Foo - Pdx

I'm gonna do it, i'm moving.

some time between 1 month and 3 months i'll be on my way to the other side of the country.

if its in 1 month it'll be with my mom, i'll try to find a job quickly and save up so when my friend comes out we can get an apartment (this is also a good idea because they'll be more likely to give two twenty year olds an apartment if a job is involved)

still not sure on what area i should look to though, we'll be car free (friend and i) so i want to be close to downtown or atleast near lots of jobs and interesting things...but also very cheap if possible

talk to me portland, what should i be looking for/forward to, watching out for, etc

looking out for: meth, streetcar tracks
forward to: cheap PBR

Probably anywhere north of powell and east up to about 50th in SE. The job market here suuuuucks, be forewarned.

it's a kickass town. you'll enjoy it. +1 to slopvehicle. as far as cynic's comment, there are a lot of places to live--are you looking at apartment or house? how many people? use the **** out of CL.

as far as work...yeah...the job market is...well, it's okay. not great. not even very, very good. just okay. you'll find work, but maybe not work you'll enjoy and not right away. but i've never had trouble getting work.

When I first moved to Portland in 1977, I needed a job right away. I signed up with Manpower and they kept me as busy as I wanted to be. The nice thing about it was that I got to see what was up with the job market and got several good leads as a result of Manpower jobs. There are other temp agencies for other skills.... depends what you want to do.

Craigslist jobs (http://portland.craigslist.org/jjj/) .... if you want to check it out.

I have lived in Sellwood/Moreland, Brooklyn, and Richmond neighborhoods. They are all in inner Southeast and all were nice places and affordable for working folks. Also check out inner Northeast and St. Johns.

Dogbait

Try and avoid felony flats. Also, good luck with that job thing, I ain't gonna be here for the summer for precisely that reason.

find downtown... pick a direction ride for 10-20 minutes and stop...
anything behind you is where you want to live.
Portland is very centralized... think "downtown is the center"
If your on a budget ride North East or South East from downtown.
(reference) I live 12 minutes from downtown and pay $272.50 (split) with a roomate... in SouthEast off of Hawthorne.

Well, there's jobs, but they happen a lot by word of mouth and CL tends to post openings for places out of the area or just desperate for a hire. I'd be wary of the postings that have been up for like a month. Just get out and hoof it. You'll get to know the area and pique much more interest in potential employers. Anyone can just submit a resume, you have to talk to people.
Living east side tends to be cheaper and feel more like a real neighborhood, with good places to eat and grocery stores and whatever. Downtown is mainly Financial and is a magnet for the suburbanites. If you really want to be here, you'll find a way to make it work.

are there many messenger jobs over there? i hear itʻs all old school lifers these days, and that thereʻs not much space.

find downtown... pick a direction ride for 10-20 minutes and stop...
anything behind you is where you want to live.
Portland is very centralized... think "downtown is the center"
If your on a budget ride North East or South East from downtown.
(reference) I live 12 minutes from downtown and pay $272.50 (split) with a roomate... in SouthEast off of Hawthorne.
thats a pretty good ide


but yeah, it'd be niiiiiiiiiice if it was more of a house, becuase i have 2 cats that havent used a box in years, but i think that would probably be out of our price range at first, it'll be me and one other person, then in a year (or psu semester) atleast one other person should be moving in, then maybe we can look into a bike pirate house.

SE is a good place to live. Stay away from SW it's a ****ing ghost town there. NW is too expensive/trendy as is the Pearl. I don't know too much about NE but one of my buddies just got out of North Portland (NOPO) since there was a double homicide two blocks from his house. He moved to the Hollywood district, which is actually a pretty nice neighborhood w/ some cool stuff close by.

Not sure about messenger jobs although one guy I met just got one but had to go with one of the crappier companies in town (possibly due to the "lifers" at the other companies) I do know that when I did an alleycat with Humancongereel last month the messenger crew seemed pretty tight knit, although they were all nothing but cool to us newbs.

