Willamette Week| Lead Story| Seattle Envy

Torn Between Two Cities: An I-5 Love Story
BY KRISTY OJALA

I grew up in a soggy green hick town in Southwest Washington, an hour's drive north of Portland city limits. As an adolescent, my family eschewed the mighty, snooty trappings of Seattle for Portland's alluring mall ice-skating rinks and tax-free Christmas shopping. Portland was somewhere Washington citizens went before there were outlet malls. Plus, Portland had Powell's, which beat the hell out of the Space Needle any day. But I never especially loved either Seattle or Portland; when you grow up on I-5 an equal distance from two metropolitan areas, you tend to be saddled with ambiguity as a way of life. As long as you get out of your backwoods hometown for a day, you're happy in either place.

Then you get older, and things like traffic reports and job markets and "livability" start to enter into the decision-making process. I've thought about moving to Portland a dozen times, but something's always held me back. I can't pinpoint it any better than I can explain why I don't like mayonnaise or houses painted peach. On the flip side, I only chose Seattle because I had friends there and it was easy to find a job. It seems lucky to me that the urge to go north has provided me with two years of thus far enjoyable living. I'm happy in Seattle, so I guess I subscribed to the gift-horse mentality and never really questioned why I couldn't be just as happy in Portland.

That is, until the Portland vs. Seattle dilemma introduced itself into my life about six months ago, when I fell hard for a Rose City resident. After several weekends of driving the 182-mile stretch of I-5 that separates my baby and me, friends naturally started forcing the issue; people are like sharks when it comes to the long-distance relationship, waiting to see how long you can keep it up. A close friend gave his blessing: "Kristy, I'll understand if you move to Portland. I'll visit...once in a while." Another friend's mantra was "You'd better not move down there; people in Portland are mean!" I started weighing the pros and cons of each city on a regular basis.

One night, my boyfriend and I went to a club in Seattle. The subject inevitably came up when we drove around a four-block radius about five times looking for a parking place. I pulled out a pen and on my left hand wrote: "Seattle: 1) Parking sucks. 2) Crowded clubs and restaurants. 3) No Comedy Central." The night wore on, we got a little drunk and the pen came out again. My right hand read: "Portland: 1) Too far from Canada. 2) No KCMU, a top-rate public radio station in Seattle that I have no comparison for. 3) Too goddamn many bridges." And so it went until we tired of the game.

The differences between the two cities are hinged on small details, not life-altering differences. It's like a pointless high-school rivalry ("Our team can kick your team's ass!"), where thickheaded generalizations serve as absolutes. We're both stuck with software companies and rain and the coffee/lumberjack stereotype. It mostly boils down to the adage, "It doesn't matter where you are, it's who you're with." I'd live in Boise as long as I was with great people. I have to say, though, Portland fell out of the running a few weeks back when my car was vandalized during a visit. After buying a new stereo for the drive home, I passed an eternally parked car that has become somewhat of a Portland landmark to me: Next to its Oregon license plate is a bumper sticker that reads, "I Love Mean People." Touché.

Born and raised in Winlock, a minuscule Southwest Washington town with an egg statue in its city center - much like Springfield has the frightful Jebediah statue on The Simpsons - Kristy Ojala has spent approximately 11 years experiencing the finer points of I-5 between Seattle and Portland,though what she'd really like to do is move to Halifax, Nova Scotia and open Canada's first indie rock karaoke barber shop.

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Willamette Week | originally published October 28, 1998