I’m moving to Portland from Orange County, CA next month. I have never even visited, but I hear it’s nice. I’m going to be up there next week looking for short term housing. Is Portland as liberal as I keep hearing it is?
No, it's not... LOL...
There are plenty of conservatives around, too. It's like any other big city and you're gonna get liberals in them, too.
But really, it's a nice town. You'll be surprised to find out that the downtown section of Portland is a good "walking town". It's great to walk around and there are always lots of people around doing their thing. The downtown section is pretty alive and active, compared to a lot of other cities and their downtown inner cores.
If you like riding a bike for fun, it's a good biking town, too. People will be more used to traffic from bikes there, than people in other cities are..., I can tell that. :-)
There is plenty of "business" for shoppers in the inner core downtown Portland, so people actually can shop there and do things in the evenings. It should be more busy now that we're into the Christmas shopping season. It will be active and definitely busy in downtown Portland in the evenings.
I would say, that in general, people in Portland have a "live and let live" attitude there and are more laid back (at least from what I see in my travels around).
Portland is not going to be as "religious" as Tulsa, Oklahoma (for a comparison) or Dallas, Texas -- but there are plenty of Christians there (if that would be one thing you would be concerned about [or not... :-) ...]).
Thanks so much for the info. I am really looking forward to getting there (or it may be more that I’m excited to leave California!) In my casual researching of Portland I’m finding the city to be quite polarizing. People seem to love it or hate it.