Buy some ****ing raingear because the weather here sucks titties. Get ready for the best summers of your life followed by the most depressing winters. I don't think I saw the sun for all of December and part of January this year.

There's a heap of fun bars/ dive pubs where you can find a cheap beer, plenty of great microbrews and there may be some hot chicks who don't go to striped shirt dance clubs (although I haven't met them).

Any other questions, or if you need someone to show you around when you get here, hit one of us portlandites up. We keep talking big about getting some sorg of gtg going, although it hasn't happened yet. Enjoy the move, I think you'll really like it here.

+1 on the gtg...+1 on raingear...springs have rain, but are still beautiful. summers are great. fall is meh, winter is wet and cold, but at least it doesn't get to 8 degrees like boise did.

messenger jobs, not totally sure, to be honest, i've heard conflicting things.

nopo can be good. i live in nopo with 4 other people (counting my girlfriend) and it costs us 260 a month. not bad. nice house, chill neighborhood, right by a park (though almost everywhere in portland is next to a park)...a little farther than i'd like to be from downtown, since it adds travel time to see friends off, say, 38th and hawthorne...

but sw is a ghost town, nw is...well, forget nw, you'll never afford it. and i doubt you're much of a yuppie. se is fantastic. i sort of hope we can move out there sometime. there or ne. friendly neighborhood feel, easy to get anywhere on a bike, all that. nice atmosphere.

i think i recall that double homicide in nopo, but that stuff isn't too common.

there's so much cool stuff to do here...i can't even begin to mention it now. like in austin, tx, some people here have "keep portland weird" stickers. it's true. fun town.

hey, keep us informed, we can answer questions, give you pointers, crap like that. i sometimes suck at returning messages (sorry, Awetistic), but i'm sure glad to help however i can...hit us up when you get here, as sinfield said.

edit: oops.

i sometimes suck at returning messages (sorry, Awetistic)
Yeah, I've been waiting by my laptop...waiting, waiting.
On the messenger tip though, you gotta pester or just end up starting at Transerv and putting the equivelant of an orange flag on your helmet. If you don't try to get in while it's still raining out it's pretty much a lost cause. Practically nobody quits in the summer.

i've been here for about 3 years now, and have lived all over the city. definately stay close-in. as far as neighborhoods, i've found that the best balance of cheap housing, cool stuff to do, and bike friendly streets and transit is in NE. i'm in the mississippi neighborhood right now - 10 mins to downtown by bike. alberta is cool too. contrary to what most people will tell you, southeast is a ***** to bike around in. i hardly ever go down there unless it's to see friends.

Im the other VA kid planning on heading out there with Z. Thanks for the tips, I'm sure I'll have more stuff to ask as it gets closer to moving day. Once we find a place to live, maybe we could all have a group ride/hangout/party or something :)

Im the other VA kid planning on heading out there with Z. Thanks for the tips, I'm sure I'll have more stuff to ask as it gets closer to moving day. Once we find a place to live, maybe we could all have a group ride/hangout/party or something :)
are you as excited about the cheap beer as i am?



so yeah, my mom flew out today to check some schools out and do some interviews (she's looking for a teaching job) and a place for 2. so we'll know soon whats up

so yeah, my mom flew out today to check some schools out and do some interviews (she's looking for a teaching job) and a place for 2. so we'll know soon whats up

good luck to her with that... some of the districts have been threatening to lay off teachers...

tell her to check out the Gresham-Barlow School district. It's a little far out (think like 15-20min. drive from downtown) but it's a great place to work. I may be a little biased as my dad was a director there for a number of years and I currently work for a middle school in the district. They are very commited to technology and creating a great learning environment for their students which transtlates to a fantastic working environment. Benefits are good too. I know they just had their job fair yesterday, maybe she went to it?

