“Life 2.0″ was all about running away and starting over.
Well I sold my house. I quite my job. I packed all my shit up and moved 2,400 miles. Now I live in Portland, OR. I ran away. I’m starting over. I’m not chasing “2.0″ anymore.
So it’s time to close this chapter of the blog. From now on… it’s just life. 
After looking at dozens of apartments, filling in my little spreadsheet, and comparing my options I made my choice. I decided to get a place downtown. As will all options there were pros & cons, but at the end of the day I felt that downtown was the right choice for me.
The most obvious problem with choosing to go downtown is the finances. Not only are the downtown units smaller than apartments further out, they’re also more expensive. Add to that parking costs which run north of $100 month, in some cases approaching two bills.
The particular apartment I chose was beyond my original budget. Not by much, $120/mth to be exact. However multiply my monthly overage by the 60 months it will take for me to get a degree and we’re talking seven grand. So yeah, being flippant with my cash stash is going to mean I’ll be a sandwich short of lunch before I finish school unless I start bringing in some income. In other words, from a purely financial prospective this is was just a plain stupid decision.
But I still think it was the right stupid decision…
Even though moving downtown also moved me out of my budget, it put me right in the middle of everything. If I walk out of my apartment building I can literally see the PSU campus. The street car has stops between the apt & the visible PSU campus. The nearest grocery store is 1 ½ blocks away. I am 5 minutes walk from Pioneer Courthouse Square (the central hub of downtown), the bank, a myriad of eateries, roughly 700 Starbucks locations, and at least 2 movie theaters.
On top of this my building exits right on the park blocks that make up Portland’s South Park Blocks, a stretch of 12 blocks that run down Portland’s downtown and into the PSU campus. Home to 337 trees the park blocks are always shady and a nice place to relax with your netbook and blog, or maybe with a good book. The abundant green space makes it an attractive place for dog owners as well; so us wanna-be dog owners get to sneak in a scratching or two on occasion.
All-in-all, I think this really is the perfect place for me to start my life up here. I know I like downtown and everything is incredibly convenient. I also have time now to learn the city at a more gradual pace. I signed a 15 month lease in order to get a good deal (3 months no rent and a free parking space for the duration), however I don’t expect to stay after my lease is up as I couldn’t afford their market rates. So now I’ll have more than enough time to figure out where I’ll hop to next when time comes for me to hop again.
And to be honest with you, the fact that I may not be able to afford to live downtown was more reason for me to do it. It may be that years 2-5 will be lived further out where it’s cheaper. But I didn’t quit my job, sell my house, and flip my life upside down just to end up back in the suburbs. Right decision or not, I’m living in downtown Portland my first year!
So that’s that… and here I am. I’ll share more about the actual apartment itself in the next day or so. I promise.
A few of Portland's named 'hoods
By Wednesday I had hit up the 3 neighborhoods I had planned on checking up and had found several apartments that I’d be willing to sign a lease on. But I had time to spare and figured it wouldn’t hurt to keep looking at/for apartments.
Now this map I keep showing in the corner there is one I found in a book. It shows what I guess are some of the key neighborhoods, but Portland has a shitload of named neighborhoods. If you’re interested you can see an entire list or even in map format.
Since it turns out craigslist is the way to apartment hunt in Portland, Tuesday evening I pointed my browser to padmapper.com (a site that takes craigslist listings and plots them on a google map) and looked to see who as leasing what and where. By day’s end there were two additional neighborhoods that I thought were worth mentioning.
If Nob Hill is the young, trendy, cool kid then Goose Hollow is it’s older, more mature brother. Located just south of Nob Hill it’s a quieter neighborhood without all the bars and night life of Nob Hill. There were multiple condominium buildings located there, but luckily there were a few apartment buildings as well.
Goose Hollow is in a great location. Literally minutes away (by foot) from Nob Hill the nightlife is easily accessible. It’s equally close the light rail and downtown is right around the corner. That said, it’s also just far enough away from it all to be separated from the hustle and bustle.
Street parking is available with a city permit for $45 a year, a pittance when compared to the cost of parking downtown. Goose Hollow immediately shot up the list of possibilities for me.
My original plan was to check out the Lloyd area (found on the map up top), though once there I walked around through multiple other ‘hoods. Irvington quickly found it’s way onto my “places to live” list.
If decide to settle down in Portland after finishing school getting a job Irvington will be #1 on my list of choices (at least it’s #1 right now). Unfortunately price might keep me away as I found a quaint little house for sale in Irvington for $700,000. Charming.
Irvington is the cutest little neighborhood. It’s obviously well established and has the trees to show for it. Though I did find more than enough apartments Irvington is primarily houses and is the perfect place to raise Kane Jr.. The streets are smallish and so are the blocks. Little green lawns welcome passers-by and the occasional vegetable garden provides the finishing touches. If you walk around Irvington and don’t fall in love with it then it’s likely that you have a bad soul.
