I'd have a beer, but even that doesn't sound good.
Posted on 03/03/2009 9:47:04 AM PST by Abathar
PORTLAND, Ore. -- Portland is the unhappiest city America, according to a new ranking by BusinessWeek magazine.
The publication said it ranked 50 of the country's largest metropolitan areas based on a variety of factors, including depression rates, suicide rates, divorce rates, crime, unemployment, population loss, job loss, weather, and green space. The most heavily weighted factors were the depression, suicide, unemployment and crime rates.
Leslie Storm, director of Oregon Partnership's crisis prevention line, said calls for help are up 71 percent from January 2008 to this year.
Fallout from the rotten economy is the main topic for callers, but she doesn't rule out the weather, either. Counselors and volunteers who handle the hot lines are aware of Seasonal Affective Disorder that can lead to depression, she said.
"I think a lot of it's the economy. I think people are calling us that wouldn't have called us in the past because there are fewer resources. And because there are fewer resources, people who are using alcohol and drugs can't get into a treatment center," Storm said.
While some said the Rose City's reputation for livability, green awareness and creativity ought to keep its residents happier, Storm said that all the people who have moved here for that reason may have left families behind and don't have a built-in support system.
(Excerpt) Read more at theindychannel.com ...
Well there's your problem in a nutshell...
Too many Liberals!!
They should do a relationship to misery and political position. Ah, screw it, I want to kill myself. Look at the weather. It’s raining, no it’s snowing. Ah crap, the traffic is backed up again.
Don’t forget about the self admitted pederast homosexual mayor Sam Adams.
I'd have a beer, but even that doesn't sound good.
I think that’s been done: there are surveys that show conservatives are much happier than ‘liberals’ (dash it, I want the word back—let them be ‘progressives’ or ‘socialists’, we’re the ones who defend liberty, but I digress). It is a corollary that leftists are more miserable than conservatives.
BTW we also have better senses of humor and are more generous (also confirmed by large-scale survey research, much to the annoyance of the researchers who conducted the surveys).
“Too many Liberals!!”
You are’nt joking there. I work in Portland and am inundated with the “lifestyle” of the “keep Portland wierd” crowd. Even the Mayor is a lying shiftless ped. sodomite.
I would be out of Portland in a heartbeat if I could find a better job in Vancouver. (where I live currently)
You hit it just right. To many Californians moved to Oregon and changed a great state into a mini-California with all their liberal ideas. Along with that, when things go bad with the economics, the weather gets to people real fast. Californians have a hard time with rainy weather all the time. They don’t seem to adjust as well as others. It use to be that Californians would move back to their home state within two years. That’s one reason they found it hard to find a job. Companies knew this fact and didn’t want to go to the expense of hiring them.
Vitamin D deficiency, 2/3 of the days, they go without the sun.
Brought to you by another bunch of useful idiots, who will now move on to another red city, and then fowl the new nest once more.
Excellent graphic!
But they are so “creative” and “imaginative,” particularly about making up things that are not so, such as that the One has the skill and character to lead this country.
I lived there for 2 years.....rain & clouds 7 months out of the year. Almost drove me crazy....so I moved 4 hours south. More sun and less liberals....
Cocktail-party twaddle. Just for laughs (and for a reality check), they should do it for some genuinely unhappy places like Detroit, East Saint Lewis, Camden NJ, et al.
Too many liberals, you are right. Portland is also a sanctuary city for illegal aliens.
Keep your chin down, Cleveland, there’s always next year!
oddly enough, portland is home to some of the best tasting microbrews.
You’re talking about Vancouver, Washingtion, right? Is that a much different town than Portland? Just curious... They’re right next to one another.
It’s the climate.
I would say that more than anything it is the economy. Portland has always teetered on the edge of maintaining itself. Too bad. I like the area and the city.
BTW: It has rain - deal with it.
Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco the Trifecta of American Marxism. And the reason people call us the Left Coast.
I’ve been to Portland once. The streets were lined with bums and winos.
