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Comment by ecshafer | Hacker News Reader

The top 10 metro areas list is interesting. Philadelphia, San Antonio, Houston, San Diego and Phoenix not on there despite all 5 being in the top 10 MSA and city population, while DC, Portland, Seattle, Atlanta, Boston are on there.

I am also shocked that Portland is growing. I went to Portland this year recently, it is the worst city in the country I have been to. 90% of downtown is boarded up, city is deserted, massive homelessness crisis.

Elmira/Corning dropping is kind of interesting. Since Corning is entirely propped up by Corning Glass.

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> I went to Portland this year recently, it is the worst city in the country I have been to. 90% of downtown is boarded up, city is deserted, massive homelessness crisis.

I had the opposite response, but I guess I've been in San Francisco. All the locals were scared of downtown. Yes, it was boarded up. But it was safe. One homeless guy was being talked to by a cop because he was yelling. (They were all sitting cross legged on a corner. Super non-confrontational.) They left and then he left (not yelling). I don't think you could get a San Francisco cop's attention if a homeless person were flinging things at you.

In the week I was there I saw people be physically attacked twice, once at a tram stop and once at a restaurant. This is on top of maybe a dozen other "incidences". I spend a lot of time in Philly and New York both, and that's beyond the pale for either of those cities.

Isn't Philly famous mostly because its inhabitants like to get in fights and throw batteries at people at sports games?

> The top 10 metro areas list is interesting. Philadelphia, San Antonio, Houston, San Diego and Phoenix not on there despite all 5 being in the top 10 MSA and city population, while DC, Portland, Seattle, Atlanta, Boston are on there.

Yeah, I found that to be an odd "top 10" as well. My guess is that they are the top 10 US metro areas from which Stack Overflow traffic originates? It'd be nice if we didn't have to guess though.

It's going to take awhile for people to feel confident investing in downtown Portland again. Things were getting regularly destroyed in 2020. Apple is just beginning to install a permanent plexiglass barrier around the Pioneer Square store after relying on temporary metal fencing for 2 years.

Yeah. I lived there 2016-2018, some of the best years of my life.

I moved back to PDX up from San Francisco in 2021 to try to settle in a fun place where I could buy a home and it was just a disaster. The stories people tell are both exaggerated and vastly understated.

I’ve since left, and I hope the best for the people there.

> 90% of downtown is boarded up, city is deserted, massive homelessness crisis.

Patently untrue. Portland is booming.

I went to a half dozen neighborhoods over a week. Even post covid, comparing it to Chicago, Philly, NYC, DC (all places I have also been to in the last 6 months) it felt like an absolute ghost town. Almost no people are walking around, even in the "hip" areas. If it weren't for the cars, it would have felt downright post-apocalyptic.

where? i've been to Portland many times, and haven't seen any booming.

It's not as nice as it was in 2019...

The greater Portland area is booming, but downtown just feels sad.

Downtown Portland has always felt sad though? Hop over the river asap

The Corning drop is interesting. Maybe the Corning engineers are all working from home but live in towns not included in the defined Corning/Elmira area like Binghamton?

> shocked that Portland is growing ... massive homelessness crisis.

This statement reminds me of "Nobody goes to that restaurant anymore because it's too crowded".

I really miss the PDX of the old. It was a great place to live. It was such an inviting and friendly city…then all the Californians moved there and proceeded ruin it.

It’s been fascinating watching the suburbs of Portland (Beaverton, etc.) get all the culture funding and investment as everybody flees downtown.

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