Born: Omaha Nebraska, lived there maybe 8 months? Then: the Philippines 2 years Fort Meade Maryland: 2 years Odenton (ick) Maryland: 11 3/4 years Pittsburgh PA: 3 months Odenton MD: 9 months Madison CT: 3 months Wooster Ohio: 9 months Madison CT: 3 months Wooster OH: 1 year 9 months Charlottesville VA: 3 months Wooster OH: 9 months Washington DC: 3 months Baltimore, MD: 1 yr 9 months Flagstaff AZ: 3 months Baltimore MD: 3 1/2 years Albuquerque NM: 3 1/2 years Aurora (ick) CO: 1 year

wow, this looks like fun. lets see... hartford, ct- 3 yrs. glastonbury, ct- 15 fucking long, hard years. kingston, ri- nine months providence, ri- five months glastonbury, ct- ten long, hard months during which i was in therapy. new haven, ct- five years during which i should have been in therapy. seattle, wa- seven years. ( i lived in nine places in seattle. scary!) olympia, wa- ten months so far. next stop: portland. in maybe a year and a half or so, when i get fucking restless again.

portland is the city of my heart. I move away but always come back. - san jose, california - portland, oregon - seattle, washington - prague, czech republic - portland, oregon - mexico-guatemala-belize-honduras-el salvador-nicaragua - portland, oregon - kiev, ukraine next stops: spend the summer with my acting boyfriend in france and my father's family in holland. then move back to portland, oregon, in the fall and try to start a conventional life. well, that's what I've been telling my parents, anyway.

i can update: Born San Francisco 5 months Daly City, CA 17 years Petaluma, CA 3 months Woodinville, WA 4 years Petaluma, CA 3 years San Luis Obispo CA 7 months Scotts Valley, CA i've not found a better place to live than here.

28 years: all over the god damned place.

come on, swine. we want the details. cyst, tell me more about portland. by the way, i have the egg pictures now, i just need to scan em. send me your email address and i will hurl them your way.

Ludington, Michigan - 19 Years Holland, Michigan - 5 Months Ludington, Michigan - 1 Month Bradenton, Florida - 3 Months Sarasota, Florida - 7 Months Bradenton, Florida - 8 Months St Petersburg, Florida - 8 Months Tampa, Florida - 2 Years and Loving IT!

americanka@mailcity.com portland is like a sewer and its residents are like big rats. an ex-boyfriend from the east coast got off the train there and told me it was like a surreal sea of white faces. it rains all the fucking time, just like in olympia, except there are more taverns because in oregon video poker is legal. portland is the sleaziest city in the nation. it has the most strip bars per capita of any city in the u.s. per capita, it also has the most movie theaters, restaurants, brew pubs, bookstores and college graduates. (it even has some movie theater/restaurant/brew pubs.) it seems to be really big on heroin nowadays too (the college grads smoke it). there used to be a store on one of the main streets, burnside, called "dr. bill's learning center," where you could buy old porn mags and videos, candy bars and "insulin" syringes. portlanders are complacent motherfuckers. it's hard to stir up fights there. even the old town bums are laid back. him: "hey babe, wanna come over here and have some kinky sex?" me: "no thanks!" him: "ok. see ya." and him: "you have any spare change?" me: "sorry, no, I don't." him: "thanks anyway." there are few places there I don't feel safe walking alone at night. but I lead a charmed life.