Yes, born and raised in Washington. Vancouver is right across the river from Portland, but the Portland migration to Vancouver has not quite ruined it yet. Portland is wearing us down, but we have been resistant to the biggest liberal boondoggles so far, light rail being the largest.
Makes sense. Liberals are people who spend all day thinking about ways to be miserable. They used to say that the Pilgrims were people who spent all day worrying that somewhere, someone was having fun. Today's libs spend all day worrying about the same thing. For libs, if you're happy and satisfied, then you shouldn't be. Because somewhere in the world, someone is suffering. And it's probably your fault. That's the way they think.
Grants Pass? Medford?
*snicker*
We moved to Indiana from the Detroit area, I can’t believe they didn’t get the crown...
I’ll bet Vermont isn’t far behind .
Vancouver is about twenty years behind Portland, when it comes to politics. We’re not as crazy. We’re a center right district, more or less.
Of Course it is! It’s chock full of mad at the world whack left liberals!!!!
Let's call them 'regressives' instead.
All your city are belong to us!
Unfortunately it doesn’t fit. America never having been mired in the full-blown socialism they want, cannot regress to it (well, unless you count the flirtation of the Plymouth Bay Colony with socialism that almost starved them).
That ‘always raining’ reputation is true for late Nov - March but April - October is rather dry. The cool thing about the winter rains is if you get too sick of ‘em you can jump in the car and take it up to Mt. Hood’s Tiberline Lodge and ski slopes for a bit of the Winter Wonderland thing.
Eugene is worse than Portland in every way. The lunacy begins on the highways 20 mi.s out.
Lot of Homos in Portland too.
Is there a drug problem there too? Is it Heroin or Methamphetamines?/Just Asking - seoul62.....
Full of Druggies, Homos, Winos, Bums, and Corruption - Portland has it all!
I lived just outside of Portland for 18 years. The last year I was there, I don’t think we saw the sun. People from California want sunshine...they don’t like clouds all year.
St Louis 2, New Orleans 3, Detroit 4.
Rounding out the top ten: Cleveland, Jacksonville, Fla., Las Vegas, Nashville-Davidson, Tenn., Cincinnati and Atlanta.
What's up with Nashville and Cincinnati?
And where's Philly, for that matter?
My image of Oregon was the Cops Show Series, which featured Sheriff John Bunnell of Multnomah County. The impression that I came away from viewing those episodes which featured Multnomah County was that it was not a very nice place to live. How would you describe the West Hills area aka Southwest Hills aka Council Crest area, is it light years away from Multnomah County? As for your full of description of Portland, I thought Crook County, Chicago had a lock on that title./Just Asking - seoul62.....
Medford....You?
Grants Pass. Small town flavor, back to the 50’s, great
old town, soda fountains with out the Medford traffic.
The state legislature is about to destroy the micro-brew industry with a huge tax increase on barrels of beer.
The microbrewer in my town in Southern Oregon says the tax increase will cost him $85,000 more a year.
Sad...
Ed
I only know the area from a friend of mine who once lived there. Of the negative aspects I listed, I agree that Chicago and many other big cities could fit my description.
It does have one of the best bookstores in America (Powell’s). Other than that, not much to recommend it.
In other words, they didn't actually ask people whether they were happy or not.
As Dr. House would say, “People lie, all the time.” Go with the hard numbers and facts, not peoples opinions.
Okay, but there are beach and island and mountain communities with high off-season unemployment and crime rates and a lot of cloudy days, and people still love living there. They come for the surfing or sailing or skiing and stay for the lifestyle.
There are communities where people go to die or to do away with themselves, so their death and suicide rates will be higher. And New York gets pretty unliveable in between its renaissances.
Plus, you have to look at how some of these numbers are calculated. Somebody comes up with a figure for how depressed a city is, based on suicide and unemployment figures. If someone else takes that depression rate as an independent factor and put it together with suicide and unemployment numbers, they there's a circularity in the reasoning.
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