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Bah, don't listen to all these haters unless you wanna be a p***y and never ride up any hills cause you live in the flat part of town. SW is great, unless you care about being cool. And for reference I could hit a baseball onto i5 from my house. Terwilliger curves, uh-yeah.

good luck to her with that... some of the districts have been threatening to lay off teachers...
she's not really looking in portland for a job, more in the middle of no where places, like Paisley and Plush, supppppper small poulations (two hundred something in paisley, sixty in plush)

i think she has interviews set up already, so thats cool

but she'll probably try and get a short term place in portland until the school year starts back up

she's not really looking in portland for a job, more in the middle of no where places, like Paisley and Plush, supppppper small poulations (two hundred something in paisley, sixty in plush)

i think she has interviews set up already, so thats cool

but she'll probably try and get a short term place in portland until the school year starts back up

nice... hopefully you'll end up with a middle-of-nowhere place to hang out.

Bah, don't listen to all these haters unless you wanna be a p***y and never ride up any hills cause you live in the flat part of town. SW is great, unless you care about being cool. And for reference I could hit a baseball onto i5 from my house. Terwilliger curves, uh-yeah.

You live up by the terwilliger curves? I live off of Barbur right across from the Swan Mart. I still hate the ghost town that is SW though. I thought it was a charming relaxed neighborhood until i realized that relaxed= mortuary.

I completely disagree with whomever said north portland is far away.
I live off Fremont and Williams and I can get from home to downtown in ten minutes and I'm the slowest person I know next to my roommate who has a 50 lb. beach cruiser for a bike.

I just moved to this zone from inner SE, and while the produce district is wonderfully close to downtown, the heroin zombies under the bridges arent the the raddest.

You live up by the terwilliger curves? I live off of Barbur right across from the Swan Mart. I still hate the ghost town that is SW though. I thought it was a charming relaxed neighborhood until i realized that relaxed= mortuary.

Yeah, I'm not arguing that it isn't a ghost town, I basically just wanted to get myself riled up a little. Yeah, ghost town ain't bad though, I'd take ghost town over how many bums wander around the inner SE area. Theft and whatnot is also a lot lower here. I pay 290 w/o utilities for a house, with 3 other people.

I completely disagree with whomever said north portland is far away.
I live off Fremont and Williams and I can get from home to downtown in ten minutes and I'm the slowest person I know next to my roommate who has a 50 lb. beach cruiser for a bike.

I just moved to this zone from inner SE, and while the produce district is wonderfully close to downtown, the heroin zombies under the bridges arent the the raddest.

is that me? i don't think i said it's far. i think i said it's farther than i'd like, but not terribly bad. fremont and williams is technically nopo since it's west of MLK, but i live in north north. like...interstate and argyle. like where the big statue of paul bunyan is. 15-20 minutes to get downtown, still isn't bad. i just hate how the drivers get more provincial in my neighborhood.

as far as the heroin zombies...yeah. for some reason a friend and i were drinking whiskey under the burnside bridge one night and a pregnant girl asked if we had water for her needle, and when we said no, she used puddle water, then went to shoot up on a mattress a dude had pissed on a while earlier. it was sad and wrong and the sort of situation where you don't know what to do or what you can do.

find downtown... pick a direction ride for 10-20 minutes and stop...
anything behind you is where you want to live.
Portland is very centralized... think "downtown is the center"
If your on a budget ride North East or South East from downtown.
(reference) I live 12 minutes from downtown and pay $272.50 (split) with a roomate... in SouthEast off of Hawthorne.


woops... i actually timed myself to downtown and got there in about 7 minutes! Yee haw!:D

did you go down the hill on hawthorne?;)

i still need to time myself, but i have no timepiece. maybe i need a dollar store watch.

