Portland, Oregon, isn’t perfect.
It’s not particularly diverse, and most restaurants close way too early for anyone under the age of 60. The “Pacific Northwest freeze” is a real thing: People here can be simultaneously too nice and impossible to befriend.
When I left Portland in my early 20s to travel the world for almost a decade, I didn’t think I’d ever move back. Growing up there was pretty magical, but I hated the city in the way most angsty teens hate their hometown.
Then, amid the coronavirus pandemic, I booked a flight back to Portland to be near family. Five years later, I’m still here — and I can’t see myself living anywhere else. Here’s why.
The access to nature is unbeatable
Portland is surrounded by natural beauty.
Locals love to brag that you can be in the mountains or on the coast within an hour and a half — a luxury few cities can claim.
Believe it or not, you can even be in the rainforest in half an hour, surrounded by ferns and fluorescent-green moss.
I regularly make the scenic drive to the Columbia River Gorge, a historic stretch dotted with tunnels and waterfalls, when I need to clear my mind. Stopping to stand at the base of a 620-foot waterfall and get misted in the face never fails to do the trick.
The natural beauty really is everywhere. On a casual walk around my neighborhood, I’ve found everything from fresh blackberries and wild bunnies to roaming chickens and secret gardens filled with dahlias and roses.
Our local food scene is on par with major metropolises
I’m convinced Portland has more outstanding restaurants per capita than any other city.
Though the city is predominantly white, my taste buds have been thrilled in recent years to see diversity reflected in Portland’s rise to foodie fame.
The star of the show is Kann, a James Beard Award-winning restaurant by Gregory Gourdet, where “Haitian cuisine meets Pacific Northwest bounty,” and an absolutely mind-blowing plantain brioche meets my mouth.
Then there’s Jinju Patisserie, named the country’s most outstanding bakery at the James Beard Awards earlier this year. There, two Korean-born pastry chefs whip up croissants that rival any I’ve had in Paris.
But award winners barely scratch the surface. My personal list of outstanding local Thai restaurants is longer than my Trader Joe’s receipts.
Plus, Portland is especially known for its food trucks, which is how I first tried Guyanese food (at Bake on the Run), snow-cheese Korean fried chicken (at Frybaby), and Puerto Rican-Philly fusion dishes (at Papi Sal’s).
The LGBTQ+ nightlife feels truly queer
I came out after leaving Oregon, and before moving back, I’d only lived in areas where the LGBTQ+ community was either small or centered on gay men.
Portland is the first time I’ve felt included, and the queer community here is at the heart of why I chose to stay. This city’s LGBTQ+ community feels refreshingly queer.
My friends and I joke that most bars in Portland are gay bars just because the local population has so many queer folks. Many popular nightlife spots regularly host LGBTQ+ events, even if they aren’t specifically “gay bars.”
On any given weekend, I might have to choose between a “Twilight”-themed drag show, an LGBTQ+ storytelling event, a queer pie-eating contest, a lesbian dance party, or a trans wrestling match.
Because it rarely takes me longer than 15 minutes to get anywhere around the city, I can try to squeeze all the events in.
And when I wake up exhausted and hungry on Sunday morning, I can join my fellow Portland gays doing what we love most — waiting in inordinately long brunch lines.
Portland has a community for even the quirkiest hobbies
If you’ve got a special interest, you’re bound to find a group of people here who are loudly and proudly into the same thing, no matter how niche or offbeat.
Can you guess where I’ve made the most friends in Portland? If you said, “a weekly ’80s-themed mall walk in the city’s half-abandoned Lloyd Center mall,” you’d be right.
When I picked up rollerskating during the pandemic, I was thrilled to learn that the city runs a “secret roller disco” every week in undisclosed pop-up locations like warehouse parking lots (and the same half-abandoned mall).
Over the summer, I participated in a watermelon-wrestling fundraiser. In the fall, I got to take an entire four-week class about 1970s cult horror in the back room of Movie Madness, one of the country’s only remaining video-rental stores.
All in all, I’ve fallen for the city
The older I get, the more I appreciate that Portland doesn’t feel like a city, but rather it’s a bunch of neighborhoods quilted together.
It’s easy to feel welcome here when there are free tiny libraries and flyers for different clubs and events around every corner.
Everything I love about Portland, from the hiking trails to my favorite Thai soup spot (shoutout to Khao Moo Dang) to the drag scene, comes down to one thing: community.
It’s an elusive concept I spent most of my 20s searching for in far-off places. In an ironic twist of fate that really pleases my mother, I ended up finding it in my hometown.
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