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Moving to Portland, OR? |
My husband and I are planning on moving to Portland, OR. We visited there this summer and also this past January and love it. We love the rain. We are from Chicago so anything is better than the freezing 10 degree weather. Of course my mother isn't happy about our move and says that after talking to people they say it is a transient city and not a place for us to raise a family or live permanently (we are due with our first on November 10) I am a wedding photographer and also want to make sure my wedding business will thrive there. Any comments, suggestions. We know it is very liberal - we are ourselves. And that is one quality we loved about it. Any feedback is appreciated. Get a booth at the next wedding expo. Wedding Expo happens twice a year and I think booths are $1000.00 for a small booth. You need to decorate the booth well and bring your portfolios for displays. It also helps to have food in your booth like Chocolate Truffles. That will get the brides in. The Rose Garden is a great place for wedding photos. Also, get a pass for the Chinese Gardens and the Grotto (Catholic). Get yourself a good realtor. I can recommend people to you and someone to help you with financing. There are some good homes for sale in the area. The market is both saturated and inflated, but I think it will come down soon. real Estate is not as high as Chicago. You might want to look at living in SE or NE districts. There are some cute houses with easy access to downtown. Welcome to Oregon. Don't tell your friends how great it is. So many people have discovered how wonderful Oregon is, and what a livable city Portland is, that we are considering changing the state motto to Rains All the Time in hopes of heading off the incoming throngs. It's a wonderful place to raise a family. Within a two-hour drive you can have the seashore, mountains with snow on them all year, or the desert. Two major rivers meet at Portland. The city is clean, safe, friendly, and has more bookstores per capita (and the biggest bookstore under one roof, Powells) than any city in the country. Convenient affordable reliable public transportation. A forward-looking political philosophy -- the bottle deposit bill was ours, and we lead in recycling. Hundreds of miles of hike/bike trains lace the city. Greenspaces run through most neighborhoods. An urban growth boundary that is a model for cities worldwide prevents urban sprawl. I live within the city limits yet the greenspace directly behind my house features a creek and pond created by a beaver dam, and from my deck I have seen beavers, river otters, skunks, raccoons, possums, squirrels, four blackberry-nibbling deer, the tracks of two cougars that passed by during the night, hawks, great blue herons, green herons, Canada geese, four or five species of ducks, rabbits, muskrats, nutria, and numerous varieties of birds. I only wished I had moved to Oregon 30 years earlier. Welcome to Oregon! I moved here under similar circumstances from MA a few years ago. My mother refused to talk to us for a year so I can see where you're coming from. You can tell your mom that we (my husband and I) are republican if that will make her feel any better about your move. There are some of us out here, but the whole place is pretty live and let live. I've never met a nicer group of people than the ones that live in this area. I'm trying to convince my mom to move here as well, but she refuses. She'll never know what she's missing out on. Having lived in Portland, and spent time in Chicago, I would go with Portland. I'm not sure where your mom is getting her info, but plenty of people raise kids in Portland, and live there permanently. (my family still lives there). She is probably grasping at straws because she doesn't want you to leave. Portland has become a bit too liberal for me, but it sounds like that's not a problem for you. The traffic is bad, but it's worse in Chicago. Real estate has become expensive, but ditto Chicago. You shouldn't have a problem with your photography business - people get married everywhere! Here's a quick heads-up; there is no sales tax in Oregon, which makes school funding tricky. Pick your school district wisely. My sister's kids go to Portland Public Schools, and they have to hold fundraisers to pay the P.E. and music teachers - and they live in an affluent neighborhood! Good luck! |
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