..man I already want to move to Portland bad enough but you guys are making it worse. And saying a 15minute bike ride to downtown is far? Right now my commute to downtown Austin is 10minutes and I a stone's throw away from downtown. My old apmt was 45 minutes from downtown Houston but I still felt innercity.

anyway, uh, if any of you guy's are looking for a roommate starting in July, I'd move up to Pdx for that.

is that me? i don't think i said it's far. i think i said it's farther than i'd like, but not terribly bad. fremont and williams is technically nopo since it's west of MLK, but i live in north north. like...interstate and argyle. like where the big statue of paul bunyan is. 15-20 minutes to get downtown, still isn't bad. i just hate how the drivers get more provincial in my neighborhood.

n00b, williams is the dividing line between N and NE.... so it really depends on what side of the street you're on.

also i will never call it 'nopo.' i just can't.

I lived in NW Portland for 11 months before moving back to Minnesota. Rent is a little more in NW. My wife and I paid $900 / month for a spacious one bedroom over a shop on 23rd. Yeah, I guess you could say the neighborhood is gentrified, but I was on good terms with most of the homeless individuals -- There was "Rock-and-Roll" -- the professional rock and roller, by his own account. Then there was Daniel, who was certain that the mechanical roof top units on the hospital were beaming messages to the microchip in his brain (and who's to say they weren't). But, I digress.

Anyway, I loved living in NW. I could go for long runs in Forest Park and Washington Park. The Pearl District was a 10min. walk from my place. The trolley stop was a block away. I could bike downtown in about 10min. $3 burritos were available across the street. I had access to good beer: The New Old Lompoc and The Laurelwood were a few blocks away.

As others have said, the job prospects typically are not good. My wife works in higher education, and she ended up doing part-time work at two community colleges, with low pay and no benefits. I had it way easier. I'm a structural engineer, and since Portland is in a high seismic zone, there's a higher demand for engineers, so I was able to find a job within a week.

We moved back for family / friends / wife's job / house reasons, but now that we've been back for almost a year, we've come to realize what a truly unique, and liveable city Portland really is.

Good luck with your move. You're going to love Portland.

..man I already want to move to Portland bad enough but you guys are making it worse. And saying a 15minute bike ride to downtown is far? Right now my commute to downtown Austin is 10minutes and I a stone's throw away from downtown. My old apmt was 45 minutes from downtown Houston but I still felt innercity.

anyway, uh, if any of you guy's are looking for a roommate starting in July, I'd move up to Pdx for that.


Haha, well if we find a big enough place with low rent maybe you can come join us. It would be a bikeforums house...

all that got to be said:

EAST SIDE *****!!!!
NORTH SIDE - WHAT?!!??!!

don't try to get bike work... it won't happen. pdx messengers are a family, and give their jobs to other family members. even then, it's not like it pays anything. summertime is a good time to try to find wrench work, or outdoor **** work, like house painting. Bike polo is in upper NE, so consider how far that is from where you live, and if it's safe to be that drunk riding for that far. races all start downtown, but usually end in SE (sometimes NE), and the real tough-guy riding is all in the west hills.

PDX is a wonderful and beautiful town to live and ride in, so long as you're prepared to live at the poverty line. Ain't no ballers in puddle-town.

n00b, williams is the dividing line between N and NE.... so it really depends on what side of the street you're on.

also i will never call it 'nopo.' i just can't.

yeah, it's just shorter.

huh, as far as the N/NE thing...someone told me MLK was the divider. and i tend not to look at street signs very frequently or closely. i probably would have noticed that long ago (like when i first came here, almost 2 years ago now...not as n00b-y as i sound) if not for that bad habit. i always figure i know how to get places (i typically do), so what do i need signs for?

yeah, it's just shorter.

huh, as far as the N/NE thing...someone told me MLK was the divider. and i tend not to look at street signs very frequently or closely. i probably would have noticed that long ago (like when i first came here, almost 2 years ago now...not as n00b-y as i sound) if not for that bad habit. i always figure i know how to get places (i typically do), so what do i need signs for?

i know what you mean... just poking a little fun. MLK is basically NE/SE 4th Ave... bonus points if you know what it's old name is.

and I'll call your "almost 2 years" and raise you another 25, n00b. ;)

is that me? i don't think i said it's far. i think i said it's farther than i'd like, but not terribly bad. fremont and williams is technically nopo since it's west of MLK, but i live in north north. like...interstate and argyle. like where the big statue of paul bunyan is. 15-20 minutes to get downtown, still isn't bad. i just hate how the drivers get more provincial in my neighborhood.

as far as the heroin zombies...yeah. for some reason a friend and i were drinking whiskey under the burnside bridge one night and a pregnant girl asked if we had water for her needle, and when we said no, she used puddle water, then went to shoot up on a mattress a dude had pissed on a while earlier. it was sad and wrong and the sort of situation where you don't know what to do or what you can do.

