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Comment by jsackmann | Hacker News Reader

My reaction is mostly personal: This is f'ing awesome. I've lived in NYC for most of the last decade after growing up in the northwest, and I've had the urge to move...somewhere.

Just in the last few days, I came to terms with the fact that while I didn't really want to move "back home," Portland is the ideal place. Decent-size place, nice climate year-round, plenty of culture, great variety of stuff to do within a day's drive or less ... it is kind of a mini-bay area without the tech tilt in many ways. I grew up in a mid-sized town several hours away, but many of the more interesting people I knew in high school have ended up there.

Added bonus: If you live in Vancouver, WA (north suburbs of PDX) and work from home (or just in WA), there's no state income tax.

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> Added bonus: If you live in Vancouver, WA (north suburbs of PDX) and work from home > (or just in WA), there's no state income tax.

Please, please, please don't suggest that more people take advantage of this loophole! The Vancouver/Portland commute has already rendered I-5 useless, and the residents on the Washington side are currently lobbying aggressively for a new 12-lane bridge (whose cost would be paid largely by Oregon) across the Columbia to ease the congestion without taking any steps (light rail, tolls, etc.) to reduce the amount of traffic.

Portland is what it is in part because residents of the city and Multnomah county are willing to pay relatively higher taxes than those in neighboring areas for a higher level of service from the city. Our transit + public services are pretty good, but the folks who drive down from Vancouver and ride the MAX through Fareless Square to shop without paying sales tax or income tax are just freeloading.

I generally agree with your sentiment, but you should realize that people who live in WA and work in OR still pay OR income tax.

Sure, they pay state income tax, but not property taxes, which are a major part of where the city and county get their funds for transit and public services.

The differences between Portland and Vancouver are particularly stark, as the lack of an urban growth boundary in Clark county (where Vancouver is located) makes real estate (and therefore property taxes) much cheaper on the Vancouver side.

When you get right down to it, my point is simply that people who like a progressive, tax-heavy city like Portland enough to spend a lot of their time there should probably be willing to pay the taxes that go along with that lifestyle. Otherwise, they're just making it that much harder on the full-time residents.

> I grew up in a mid-sized town several hours away,

Eugene? That's where I'm from.

> nice climate year-round,

Let's be honest, if it were, then it would be inundated with people because it is a nice place in so many other ways. It's not, though, IMO; it's gray and drizzly from October to early summer (and usually stops raining the 5th of July). If people don't mind that, it's a great place, though, although it does tend towards laid back rather than busy/active. IMO you could do a lot worse.

Nope, Spokane. High end of "several."

"Nice" is probably overstating the climate, but the flip-side is that it's rarely too hot or too cold; you don't usually suffer through the heat+humidity of the eastern seaboard, which probably has something to do with me holding that opinion right this second!

Amusingly enough said during a horrible heatwave here - 106 degrees and the like. Of course, it'll be only this week, and there's no humidity...

I just moved to Portland from Spokane, and I am loving my life. So many cool places and the community feel is great. Cuts the drive to the coast down to 90 minutes rather than 7 hours as well.

Upmodded for calling out the "nice climate year-round" bit. Portland can be miserable with rain.

Portland gets the same amount of rain as New York, but it hardly ever rains hard, and many people manage without even owning an umbrella. It doesn't get very cold in the winter, and there's typically only a week or two of 90+ weather (with low humidity) in the summer. Personally, I enjoy the seasonality far more than the uniform sunnyness of (parts of) California.

I made the mistake of buying an umbrella in Portland after living here for about a year. The sales clerk grinned slyly at me when I was checking out and said, "So, you're from out of town, eh?"

You just don't really see that many umbrellas here (especially outside of downtown).

[edit: basic grammar]

> Portland gets the same amount of rain as New York, but it hardly ever rains hard,

Yes, that's precisely the problem. Instead of a brief downpour, you get a week where it sprinkles on and off and it's cloudy the whole time.

Portland rain is strange. It's never actually raining, but it has always just rained.

I lived and worked downtown for several years, walking to work every day. In that whole time, I was actually rained on during that walk maybe a dozen times. I have no idea how this works, but it does.

It can rain all day every day for a week, while somehow never actually raining on you.

Northern England, on the other hand, goes out of its way to rain directly on you whenever you try to get out and do anything.

I'm in Eugene now. And it's got a fair number of tech companies and branch offices (aka. telecommuters). If you are there and want to connect with the local tech scene there is a monthly tech brewpub hosted by http://itproforum.org

I'm in Italy now, actually, but I'll look you up and buy you a beer if I'm ever back there.

To me, Eugene was always kind of frustratingly way too laid back. It never seemed like people were doing things.

Eugene is fully of hippies and it drives a man insane. It's a huge stereotype but it's absolutely true. I grew up there and lived there for 18 years. My parents still live there. Everytime I visit all I see are damn hippies everywhere. I can't stand it.

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