Portland, OR, is geographically a west coast city but it looks like an eastern city, like Pittsburgh, PA, where we were in November. Gross! Rivers, hills, old, dirty buildings, narrow streets too. Plus really weird roads and antique freeways. The art and science of highway design has definitely made progress since these were laid out.
Imagine a twenty first century teaching hospital complex (OHSU) occupying the top of a hill like a Crusader castle in Palestine. All this being serviced by roads too narrow to qualify as decent driveways, too narrow to receive centerlines.
It appears they gave up on roads and built an aerial tramway that would do a Swiss ski lodge proud. This after spending tens of millions on underground parking garages, with valet parking that doesn't start functioning until well after the first patient appointments of the day.
The medical complex in Pittsburgh works much more smoothly, as though everybody is on the same side and all pulling together. At OHSU, not so much.
Salem, on the other hand, has wide, wide streets that give it a sense of spaciousness. True, the buildings are old but it feels like a west coast town ... town, not city. It doesn't feel like a capital in the way Sacramento or Albany does.
I spent three years in OR some decades ago ... I was rained on enough to last me a lifetime. Two weeks at a stretch without seeing the sun were commonplace. For a native Californian used to sunshine, it was just too depressing.
The dreary OR winters were written up in the diaries of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The trees love all the rain, people find it sad, or even S.A.D. Native Oregonians brag about the number of fatal one-car crashes Oregon has, many believed to be suicides. While I was there the acting president of the U. of O. killed himself by driving his VW head on into a loaded logging truck. Sad days indeed.