slices of portland pie, stolen from monk magazine's guide to the city: The Blow Fly Tavern is situated on a former wetland in North Portland, strategically positioned between Rivergate Auto Wrecking and Ruben's Import Auto Wrecking, and directly in front of a 300 acre landfill, from which the Blowfly gets its name. For the uninitiated, a blowfly is a fly that feeds on decomposing meat. As some perverse testament to the mighty insect, two huge flies are painted on the front door. Inside it's as skanky as it gets. Dirty fingernails are typically a major faux pas at most area bars, but this is a prerequisite at the Blowfly. Look for a parking lot filled with pickups and Mid-60's animal cars--Impalas, Mustangs, Cougars and the like. And remember: "Oly is the beer of choice at the Blowfly, where Budweiser is considered an import." 9101 North Columbia Blvd (Portland's answer to Tonnelle Avenue); phone number unavailable. EJ's Hideaway. There is something disarmingly innocent about Portland, and it shows up most clearly in its strip clubs, which have a frank and friendly air about them. EJ's prides itself on serving fine food, microbrews (when's the last time you went to a strip club that served anything but commercial standards?), and big screen TV. Not to mention "a variety of lovely ladies." While most men don't want to be discovered at these sort of places, preferring to cower in some seedy corner, the well-lit EJ's sort of blows that cover away, making it seem perfectly fun and natural, even though, in general, strip clubs are not our D-cup of herbal tea. 2140 NE Sandy Blvd; 234-EJEJ. Mount Tabor, the only volcano found within a major metropolitan area anywhere in the U.S., has been recently reclassified from extinct to dormant! The Oregon Liquor Control Commission experiences fewer complaints from bars with nude entertainment. Most Japanese cars sold in the U.S. are unloaded in Portland. In 1971, Oregon enacted legislation banning pull-tab cans and nonreturnable bottles, the first such state-wide legislation in the country. Oregon has the second highest liquor prices in the U.S. Washington has the highest. Portland is the only city in the U.S. with a flasher statue. We find it gratifying in a state with the lowest organized church membership in the country, there is such a large number of fabulously non-traditional churches. In a range of styles that might best be described as Church of the Subgenius meets the San Francisco Cacophony Society meets Monty Python meets Marquis de Sade, this imaginative and absurdist outpouring of unique spiritual expression is the perfect antidote to the monotonous dogmatic drivel coming out of the religious right in this state. The Church of Elvis. The one, the only, the original Portland theocratic landmark. Part of the world's first 24-hour coin-operated art gallery, the C of E operates like a bank machine, offering a wide variety of services, from weddings to confessions to catechisms to sermons, all priced reasonably from one to four quarters. International Secular Atavism International is Portland and Vancouver, BC's answer to the Church of the Subgenius, ... The particular focus of these Dada-like pranksters is any and all dirt on Jesus H. Christ (they sell his snot) and on Catholic priests (pedophilia etc.) ... Sometimes they hit the mark (e.g., a bumper sticker that reads "JESUS CHRIST THREW UP IN MY CAR. He was wearing a yellow rented party dress which was wrecked. He was heard saying 'I don't fucking care...It's not fucking mine.'") ... Probably the best part of the Atavists is that they blatantly expose the perverse excesses of the fundamentalist right--e.g., the Haunted House sponsored by the New Life Fellowship Church in Newberg back in 1991, which featured a young woman lying on a gurney, covered with a bloody sheet after having undergone an abortion. She was accompanied by two nurses with bloody tools who exclaimed, "This is what happens to Bad Girls when they go out and have sex!" The Reverend Ernest Truely. Ernest Truely is weird. I mean, REALLY weird. And that's when he's not stoned. When he's stoned, he's downright creepy. His regular Public Spanking Schtick, like Ernest himself, is easily the most twisted piece of performance art on the Portland scene. ... It's the kind of thing for which "very naughty boys and girls" report to places like the City Nite Club where "Mr. Spankmanship" pays dishes out spankings for a buck, tittie torture for 25 cents, advanced enemas for two bucks, and bondage healing and salvation (in that precise order) for just one buck. ... Hung Far Low. In the grand tradition of Won Long Dong, Hung Far Low, by some strange twist of immigrant luck, has prospered primarily because its evocative name generates big yuks from passing Caucasians. We can assure you it's not because of the food, which is mediocre at best. A favorite of grungy scenesters is the dark back bar where the gin flows like water, though we preferred the restrooms, which come in two distinct varieties--Women and Ladies. The elaborate elongated sign out front completes the effect--with only Far Low illuminated in neon. A subtle but sincere tribute to the Hung Dynasty. ... The Original Ice Cream Parlour & Restaurant. We list this former Farrell's not so much for the food or the decor, which is predictably bright and cheery, but for the provocative names the place has "innocently" given to its childlike concoctions. Our favorite: Jenny's Pink Surprise, a triple taste treat "created for a girl who is sweet and not a banana. Three scoops of vanilla ice cream with strawberry topping, sliced bananas, whipped cream and nuts all around." Only in Portland. 1613 NE Weidler; 281-1271. Dr. Bill's Learning Center. Let the professorial Doctor teach you a thing or two about dildos and other sexual apparati, including the 101 Uses of a Cucumber. While there, be sure to visit the vibrator room, sample some corn chips and oreos, and ask the good doctor "who bombed Savemore Drug." 300 W. Burnside; 223-3970.

