Portland and Pittsburgh: Tales of Two Very Different Cities

As a stroke survivor, I've moved around a lot though Portland, which is 3000 miles away from where I started, is the biggest leap. (https://stroketales.blogspot.com/2017/07/first-impressions-of-portland-oregon.html) I lived in Pittsburgh for over 3 years before coming to Portland. But except for the two cities starting with P and the vast number of bridges, the two cities are very much different. The first 5 examples that came to my mind immediately follow.

One of 1000s Pittsburgh gear

1. Everywhere you look, day or night, you will see at least one sports memorabilia in Pittsburgh--Pirates (baseball), Penguins (hockey), and/or Steelers (footballs). Pittsburgh is obsessed with sports. Bumper stickers and flags, t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, and more abound. Portland is best known for the Trail Blazers (basketball) and the lesser known Timbers (soccer) and Pickles (baseball), the latter two because they're sort of minor league. Portland is hot on the Blazers, but no sports stuff anywhere to flaunt that I've seen.

And the debate goes on

2. In Pittsburgh, everything was placed in plastic bags when I went shopping. So I was shocked, even though in retrospect I shouldn't have been, that Portland only uses mostly paper. Portland is esoteric in the area of the environment whereas Pittsburgh, originally a blue-collar town known for its steel mills, isn't concerned mostly at all. The debate, plastic vs paper, goes on. Paper bags take more energy to manufacture than plastic, even though paper bags are easier to recycle, and so forth. So the one thing you see in Portland is the re-usable shopping bag; not so much in Pittsburgh.
 

Pittsburghese, anyone?

3. Pittsburghese and Portlandese are very different aberrations, reflecting the culture thereof, or not. You decide for yourself.

(If you listen to Jack Pearson, played by Milo Ventimiglia in the acclaimed "This is Us" which takes place in Pittsburgh, he gets those expressions perfectly said). Going to Portland made me say to myself, a couple of times, you're not in Kansas anymore.

Ten examples follow for each.

Pittsburgh:

Jagoff = Jerk
Sprinkles = Jimmies
Yinz = You 
Stillers = Steelers
Nebby = Nosy
Coort = Quart
Lah-see = Lousy
In-ur-es-tin = Interesting
Hahs = House
Dahn-tahn = Downtown

Portland:
Brewmoo = relating to any number of theaters that serve beer
The mountain is out = It's a nice day
Spendy = Expensive
I'm going to Freddies = Local store Fred Meyers and Portland's version of Target
The Couve = Nickname for Vancouver, Washington, which is just north of Portland
Stumptown = Originally another nickname for Portland for all the loggers who once lived there
Nordies = Short for Nordstrom’s, a major upscale retail store located downtown and in a few area malls
Puddletown = Nickname for Portland because of all the rainfall it receives
PillHill = The hill that houses OHSU, the teaching hospital, Dorenbeckers (children’s hospital) and the VA Hospital
Stillers = Steelers, the beloved football team

The long row of carts

4. The food carts in Pittsburgh are mainly around the college campuses and downtown. Young adults who frequent them on college campuses mostly can handle the greasy concoctions like pizza, Chinese, and burgers that come from there. Everyone else usually takes Pepto-Bismol or facsimile. In Portland, however, the trucks are a cut above, dedicated to serving, in each individual truck, food like Asian Fusion, intricate wraps, a wide assortment of bubble tea, and Voodoo doughnuts, for example. They are parked in clumps, 15 to 20 food trucks, in many locations that aren't around college campuses or downtown only and, sometimes, they are parked in the middle of nowhere. But Portlanders know where they are. Throngs of them frequent the carts wherever the carts are.

Jackpot: Beard AND man-bun

5. The guys that sport beards in Pittsburgh, for the most part, keep them groomed. But not in Portland. The north westerners apparently don't give a flyin' frig about their beards and are more interested in having one at all than not. Thus, you see unkemptness beard-wise all over Portland. Young and old have beards in hippie-like fashion that are straggly and nearly halfway down the chest. The other things you see all over the place in Portland are man-buns. In order to have a man-bum, the hair must be at least shoulder length in order to pull it up for a bun. Man-buns and ponytails are different, the latter just gathered with a tie and once it's up, allowed to hang loose. Man-bans, IMO, are more sophisticated and skillful than a ponytail. In Pittsburgh, I hadn't seen one man bun ever. But in Portland, they're all over the place.


I was a fan of Pittsburgh, but the scenery is better in Portland, and the food for that matter. And the man-buns, of course.