Moving from Los Angeles to Portland After 23 Years
I’ve lived in California almost my entire life. I grew up in different Orange County cities and in 2000 moved to the city of Los Angeles. My first apartment was at Park LaBrea in the Miracle Mile neighborhood. As I mentioned on my personal travel blog site Eat Bike Explore, you should love where you live. And I loved living in Los Angeles. I know most people probably find this trivial, but one thing I loved was walking. Outside of Manhattan, walking from your front door to grab coffee or even groceries is not a possibility in the majority of American cities.
Living in Los Angeles shaped my interest, lifestyle and probably my political views. I took improv classes, acting classes, scriptwriting workshops, got my real estate license, went to bartending school, did background work, audience work and probably a lot more that I can’t remember right now. I was single when I moved there, then married and now going through a divorce.
My feeling is many people like to shit on LA. It’s just the thing to do. But I found myself defending it. Los Angeles is the city I grew to love.
Unfortunately, Los Angeles is a very expensive city to live in. I found so much of my time was devoted to working so I can pay bills instead of appreciating this amazing city. At the end I just got burnt out. I’ve probably experienced the city more than the average middle income person living there, but trying to create a decent work-life balance just seems to be slipping farther away. At some point I started to fall out of love with this city and instead found myself just spending more time watching TV.
I’m also not one of those people that are willing to live far away so I can have a cheaper home and a longer commute. I hate cookie cutter suburbs with shopping centers where the parking lot takes up more land than the actual stores. Outside of the city of Los Angeles, I find much of Southern California to be rather bland. And the places I do like outside of LA are way too expensive. I need to both love where I live and lower my cost of living.
So, why Portland, OR? For one, I really like the Pacific Northwest. I’ve been to Vancouver BC, Seattle and Portland about a half a dozen times each city. Vancouver was my number one pick, but Vancouver is more expensive than Los Angeles, plus it’s in another country. Seattle is also more expensive than Los Angeles. Portland checked most of the boxes of being less expensive than Los Angeles, artsy, generally walkable, bikeable, weird, more environmentally conscious, great food scene, beer and coffee scene, with nature all around. To me, Portland has a more homegrown DIY attitude, it’s more acceptable to be yourself and less worried about being image conscious. Maybe I can carve out my niche here, whatever that might be.
I just moved here about a month ago, so here’s to hoping I find a better work-life balance which allows me to be able to afford living in a city I love.
