Portland v. Seattle: Stuff Seattleites Envy...and Stuff We Don't
| Stuff We Envy | Stuff We Don't |
| You Can't Pump Your Own Gas Must be nice when it’s raining. | You Can’t Pump Your Own Gas It’s a pain when you’re in a hurry. |
| The Aerial Tram Sure, the skyway only connects the south waterfront to the OHSU complex, but it’s a fun, cheap ($4) round-trip ride for tourists. | Warmer Weather You know how we barely get by without air conditioning? Harder to do in Portland, home of 100-degree-plus summers. |
| No Sales Tax Of course Oregon makes up for it in income tax (which we don’t have), but it’s awesome that price tags equal the actual cost. | No NFL or MLB Teams The Trail Blazers can only entertain you so long. |
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The Schnitz No concert hall in Seattle has as cool a nickname as the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, or as eclectic a mix of programming: the Pixies one day, the Youth Philharmonic the next. |
Residents Can Keep Barnyard Animals Fresh eggs are nice and all, but a city’s awfully tight for keeping geese, burros, pygmy goats, and ducks. |
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Great Skiing Sure, we have great skiing at Snoqualmie Pass, but Mount Hood has dramatic acreage, six ski areas, and is open year-round. |
The Timbers’ 19,000-person Jeld-Wen Field The Sounders crowd? An average 44,038 screaming fans—more than all but one pro baseball team. |
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Small Blocks The 200-foot-long city blocks make it feel like you’re getting somewhere quickly in downtown Portland. |
Weed is Illegal Now who's the cool, hip city for freethinkers, huh? |
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Their Breweries While we’ll stand by our Manny’s and our Interurban IPA till the end, it’s pretty cool that Portland’s 52 breweries is a world record. |
The name Jeld-Wen Field The “Clink” is an awkward moniker, but at least our stadium isn’t named after energy-efficient windows. |
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The MAX Portland’s light rail system goes to the mall, the airport, the suburbs—52 miles total, to Seattle’s 17.3. |
The Traffic Is Bad Yeah, maybe we aren’t one to talk, but theirs is the eighth worst in the country, yet the city is the nation’s 28th largest. |
