5 Maps of Portland’s Cultural Oddities Present How We’re Totally different from Seattle and San Francisco

Portland is in a midlife crisis.

For much of the past decade, this city has enjoyed an image with an upward trajectory: attractive, smart, basking in the spotlight as the national media spoke of our bright future.

Then suddenly we melted together on the national stage. And after a year of burning dumpsters, slums on sidewalks, and unsolved murders, Portland became the punchline.

Be honest, how many times in 2021 have you replied, “It’s not really that bad,” to a home aunt, college buddy, or business acquaintance who asks about Portland? As a new bourgeois slogan, it leaves a lot to be desired.

In the midst of this disorientation, do you know what could help? A card book.

Two Portland State University professors, Hunter Shobe and David Banis, have written a sequel to their regional bestseller Portlandness: A Cultural Atlas, which uses cartography to compile the most important features of the Rose City. Her new book also uses maps, comparing PDX to Seattle and San Francisco, the crispy, evergreen north-left coast of America.

Or, to use the title chosen by the authors, Upper Left Cities (Sasquatch Books, 224 pages, $ 30).

It’s a slightly eccentric compilation of everything that city has the most back alleys (Seattle), the most ramen shops (San Francisco), and the most Russian speakers (Portland). Some cards – like the one on the left, showing stores selling analog goods in 1987 – are particularly playful. The measurements range from bizarre (there is a chapter on lost amusement parks) to technical (where the cheapest gasoline is found in each city) to current: Two pages examine where in each city the most people are infected with COVID-19 are.

The comparisons are often instructive. It’s one thing to hear that homelessness is a scourge of the entire West Coast and quite another to see maps of where Seattle and San Francisco’s largest camps grew. In fact, one of the themes of the book is that Portland is really part of a single city in the Pacific Northwest that votes, eats and plays in the same way.

“All Northern Calfornians move to the northwest – I think they feel comfortable here,” says Banis. “The voting patterns could be identical. [Portland] feels like a small version of San Francisco in many ways. “

In the following pages we’ve mainly selected maps that show how Portland differs from its neighbors. The PSU geographers found wide variations in housing costs, weed shops, and the type of air cargo arriving at cities’ airports.

The resulting portrait suggests that Portland is mostly young.

Not just by average age – although we’re the youngest of the three cities, in part because millennials in Seattle and San Francisco are even more averse to breeding. Portland differs from its siblings because it’s a city where (some) newcomers can still afford to go, an economy not so tied to big corporate engines, and a population less inclined to obey the rules.

In other words, we are a city in crisis, also because we can still argue about who we should be.

For decades, Portlanders have been annoyed at being compared to Seattle and San Francisco. The measurement, while not always flattering, is a little liberating. Of all the cities on the upper left, Portland is the least successful and the least enduring. In other words, we are the place with the greatest potential for change.

Houses are much cheaper in Portland than in Seattle or San Francisco.

(Courtesy Sasquatch Books)

The Portland real estate crisis looks both better and worse after house prices skyrocketed in its sister cities. Better, because a standard home that sells for a quarter of a million dollars in a neighborhood in southeast Portland is a bargain compared to a mid-price home in multiple neighborhoods of San Francisco that sells for over 2 million dollars. Worse, San Francisco residents can tell a bargain when they see it.

“It doesn’t take long to look at this,” write Shobe and Banis, “to understand why so many San Francisco people made up their minds after years of making money in San Francisco but paying San Francisco prices Portland or Seattle. “

Another tension lies at the root of the marauding California homebuyer’s fear: Both Seattle and Bay Area residents are, on average, better educated than Portlanders. Sixty percent of Seattle’s residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 49 percent in Portland. “In those places where you have the most wealth,” Shobe told WW, “you also have the highest rate of education.”

Portland sees far fewer goods landing at the airport.

In 2018, $ 1.98 billion in trade was processed through Portland International Airport. That sounds like a lot until you measure it by the value of goods imported and exported through San Francisco ($ 66.4 billion) and Seattle-Tacoma International Airports.

