eighthoursbehind

Hello,

I moved from the UK almost three years ago and have resided in Hood River, Or since then with my american born wife. We decided to get an amicable separation and I am thinking wisely about relocating to Portland. Do we have any member that know Portland well?

Regards,

Mark

farmerwife

Meauxna!

How well is well? Are you trying to decide on an area or suburb of PDX, or considering Portland as opposed to another city or State?

Traffic or commutes could be bad, personally I would want to live in the same area as the job, to avoid traffic hassle.


Particularly bad now it is the summer "fix the road season".

meauxna

Hey Mark, sorry to hear that you're splitting. You had the cafe that I never made it to, right? We're actually passing through your way at the end of this month..
I think that there will be more opportunities in PDX than elsewhere right now, but times are tough. Hit craigslist for rental & job info, also wweek.com for the weekly rag, and please drop me a PM for any specifics; happy to help out.

One tip about commuting in Portland.. I have almost always lived close-in and this has worked out well. In any direction, I'm going against the main flow of traffic. SE Portland is harder in terms of freeway access to the west side (any idea on where you'll be working?)
The road fix season isn't too much of a problem here this year anyway; there is a commuting blog on the oregonlive.com site where he details the road works and their schedules, but not much is very very bad right now.

lansbury

As Mo says you need to think about work location to where you are going to live.

I live in Milwaukie borders SE Portland and do the 10 miles to the Red Cross in North Portland in 20 minutes, all on the east side of the river. But going out west onto 26 to say Hillsborough can be disproportionally much longer.

My niece and her husband have been with us for the last two days apartment hunting in Portland and there are loads of special offers and good places to rent at the moment in downtown Portland.

meauxna

oooh, for downtown.. drove past this again last night and it's soooo nice looking!
http://www.cyanpdx.com/

lansbury

I think that is one they looked at.

BHAFC14

I worked in Portland for about 18 months for Intel at their Ronler Acres and Hillsboro campuses. I lived in Beaverton which was only about a 10 minute commute or a 25 minute cycle if you were feeling green. I would agree that it is better to live closer to where you work especially in a rural area where any form of public transport is scarce to say the least - although that was 10 years ago and things may have improved. I really liked Portland, plenty of good microbreweries (Full Sail and McTarnahans went down very well) and a lively music scene, also good skiing not far away at Mount Hood Meadows and Ski Bowl. The local rag, the Oregonian, was a good source for accomodation and what was going on. Only thing that got me down was the constant rain - the locals always said you didn't go brown you just rusted !

bethel

I've lived in SE Portland for 10 years or so and I love it. But you must have been here to visit, Hood River isn't far away. What do you want to know? It's a great city, in fact the only city I've ever lived in that I like living in - It's easy to cycle around, birds singing, trees rustling, Fireworks exploding (right now!). I personally would prefer never to go to Beaverton, I used to work there and I found it very depressing in an " everything's a strip mall" kind of way.
Anyway, if you have any particular questions just let me know.