You live in Kenton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenton,_Portland,_Oregon) or, if you live east of Interstate, Piedmont.

There is no such thing as "nopo".

Portland is divided into five geographic districts, North, Northeast, Southeast, Southwest and Northwest. these divisions are reflected in street addresses and are used as administrative tools by the city government to divide work districts. Portland is also divided into Neighborhoods that have well defined, historical boundaries. When folks who have been here for a while are asked where they live, They will say something like Richmond, Sunnyside, Kerns, Arbor Lodge, Lents, Linnton, Overlook, Eliot or Sabin... not North Portland. I worked in North Portland for 25 years and that's what it was called. It is probably the most diverse district in the city with housing that runs the gamut from broken down slums to mansions overlooking the river to gazillion dollar condos and floating homes on Hayden Island. The misnomer "nopo" seems to have come into use among recent arrivals who want it to sound like the nouveau-hip neighborhoods they were priced out of in NewYork City (SOHO) or San Francisco (SOMA).

I suppose it's normal for folks from elsewhere to want to identify with their neighborhood and give it a new name.... sort of like it's a lost puppy.... but the traditional neighborhood names have been in use for a long time.

Along North Mississippi Avenue, there is about a 10 block stretch that was a prostitute stroll and drive-up drug market in the '70s and '80s. It has been undergoing a period of gentrification and is now at the point that the folks who moved in ten years ago for the cheap rents are about to be pushed out by the young lawyers and telecommuting high techies. The latest trendy name for that neighborhood seems to be "Mississippi".... not so, it's Boise just like it says there, chiseled in stone, on the front of the school at Fremont and Borthwick.

There is another up and coming area along Northeast Alberta Street. There were race riots there in the seventies and a large part of a vibrant commercial strip was burned out and never recovered. There has been a lot of renovation going on and the area is once again alive and well. Some call it "Alberta" which it is not. If you knock on a few doors north and south of Alberta Street and ask some of the long time residents where they live, they will probably say, King, or Vernon or Concordia... the three neighborhoods that Alberta St. passes through between MLK Blvd. and 33rd Av.

There is no such thing as "nopo".


Dogbait

i know what you mean... just poking a little fun. MLK is basically NE/SE 4th Ave... bonus points if you know what it's old name is.

and I'll call your "almost 2 years" and raise you another 25, n00b. ;)


Union

Dogbait

Interstate 84 is called the Banfield Freeway. What was it's old number?

Interstate 405 is the Stadium Freeway.

What is Interstate 5 in North Portland called?

What city was annexed into Portland in 1913?


Dogbait

yeah, i know i live in the kenton neighborhood. "nopo" is just the nickname that seems to be taking over, a popular shorthand. i told someone i live in kenton, and he had no idea what i was talking about. i didn't know that bit about mississippi being called "boise" (where i used to live. the one in idaho). personally, i don't think "nopo" sounds hip. i think it sounds stupid. but it's easier to type, so i use it here.

as far as my 2 years (which i've spent in both portland and boise), i'm not trying to say how pdx-core i am, just that i'm not someone who came here 2 months ago. i see your 25 years and i fold...;)

Union

Dogbait

well of course YOU know....

What city was annexed into Portland in 1913?


Dogbait

Was it Albina?

st. johns, i believe.

No, I think it was Nopo. It's a trick question and dogbait set y'all up.