ummm, cyst, i have a kid? tell me about the nonsleazy aspects of portland so i am not scared off altogether. crime rate- better or worse than seattle? public school system- better or worse? housing prices- better or worse? you get the idea. not that i mind my daughter exposed to a little sleaze, mind you, but there has to be a balance in there somewhere.

Agatha, my princess, heart of the light, momma bear: see if you can get a house on Sauvie Island. It's right by Portland, and it's cool. But I bet the prices are through the roof. You might also want to look at housing around Reed College. I only visited for a week, but I wasn't scared at all for even a second (perhaps I have some of that Cyst luck because I have never felt personally threatened by even the seediest elements I have encountered in various iterations of Urban Living). I liked Portland: it's on my "must come again and stay longer" list.

[scribblescribble] Wow, thanks for the info everyone! I'll be back in a few years -- I'm off to stalk each and every one of you! teehee ta ta!

housing, especially within the city, is very expensive. $120,000 may or may not get you a one-bedroom "bungalow." portland is the only city in the nation with an urban growth boundary, so the land within it is getting very costly. plus, people keep moving there. the school system is not great, partially due to some property tax limitation measures passed in the late '80s. for instance, according to the monk article, oregon has some of the lowest sat scores in the nation. I think sauvie island is out of the question for people who don't have a few million dollars to spend.

I don't know much about the grownup side of potland, but plenty of upper-middle-class white folk seem to like it, so it must be ok for family raising. but expensive, yes. here are some excerpts from the monk essay comparing portland to seattle (full text can be found at http://monk.com/ontheroad/portland/pdxessay/portland.essay.html ): After all, the population of the Portland metro area is 1.3 million, with 500,000 people expected to move to the area in the next 15 years. But because it is so eloquently subdivided, Portland never feels crowded or urban. The trees are omnipresent (150,000 on streets alone). Hills block any panoramic view. It's hard to get a sense that this is a vast sprawling metropolis. Of course, from a conventional understanding, it's not. With 116 public parks within city limits (including lush Forest Park, the largest city park in America), you get the feeling Nature is still in charge. Freeways, cars, tract homes and skyscrapers have not yet taken over. Seattle is a double tall espresso, Portland is pot When we first announced to friends that we'd be featuring Portland, they exclaimed, "But you just featured Seattle. Portland's no different." After two months in P-town we wholeheartedly disagree. For starters, Portland doesn't even look like Seattle. It's closer to Pittsburgh, another quasi-industrial town at the confluence of several rivers. Secondly, Portland is an urban outpost in a largely agrarian state. It still retains a rural sensibility (my God, you can raise chickens and pigs in Portland). Seattle is positively cosmo by comparison. Furthermore, while corporate Jet City is burning with ambition, laid back Jag City feels no such urgency. In prosperous Seattle, slackerdom is a pose; in more impoverished Portland, it's a way of life ("I scrounge, therefore I am"). If Seattle eagerly embraces Ezra Pound's famous motto "make it new," then Portland's motto seems to be "keep it old." Hell, you can't even get self-service gasoline in this town. You might say that "nothing too fancy" is the unstated Portland credo. And most definitely nothing that desecrates what is simple and, above all, "natural." As the joke goes, how many Portlanders does it take to screw in a light bulb? Three-one to screw in the bulb and two to file an environmental impact study. Now, Seattle also has its strata of eco-PC-fanaticism, but it isn't as politicized as Portland. Seattleites want a clean environment so their hiking trails look pretty and their bodies remain sacrosanct. Portlanders don't care as much about the actuality of a clean environment, as they do about proving that "those greedy, big-ass, mother-fuck'n corporate polluters did us wrong." In other words, it seems almost impolite to have strong radical opinions in Seattle, but in gnarlier, more vigilant Portland, "The Beirut of America" in George Bush's treasured words, hardcore anarchist activism is alive and well.