With regards to the apartments I found two apartments that were affordable, roomy, and had free parking spaces (though being on the East side parking in the street is free as well). Irvington, much like Goose Hollow, quickly rose up the ranks of possibilities. Though Irvington, being East of the river, did take me out a bit further than I had hoped to be.
A few of Portland's named 'hoods
Hawthorne was the third of the three neighborhoods I had planned on visiting. Of the three mentioned so far, Hawthorne was the most liberal and most like a suburban neighborhood. It was also the most frustrating.
On Tuesday morning I woke up and took the rail into downtown and a bus back out to Hawthorne. I then proceeded to walk around. When walking around Nob Hill and downtown I simple looked for “Now leasing” signs and either walked inside or wrote down the name & address to look up later. That method was not quite as fruitful.
By early afternoon I had zero leads and was getting annoyed. I stopped a little kolache restaurant for a bite to eat. There I found some conversation with the restaurant’s two owners (who happened to have move up from Houston only months ago) and 3 patrons. I told them of my quest to find housing and they nodded along knowingly.
Hawthorne, it seems, is one of those places where you almost have to know someone to get in. Being made up of mostly houses-turned-multiplexes there aren’t always big property management companies behind them and therefore the mainstream rental websites are rarely used. Hawthorne takes it a step further and many times a “For Rent” sign is the only advertisement, with units being picked up before making to craigslist.
It’s apparently home to the hippy community in Portland, and get be a pretty eclectic area. I’m not sure if I would fit in well there, but judging by vibe alone I wouldn’t be against giving it a try. It’s on the east of the river, and is therefore on the east side of Portland. Parking on Portland’s east side is free. That was big perk for me.
That said, with my week’s hotel stay aging quickly I decided that Hawthorne required more time than I could give it and I ended that day’s hunting early. Unless something crazy popped up last minute, it wasn’t looking good for Hawthorne (or it was looking very good for Hawthorne, depending on you see it 
).
A few of Portland's named 'hoods
After Nob Hill I decided to creep around downtown Portland. Downtown was where I spent 98% of my vacation back in 2005, it was Portland that I knew. So that Sunday (Aug. 9th) I took the rail back in with the intention of spending the day checking out apartments. Being Sunday I didn’t expect many leasing offices to be open, but it was my best way to be productive.
Unfortunately for my productivity I got distracted by a little festival they were having by the river. Instead of walking around looking for a place to live, I walked around and tasted different flavors of Oregon. But eventually I did get to the apartment hunt and did enough to keep me satisfied. The next day, being a Monday, everyone was back at work and leasing offices were open. Monday was distraction free and I kicked ass if I do say so myself.
Now I should say that I was very specifically looking at the southern end of downtown, by PSU. I also made my way to the waterfront to check out a few buildings there. The reason I bring this up is because downtown Portland, like most any other city, has it’s good spots and bad spots. I was looking solely in what I considered the sweet spot.
One of the factors that caused me to fall in love with Portland when I visited was how urban the downtown was. Great mass transportation combined with the ability to work, sleep and shop there. It’s all here in downtown. In my time here I’ve met multiple people who don’t own cars.
The apartments in downtown are notably more modern than the Victorian-styled apartments of Nob Hill. They also have more amenities, though even downtown they sometimes lack what Texans might consider the basics (e.g., dishwasher, A/C, or a bedroom).However you should also expect to pay more and get less if downtown is your destination of choice.
It would be hard to describe the atmosphere of downtown, as it is so eclectic that it doesn’t have a singular atmosphere. Being an urban environment you get a little of a lot and you end up with this amalgamation of flavors that may be a bit faster and a bit more stoic than the suburbs; though Portland is definitely a laid-back town with a truly friendly atmosphere and they therefore have their own take on how to have a downtown. To make the ill-defined even more so I should say that the higher concentration of young college students gives this part of downtown an even more relaxed feel.
As I walked around from leasing office to leasing office, I was beginning to feel like the Civic was a real liability for me. Parking downtown, when apartment complexes even have it, ranged in cost from $80/mth to $175/mth. Parking costs, more than the aparment costs themselves was becoming the biggest detractor for me. If I wasn’t going to move downtown parking might be the reason why.
The other serious negative that downtown Portland presents more than any other area I visited was the homeless. I don’t pretend to be caring, nor liberal when it comes to homeless. I feel that they are a blight to the city. In my week of living here I have been asked for change more than in my 14 years living in San Antonio. No not “more”; way, way more. I have a feeling that Portland’s homeless will be getting their own blog entry in the near future, so I’ll take a breath and move on.
In.
Out.
By the end of Monday I had seen several apartments that I would consider moving in to. However I still had at least one more neighborhood to check out, Hawthorne. Hawthorne is on the east side of Portland. I had learned that moving to the east I would get more for my dollar. Additionally, parking on the street was free on the east side!
However having only Nob Hill and downtown to compare as the sun went down on the week’s first workday I found myself leaning toward downtown. Nob Hill was cool and I think it would be fun to live there, but at that point in time I considered downtown more appealing.
But that was Monday and I had 4 more days before I had to check out of the hotel. There was still more of Portland to explore…
