Hey from L.A.

Hi there! David asked me to participate several months ago, but I have a problem taking direction from others.  If you can’t be early, be late!  I have known David for about 347 years (give or take) and we have talked about blogging for quite a while now, so it’s nice to finally get started.

I recently moved to the L.A. area (Burbank) from Portland, OR.  Ok, I never actually had a Portland address; I’ve lived in Aloha, Beaverton, Hillsboro, Salem, and Corvallis, but unless you lived in Oregon you probably don’t know any of these places.  Most people I’ve talked to have asked me why I wanted to move, usually in a “what were you thinking” kind of way.  About the only answer I can give is that my family and I needed change.  I have lived in Oregon for all of my life, with the exception of about a year in northern CA when I was 2.  Yeah, I know that doesn’t count.

Anyway, after a trip to Vegas last year my wife thought it would be great for us to live there.  She was really frustrated with the lack of sun from October to March every year, and to be honest I really got tired of the gray skies too.  I love my wife and want her to be happy (plus more sun means less clothes), so I got on board with the idea.  She applied for a job in Vegas, which turned out to be a 6-month process that led to an offer in Beverly Hills instead.  I was able to transfer to L.A. and there you go.

Now as I mentioned, most people think I’m nuts to move to southern California after living in Oregon all my life.  Yes, Oregon is nice.  Very nice, actually.  It’s very green, mostly clean, and the beaches are great (if you don’t mind wind and cold).  Plus there’s no sales tax and you don’t pump your own gas (which is weird to everyone except Oregonians).  I like Oregon a lot, but there just aren’t too many job opportunities there.  For various reasons most companies based in OR have left and now only Nike remains. The school situation isn’t all that hot either, and that isn’t going to help jobs down the road.  For the moment it seems that Oregon is a great place if you are retired or you just sold your $1 million dollar shack in SoCal and want to buy twice the house for half the price.

Now as you can imagine, we have a lot of sun here in L.A.  It’s been pouring up in the NW but it was 80 here last week.  Plus we have Disneyland (huge selling point for the kids). Anyway, that’s enough for my first post. It’s movie night—the kids want to watch Over The Hedge and I’ve got to make quesadillas.

Comments

[phriedom]

I saw the sun and a wide expanse of blue sky on my way to work last Monday. There was a tall wall of dark clouds on the horizon and it was raining about an hour later, but I did see sunshine in November.

It is supposed to snow with accumulation down to 500 feet tonight, which means cold, dark, windy, rain on the valley floor. I have to wash the towels every couple of days because the air is so wet that they mildew before they dry.

Go Beavers!

[David B. Wright]

Hey Jason, nice to see you contributing... FINALLY! (Said the guy who hasn't updated his own damn blog in like three weeks...)

I agree with all you've said about Oregon... it used to be a nice place to live, now it's mostly just a nice place to be from.

I believe however that you need to be more specific about the issue of "job opportunities". I understand that Oregon's job market has seen steady growth over the past couple of years, and unemployment is back down around the 5% mark (lower in some areas) now. However, it's an issue of what kind of jobs are available. Some job markets are strong, but many "professional" job markets are weak. White collar work just ain't what it used to be in Oregon. Construction and health care jobs seem to be doing well, though.

One disconcerting note, it appears that some of the strongest job growth is in the public sector rather than the private sector. I'm not sure if that's an Oregonian trend or a national one, but it's certainly not a good long-term situation.