more monk, bless their hearts: Everywhere you look there are trees. Particularly in Northwest Portland, where the city engulfs you in its wet green embrace. It's like being in a dense, misty, mildewy rain forest. These are not the clean, rain-swept film noir streets of Seattle. This is a city of troll-like creatures, scraggly web-footed homeless, lonely end-of-the road desperados, and middle class white kids seeking a safe refuge to explore the dark side of the subconscious. It comes as no surprise that someone like Gus Van Sant should decide to remain here, rather than go to Hollywood. The arid sun of the Southland would dry up his cloudy and moribund Portland aesthetic. It's true that both cities inculcate strangeness. Living under a gray umbrella does that. But there's a big difference-Portland's stranger. Seattle Weird is wacky weird. Portland Weird is just plain weird. Seattle has that Scandie element that makes even creepy parts of town seem charming and clean. There's less of that cultural influence in Portland. Deep Southeast Portland, in particular, can be truly dank and rank, epitomizing all that is frumpy, raw and unwittingly camp. While Portland's window dressing can be positively white trash compared to pretty Big Sister, she ain't stupid. Seattleites claim differently, but Portlanders consume more books per capita than any other city in America. Seventy percent of the residents own active library cards. ... Portlanders are smart-they just don't earn as much. In comparison to P-town, Seattle's all prudish and prissy. She's been to finishing school. She gets all the celebrity endorsements. If Nancy Kerrigan lived in the Northwest, she'd live in Seattle. But Portland-pool-shoot'n, drag-racin', pot-smoke'n Portland-truly is grungy. And we mean that in a very positive sense. Something about the gray mixed with the wise decision to preserve a lot of the old buildings gives Portland and Portlanders this uniquely un-American, almost Old World grungeness. Like an American Liverpool or Birmingham at times, but greener, smarter, and more beguiling in a way no other west coast city can match. And don't forget the cheap jazz (cheap music in general), a lovely coast and ocean but an hour away, the intoxicating aromas (try the smell of microbrew outside Powell's), Simon Benson's handsome bronze drinking fountains, the moist and highly fertile climate, the relatively low cost of living, the open political process where anybody can and does run for office, the realistic yet enlightened health care system, the coastal intelligence matched with a Midwestern scale and pace, the small and personable downtown, the incredibly cheap prices at most area restaurants, and by god almighty, no friggin' sales tax on food! That, more than anything else Portland, is bonafide insight. But in the end, what most endears Portland to me, and what, I suspect, endears it to most transplants who come here, is that Portland has the highest percentage of people you'd want to call your friends. In other words, Portland is filled with real people, who are there for you. Corny as this may sound, if you had lived in as many cities as we have, you would truly come to appreciate this quality of basic human decency. In most American cities the locals are either so isolated in their car and work worlds, or so completely ruled by the fashions and currents of mass media, they've lost what it means to be authentically human. But in Portland, Oregon, you have a rare miracle that is almost revolutionary-intelligent, creative people who actually care about one another. In fact, this is a hallmark of the entire Northwest. A quality that in my opinion has redeemed the shallow, cynical excesses of cities from L.A. to New York, and nurtured some hope that the finer elements in the American character are not dead yet.

