[Find more of our excellent and good vibes-filled “Say Nice Things About Portland” guide here.—eds.]
Portland has resemblances to St. Pete: street-side murals, tattoos, vegan options, sexy queers. A coastal city south of Tampa, “The Sunshine City” still holds a Guinness World Record for drenching Floridians in the most consecutive days of sunshine—768 days—starting in 1967. While I delighted in the good weather and beach access, I felt stagnant at my job. I craved good Chinese food and people who looked like me. I entangled myself with someone whose presence eventually plagued the city, making anywhere else sound better.
I had resisted the idea of Portland—I hardly knew anyone on the West Coast and I hated the rain. A 2015 Quora response to “What is it like to live in Portland?” wrote: “The weather sucks. It’s not just “rainy” or “misty”; it’s a soul-killing suck. Imagine looking out your window and beholding a scene that is basically all one color; a numbing, bruised gray-blue that I can only describe as the color of wet pavement. That’s what you see. That’s all you see… The people are this color.”
I read this quote to my journalism mentor on FaceTime, expressing my qualms of living in a city full of gray-blue-colored people or potentially becoming one myself. But I had been offered a promising job to cover early education at The Oregonian, and I was desperate for a change.
