I love the weather there. I’d rather be depressed in the cold forest than to have my skin scorched. I don’t want to deal with fascists though and it seems to be a constant battle between them and antifa in Portland. How’s rent and walkability there?
I don’t want to deal with fascists though and it seems to be a constant battle between them and antifa in Portland
If by "fascists" you mean overpaid tech-worker NIMBYs who put black lives matter signs on their lawns while stifling any and all progress toward sane multi-family residential zoning, affordable housing, and compassionate care for the homeless, I have bad news for you.
Otherwise it's pretty good. Positively Stygian in the winter but you either get used to it or get a sun lamp.
Yes those types but more important the overtly fascist types like the Proud Boys. I had a friend who visited family there and he said the rural side is full of confederate flags lol. Not to mention the weird neo nazi ideology of building an ethno state in the northwest. I doubt I’ll see that in my lifetime but I don’t want to be caught in the crosshairs
My hometown in the rural PNW has weekly proud boy meetups. The mayor and several off-duty cops show up occasionally to offer support. Not trying to scare you off or anything, but it's definitely a problem if you're planning on moving into the woods
I’m probably not rich enough to live in the woods, and also don’t want to be lonely :cheems: ill probably stick to the city
I mean they exist but you're not likely to run into one. There were some arrests over what happened in Portland and it seems like things have been relatively quiet since then.
Edit: At least west of the Cascades.
I can't believe you just used the word stygian in a sentence
There's a stygian owl.
The stygian owl (Asio stygius) is a medium-sized "typical owl" in subfamily Striginae. It is found in Mexico, parts of Central America, Cuba, Hispaniola, and 10 countries in South America.
Also...
The stygian owl is wholy nocturnal. [...] The diet also includes bats which are seldom preyed on by other owls.
It's a great word, just never thought I'd see it used in a sentence so casually
I don't have the highest hopes for the PNW region being spared some of the nastier effects of climate change. I just left the area a few months ago when the whole place was blanketed with smoke from California and then later British Columbia wildfires. From where I was in northern Idaho, no one cared about minimizing COVID transmission. It caused one of the largest outbreaks globally with not nearly enough hospital capacity to account for it. Last summer, there was a heat dome that killed Over a thousand people across Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and Canada.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Western_North_America_heat_wave
I moved to Seattle from TX 3 years ago thinking I was going to some progressive utopia. It's not. The only thing it taught me is that it doesn't really matter where you live in this country. Seattle still gives all money to cops, still jails people for the "crime" of being unable to afford housing, is still full of racism and privilege, still detains immigrants and refugees in ICE centers, and bows to the authority of Capital. It's the absolute definition of the BLM - Pride Flag plane dropping bombs. Sure weed is legal, the trees are pretty, and people will ask you what your preferred pronouns are, but no basic needs are met, you will have a hard time finding affordable housing, you will see cops everywhere, you will see unhoused folks get swept from one encampment to the next while all their belongings are thrown in garbage trucks, and you will be surrounded by liberals who all think these are good and righteous things.
I mean, slightly colder, but not really cold. And worse in terms of the capacity of the state to do anything useful because the state constitution bans an income tax.
i was economically pushed out of california, landed in the pnw. i like the summers, i tolerate the winters. i like the nature, i like the food, i miss the diversity, i avoid the chuds. i like how it feels "smaller" (ie: 15 minutes out of portland and you're driving down 1 lane country roads with cows on one side and broccoli on the other). affordability and culture clashes are issues you come across often. a cool thing about portland is that it's one of the few west coast cities where you can still afford your rent on a basic food service job (city minimum wage is close to $15/hr, just get a job with tips. last apartment i rented there was a 2br in a hip neighbhood for $1500/mo)
summer 2020 was pretty traumatic for residents of the city who chose to pay attention. covid, the 100 nights of police brutality, the trump convoys, and the choking smoke from wildfires. last month a right wing chud right in the heart of town shot a group of people (killing one) who do traffic/safety guidance for protests.
there's a lot of nerds in portland. people who like tabletop games and trivia night and axe throwing. it's a very redditor friendly city. there's also a lot of based af people.
Proud Boys/Patriot Prayer guys come to Portland maybe a couple times each summer, to a specific patch of downtown that's easy to avoid, and usually with plenty of notice. They scuffle with the locals for a couple hours (usually just shouting at each other across Naito parkway), then they bounce. They can be a hassle if you move downtown or inner Southeast (sometimes their rallies leak), but most of the time, in most of the city you don't have to worry about fascists. Most of the city is actually pretty safe I'd say, aside from Old Town sometimes.
Rent is stupid high, but public transit is nice and the city is easy to get around, especially on the east side. If you need a job, the homeless shelters are pretty much always hiring and it's good meaningful work that just might end up giving you PTSD.
There will be days you walk by piles of needles and trash and human feces, but that's just because the city really sucks at providing services to unsheltered people. There are some great parks and trails here if you like nature and want to get away from the city.
Portland kind of sucks sometimes, but I like it. Also, wildfires. Last couple years the summer wildfires have been absolutely miserable.
Of course I’ll be doing more research’s and it’ll be a long time before I actually move, but what are the current job prospects over there? Currently doing STEM in college lol so there’s gonna be a lot of us
There's definitely STEM opportunities in the PNW. I came to Washington from Florida in 2012 to go to school and I much prefer it here over fucking Florida lol. It took a few years to really adapt to the winter, but it's pretty mild compared to a lot of the interior or north eastern US. I've lived on the east side of the Cascades and west side and it's def more conservative and trumpy on the East. West of the Cascades you get hicks up in the hills but the towns are mostly full of libs. Like anywhere in the US it's pretty varied, overall less conservative than Central Florida I would say.
The real Nazi/fascist/white separatist hotspots are in places in the interior like the Idaho panhandle and western Montana. I think Spokane is pretty politically fucked but I've never lived there so I don't know specifically. I think the Xtian Dominionist that got elected to the state legislature came from Spokane valley, which is basically a conservative suburb district.
Idaho can be really pretty, it's just full of the shittiest white settler americans.
Can't say I know too much about the local job prospects, but I can't quite say this town is all sun and roses. Homelessness is rampant, even for a West coast US city, at about 1 homeless resident per 60 housed compared to Seattle and LA at about 1 in 100. Any other questions you want to ask a local?
oly pd are less brutally fascist than the tacoma pd?
I've heard anecdotes from the homeless that the OPD is generally softer on the homeless (IMO, I think there's just too many homeless for the police to harass), but to everyone else they're still racist, jackbooted thugs like any other American PD. They'll also occasionally run encampment sweeps, but I have no idea how those shape up to other encampment sweeps in the area
How dangerous would it be to volunteer for more overtly leftist organizations? I know that some people get confronted by chuds and even arrested for handing out food but I don’t think it was in the PNW
Safer than most, in my opinion. The Evergreen State college's reputation as commie central isn't baseless (though greatly exaggerated by right wing media), and there's quite a few mutual aid programs that exist to a limited capacity, like EGYHOP that do needle exchanges in the street. Unfortunately they are largely full of radlibs but they still do good praxis. There's certainly room for a budding leftist movement to (locally) emerge there
As far as safety goes, MOST days you'll be very safe, but there are many days when there's some large scale right wing rally where chuds from miles around come to congregate in their oversized, pristine pickup trucks. They typically announce their comings weeks in advance and usually only stay for a few hours so they are really easy to avoid