How can this delay be explained? (After all, we have the best airport in the country – even a Mo’s Chowder!) Check out the types of goods that are imported. In San Francisco, computer chips are the main importer for iPhones. In Seattle it’s aircraft engines and engine parts – connected to Boeing.

Tim Duy, an economics professor at the University of Oregon, is not surprised by the result. “Your imports will reflect what your local economy is doing,” says Duy. “They are bigger economies.”

If it’s just a convenience, Portland’s actual port is twice as much as San Francisco’s thanks to its status as the Pacific Coast’s premier automobile exporter.

We have a lot more grass shops.

Are you starting to feel that nasty old little brother complex? Relax. We have way more cannabis dispensaries than San Francisco or Seattle, and they’re much more spread out across the city. “When we saw the cards, we almost couldn’t believe it ourselves,” says Shobe. “It seemed like it was a double or something.”

Shobe credits Oregon’s libertarian streak with the flourishing of cannabis outlets – he sees it as a phenomenon similar to the liberal settlement of strip clubs in Portland’s neighborhoods.

Beau Whitney, a Portland cannabis economist, says Oregon was actually looser about licensing pot shops than Washington and California, which strictly regulated the recreational cannabis market. “Oregon had no limits on retail licenses,” says Whitney, “as long as they weren’t near schools or daycare and the like.”

The disadvantage: more shops mean lower sales figures in every pharmacy, and this is pushing many entrepreneurs out of business despite strong demand for buds.

We share a sad story of closed jazz clubs.

A small but tangible way to measure the racism perpetuated by this city? Check out the lost jazz clubs that once thrived on North Williams Avenue. Closing such clubs is kind of shorthand for the destruction of the neighborhood they were in: Albina, the center of Black Portland, was torn apart when traffic officials carved Interstate 5 into the center.

It is a shameful chapter in Portland history. Seattle and San Francisco, however, have similar histories – and streets that represent a lost jazz era. (It’s Jackson Street in Seattle, Filmore Street in San Francisco.)

“Every city has this area that really comes to life in one of the very core of African American life,” says Shobe. “And then we see this national blockbusting situation, the renewal where you call something rotten that is actually very much alive.”

The Upper Left Cities tribute to these clubs is one of the most creative cards in the book. Banis maps the three streets that jazz reigned by drawing them as sheet music, with the location of each vanished club indicated by a musical note. Banis says it is possible to play the composition. “It sounded good,” he says.

The protests against George Floyd in Portland were longer and more intense.

(Courtesy Sasquatch Book)

The impact of 100 consecutive nights of street confrontation between police and protesters on the civil psyche of Portland has been immense – and has sometimes been overestimated for political impact (see “Bad Reputation”). But it’s clear to see how much more stamina and energy the uprising had here compared to cities where voters also voted for Biden in a 10-to-1 clip.

Long after the demonstrations in San Francisco subsided and Seattle’s Capitol Hill area was largely cordoned off, Portland protesters besieged police stations and braved tear gas across the city. Progressive political advisor Gregory McKelvey says the protests in Portland have gained momentum from trauma. “Portlanders who haven’t seen lightning bangs, tear gas, pepper spray and beatings really don’t understand the toll it takes on someone,” McKelvey told WW earlier this year. “Imagine someone beating your best friend, gassing your children, or arresting your grandmother. That would make everyone angry. “

Related: The messy picture of Portland that was sold on FOX News caught on – more than you might think.

Some of what happened can be traced back to then-President Donald Trump seeking a show of force in Portland to bolster his re-election campaign. But Shobe noted another factor: people motivated to confront cops can still afford to live in Portland, but were largely paid outside of the Bay Area. “Someone who has activist ideals,” he says, “I think people who fit that description will find it easier to pay their bills in Portland.”

GO: Hunter Shobe and David Banis will discuss Upper Left Cities in a virtual Powell’s Books event on Thursday, September 30th at 5pm. For free. Tickets are available here.