neighbors across the street have a full pottery studio in their converted garage where they hold two shows a year and give classes. Another neighbor is a professional quilter. And don't be surprised to walk into a coffee shop and find it full of spinning wheels. I can name three places within easy driving distance of my house where there are gatherings on a different night of the week.

To showcase this we have a lot of outdoor markets during the summer, and lots of indoor "holiday festivals" during the winter, including my two favorites, "Every Husband's Nightmare Bazaar," which focuses on home decor for the holidays, and "the Festival of the Last Minute," where everything must be hand-made by the vendor, and is open until Christmas Eve for all those who put off their Christmas shopping until then.

There is also a lot of rock hounding, since this is a geologically active area - we are surrounded by volcanoes, you know. During the winter everyone sits down to polish their findings from the summer and hold swap meets. There is a fantastic rock and mineral museum located here. This does have a downside, as we do have earthquakes. Not nearly as much as California, but on the downside we are not ~nearly~ as prepared as California.

Any other questions?

[kai123]

Impressive Marleh!

It will take me a bit to sort through this little dissertation, but I will! And I'll have the ball and chain take a walk through it as well. I'm sure there'll be other questions.

thanks

[strickp]

I ask because I used to work at a factory long long time ago and worked 12 hr days. A couple weeks one winter we had some overtime and I went over a week without seeing the sun at all. It does mess with your thinker, and not in a good way.

Yep.

A friend of mine's sister lived in the Seattle area for years and got so depressed she and her husband had to move their family back to Texas. She couldn't stand not seeing the sun. So if you're inclined to that, think about it before making any decisions.

[Pathos Street]

Iowa, despite its winters, is one of the better places to live in the US. Good schools, low cost of living, low crime, strong economy with relatively low unemployment.

Des Moines, Iowa City, Ames, Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, Davenport are the "big" cities.

[kai123]

Isn't Iowa largely flat? I've lived in flatlands before and it depresses me more than lack of sun

[Darkfire]

Isn't Iowa largely flat? I've lived in flatlands before and it depresses me more than lack of sun

I agree. I've been so spoiled by Missouri's hills and forests and everything. Flatlands... uughhh

[Pathos Street]

Incredibly flat and boring, yeah.











Granted, there is a lot of farmland. Iowa has the highest percentage of developed land of any state in the US, because there are so many corn/soybean fields (though it's hardly only an agricultural state). And there are stretches where it's flat, sure, especially up in north central iowa which in prehistoric times was a big fat lake... but Iowa is mostly rolling hills.