No, I it was Nopo. It's a trick question and dogbait set y'all up.

st. johns, i believe.


We have a winner!!!!

Zach gets to fill his bike tires with FREE AIR until further notice. Congrats Zach.

Albina was annexed in 1891 when Portland, East Portland and Albina were consolidated. Before this time, Portland was located entirely on the west side of the Willamette River.

Next question:
Before the "Great Renumbering of 1931", what was the name of SE 33rd Place?

Guess this one and I'll pump up your tires for you.:D

I was digging around for some info on why the Boise neighborhood was so named and couldn't come up with anything other than it was named for the local school..... but I did find this Photo Archive that may be of interest to bike folks.

"Portland Ground: Pictures of Portland Oregon - Used under Creative Commons License". (http://www.portlandground.com/archives/boise/)

Still waiting for the name of Interstate 5 and the number of the Banfield Freeway.

Dogbait

n00b, williams is the dividing line between N and NE.... so it really depends on what side of the street you're on.

also i will never call it 'nopo.' i just can't.

I am well aware that because of my address I technicaly live in Northeast portland. but seriously, when the dividing line is literally 30 feet away and most people conjure 30something and alberta when thinking of NE, it seems easier to say i live in North.

also, my local coffee shop, grocery store, LBS, and bar are all in North, so I'm not really stressing about the technicality of having an address in the 10s of NE.

regarding nopo: that just sounds stupid. I just recently moved to portland from seattle [which is by no means a big city] and when I see that kind of faux-nyc posturing it seems really silly for a town of this size. i certainly don't say that and I havent heard anyone I know say it.

also, on employment: it is not difficult to find a job in portland. it just won't be an awesome job and it won't be given to you on a plate. I hear many people talk about the employment situation in this town and they are for the most part being total babies.
you have to write a resume, put on a button up shirt and cover your tattoos and hit the streets and talk to managers. I found a job in less than a week and my roommate who just moved here from seattle last month found one in four days.
neither of our jobs are rad, but both pay the bills.
regarding courier jobs: I know a quite a number of messengers in this town and whomever said they are family hit the nail on the head. that said, they are a welcoming bunch [hell i hang out with them] and it probably wouldnt be too incredibly difficultto ingratiate yourself. but don't hold your breath for a job.

although I hear baja fresh hires for bike delivery. har har.

good luck.

Next question:
Before the "Great Renumbering of 1931", what was the name of SE 33rd Place?



It took a while, but Greenwood Ave. or possibly E. Greenwood Ave.

It took a while, but Greenwood Ave. or possibly E. Greenwood Ave.

Amazing!
What did you do..... go out there and look at the sidewalk? That's where I found it.

Dogbait

Amazing!
What did you do..... go out there and look at the sidewalk? That's where I found it.

Dogbait

Naah, a lot of work with google... I live in South Carolina right now. Found out what the basic renumbering system was within a couple of minutes, but of course since it's 33rd PL, it doesn't follow any specific rule - but all numbered SE Avenues used to be E. Streets - ex. SE 39th Ave. was E. 39th St. (and NE 39th Ave. was E. 39th St. N.)... anyway, I just happened upon this site while I was looking for old maps of portland - they have a number of unhelpful (but interesting) old maps, and this page: http://www.rootsweb.com/~ormultno/land/streets.htm

So yeah. There you go.

Am I going to have to ride all the way out to St. Helens to get my tires filled?

.........
So yeah. There you go.

Am I going to have to ride all the way out to St. Helens to get my tires filled?

That's a good resource. Thanks for the link. I used to live on SE 33rd Av. near Division. In that neighborhood, the old (pre 1931) sidewalks had the street names cast into the corners. I used to cross 33rd place almost every afternoon on the way to the beer store at 34th and Clinton. That's how I remembered it.

Since you are in South Carolina, just go over to my sister's place in Murrels Inlet to get your tires filled. She won't know what you are talking about but she always enjoys a good joke in between hurricanes.
:D
Dogbait