I was in Portland for a couple days, and it seemed all right to me, for a city. My best friend lives there. she and another of my good pals are in Lions of Batacuda, a samba drum corp/marching band. She was also crowned Queen of the Art Car Parade. when I was there, I spent several hours in Powell's City of Books. 1 building, covering 1 block, full of books. I spent a lot of money there... anyway, I haven't been an interstate resident like everyone else (yet): Washington D.C.: 6 months Hancock, MI: 17 years, 6 months Rochester, MI: 3 years Auburn Hills, Mi: 9 months Pontiac, MI: 3 months Hamtramck, MI: 1 day Auburn Hills, MI: 1 month Pontiac, Mi: 9 months HAncock, MI: 1 year Houghton, MI: 1 year Hancock, Mi: 2 years Ft. McCoy Wi: in a month, I'll be there for a year... then ?

Sem, the arctic sounds really cool. You could head on up there and sort of look at the settlements of the time from you dig (was it 18th c?). Then you could put me up at your shack in Kotzebue.

i'm unhappy about that school report. i am also unhappy about the prices of houses, however, i can work around that- it still doesn't seem as expensive as seattle, where my friend just bought a two bedroom house in the ghetto for 200,000, and the average rent for a studio apt is now roundabout $600. the schools, though, i have to be careful about. what about all those magnet schools? they have spanish immersion, an arts magnet school, japanese immersion, a science magnet school...i thought they sounded good on paper, anyhow. every city has pro's and con's. i still don't think portland is as crowded and overdeveloped as seattle is getting to be. maybe i am just wearing rose tinted shades. thanks for all your hard work, cyst. maybe the fact that you will be there soon should be on the pro side of my pro and con list. by the way, who is the "we" in the part you wrote about "when we decided we'd be featuring portland..."? just curious. also, isn't there a bar with a gigantic fish tank in it that you order your drinks on? or, is that vancouver? and, oh yeah, i heard that vancouver, washington was right on the border of portland, like ten minutes away, but cheap. what of this rumor?

$600 for a studio apartment? damn that's cheap.

have not heard of such a bar! find out and I will meet you there for drinks someday. the "we" meant "we the writers at monk magazine." the monk crew tours the country, living in different cities and writing about them. you should check out that link. vancouver, a cultural wasteland, is just over the river. it's cheaper than portland (if you do your shopping in sales-tax-free oregon) and has potential. but interstate bridge traffic's a bitch. that 10 minutes figure does not apply to weekdays between, say, 6 a.m. and 7 p.m. if you move to the portland area, you can be part of my chick clique. two members -- my radical (self-described as) mulatto friend and my divorced high school friend -- also have young children. well, theirs are just toddlers now, but they will be kids soon. if you're already used to the weather, there's no reason not to move to portland. I used to not want anyone else to come there, but I've since decided that portland can always use more cool people.

last place I lived in portland: a two-bedroom for $600.

http://www.datamasters.com/cgi-bin/col.pl This site is great, it is a cost of living comparison. You just put in the state and city you live in and the state and city you want to move to and it calculates taxes, housing, food etc.. and tells you what you would have to make in that new place to live at the same standard of living. Personally, I would have to make a few thousand dollars more per year to enjoy the same standard of living in Portland, OR as I do in Tampa, FL. Of course there is more to life than money, I would take the sunshine over rain anyday. As far as New York City, they would have to pay me nearly double what I make here just to put me at the same standard of living. Actually they would have to pay me 4 times as much as I make here before I would consider moving to NY City.

i could make considerably less in portland. fuck that page.

this has nothing to do with anything, but it's a cool link of '50s illustrations of celery-carrying women whose panties are around their ankles: http://www.lileks.com/institute/frahm/index.html