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Moving
Posted by Mike Sugarbaker at 2:53 pm on 12/12/2005
I can be a little more public about this now: I’m moving to Portland in January.
After a year of spending a lot of intermittent time in Portland, I have developed a theory: the biggest problem with the Bay Area is it has a big ol’ bay right in the middle. This pushes every place you might want to be away from every other, and so it takes at least forty minutes by car to get anywhere. By public transport it takes longer, and many places can’t reasonably be reached on public transport at all. (Public transport’s separate issues are the second biggest problem with SF. Cost of living is a distant third.)
In the act of moving I am, of course, part of a problem. (I say “of course” because as I’ve always said, if you’re not part of the problem, you’re part of some other problem.) Oregonians have long nurtured a hatred for émigres from their neighbor to the south. And while Portland, lately home to one of the highest unemployment rates of any major metro area in the US, is starting to create new jobs again, it isn’t creating them faster than new people are moving to the area. I hope the California plates on my car don’t start any trouble.
So, while I’m a bit self-conscious about the above, I’m thrilled to be repping my beliefs by living where they get urbanity right. I’m kind of psyched to be living where they keep all the Ruby coders. And most of all, I’m elated to be in the same city as my sweetheart. I’m coming, baby.