Portlanders aren’t miserable. Our city truly offers the best of everything. So, it struck us as odd when the Wall Street Journal came out this morning with a survey that showed Portland was the second-most miserable city in the U.S.
First off, our city tends to offer us so much variety that we can’t get tired of any one thing. Too hot? Head to the mountains. Too cold? Head to the desert. Too rainy? Check out our wide variety of coffee bars, martini bars and rebar (okay, maybe not so much with that last one). Too sunny? Um… no one complains about too much sun, really, especially in a town where there were only four days of sun between April and June in 2010.
When we first saw the survey, it got us thinking – maybe it’s the rain? It rains in Portland. A lot. But we don’t hate the rain. In fact, we love it! Where else can you always have the perfect excuse to take in a movie or just be damn pissed at the world? Nothing feels better when you’re angry and depressed than having the weather say, “You know what? We totally agree with you. Your life is crap!” Plus, the rain makes Portlanders seize the day – there’s no waiting for the perfect day to go do something when it rains all the time. Want to go to the zoo? You just go, rain or shine.
Then, we dug a little deeper.
The survey only looked at unemployment, dropping housing prices and increased gas prices. Okay, so skipping over the fact that we still don’t know how we got ranked lower than a lot of cities (Detroit? Really!?), what’s in there that’s new?
Unemployment? Oregonians nearly invented the word. No one does unemployment like we do. In fact, we do unemployment so well, it’s work. Lower housing prices? Yeah. That one sucks. Not much we can do there but wait – but, hey, it could be worse – we could not have houses. Increasing gas prices? Well, maybe you didn’t see our story today about Audi bicycles made from scrumptious hardwoods – but Portlanders love almost every kind of transportation besides cars!
Basically, when you look at the entire survey, Portlanders should be miserable on paper, but, in reality, we’re not. We know how good we’ve got it, and we’re damn happy about it! Besides, it could always be worse. We could live in Phoenix!
Source: Misery Across The U.S.