Willamette Week| Lead Story| Seattle Envy

If Seattle Is a Scorpio, Portland Is a...
BY CHIP GILLER

"Portland has more strange characters per capita than anywhere else in America," says Matt Shoudy, as he piles a second helping of rice onto his plate.

We are sitting in a Thai restaurant in the trendy Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. The restaurant abuts an erotic sandwich shop, which, in turn, shares a wall with a well-trafficked sex-toy store. Drummers outside the door, dressed in what appear to be old onion bags, are cutting a beat for the setting sun. Finding my way to the restaurant, I shared the sidewalk with pudgy men in skirts and gaunt teenagers with multiple body piercings.

To me, a newcomer most recently from strait-laced Washington, D.C., Seattle itself doesn't seem to want for strange characters. So I press Shoudy--a Seattle native who makes frequent visits to his mother's family in Portland--to expand on the distinction between the two cities.

"If you're going to run into a mean freak on the street, it'll be in Portland," Shoudy explains. "It's a rougher place."

Your Songs Would Sound Better in Portland
People said it in different ways, but what I learned from talking with those who know both cities well--twenty- and thirty-somethings who have spent a number of years in Portland and now live in Seattle, or vice versa--is that Portland is, to many, a more intense place, a more real place, than Seattle. In Portland, mean is meaner, clean is cleaner, hip is hipper.

Steph Bell, 29, a Portlander who now lives in Seattle, says of her hometown, "The rain is more depressing. The sun is brighter. If you were a songwriter, your songs would sound better in Portland."

"Portland is more self-aware, whereas Seattle is more spread out and has less community awareness," says Sally Hulsman, 31, who also grew up in Portland but now calls Seattle home.

Seattle Wins for Beauty
"As an urban environment, Portland beats the shit out of Seattle. And in terms of civic pride, community services and transit, Portland is much, much better," said Shoudy, 32. "But in terms of natural beauty, Seattle wins hands down."

Lissa Kaufman, 31, a disgruntled Portland resident who grew up in New Jersey and has spent five years in Seattle, quickly dismissed one of Portland's most prominent natural features: "That skanky-ass river in Portland? I wouldn't put my big toe in it."

Even Portland loyalists don't dispute Seattle's aesthetic ascendancy. Erin Flasher, 31, who lived in Portland for several years before reluctantly moving to Seattle for job reasons, says, "You can't beat the water, mountains and lakes in Seattle. Recreation is a lot more immediate here."

Portland as Disneyland
What about cultural and ethnic diversity?

"Seattle is much more cosmopolitan. Portland is 25 times more provincial," says Kaufman. "I was always complaining about how small Seattle was when I lived there, but now I miss it. Portland feels more like the Midwest."

"Portland is more Southern, more parochial feeling," says Hulsman.

"It's Disneyland," adds Jennifer Wells, 31, an Easterner who now lives in Seattle. "Everyone is white and happy." Or, as another person put it, Portland is the product of a white-trash past that spurned minorities and immigrants, while Seattle was at least marginally more welcoming to others and now has a more ethnically diverse population.

"In Portland, there's less to be scared of. The unknown? There is no unknown," says Hulsman, her voice laced with irony.

Size Does Matter
Maybe it all comes down to size. As Sara Ainsworth, 28, who has dallied in Portland but is a Seattle native through and through, states simply, "Portland's a big town; Seattle's a small city."

Matt Brown, 31, born in New Jersey and now living in Portland after a five-year stint in Seattle, says the smaller feel of Portland appeals to him. "Portland's a much more down-to-earth place," he says. "You can make more of a difference here. There's a tradition of people being involved and being heard. In Seattle, which is more polished and spiffed up, I didn't feel that so much."

Smaller doesn't necessarily mean less trendy, however. "I went to a bar the other weekend in Portland, and it was filled with vintage clothing. Everyone was wearing it--I couldn't believe it," says Tod Mahony, 30, who grew up in Portland and has lived in Seattle for 11 years. "I raise the possibility that Portland's hip quotient has surpassed Seattle's."

"Seattle is a Scorpio town," says Bell, taking a different tack. "Portland is a Virgo--no, Sagittarius. No, Gemini. Hmmm...Sagittarius with a Gemini twist. Yeah." For her, at least, that seemed to resolve the question.

Chip Giller, a Massachusetts native, lived for almost a year in Portland. He now makes his home in Seattle, where he is launching an environmental Web magazine. He wishes either city had ice cream as good as Boston's.

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Willamette Week | originally published October 28, 1998