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I currently live in Redmond Oregon which is a city about ~10-15 miles north of Bend Oregon , but I can speak in relativity about most of central Oregon and the pro's/cons. Redmond/Bend is a semi small community that has grown exponentially in the past few decades from many out of staters coming here for the outdoor things to do, atmosphere and beer culture. The good Amazing place to do outdoor stuff -The good things about central Oregon is there is never a lack of things to do throughout the year. The summer's are beautiful, dry and warm which allows for amazing hiking and biking on our seemingly endless miles of singletrack and trails that are super easily accessible. If you want to get out of town to some more remote area's to hike and bike you're close to Smith Rock State park, a few hours away from Crater lake and the Deschutes National forest which of course is filled with tons of hiking and mountain biking trails. -Cycling here is pretty big, lots of open roads and hills to climb around, a decent amount of competitive cycling events such as weekday criteriums, tuesday night time trials, thursday cyclocross races in the fall and groomed fat bike trails to bike in the winter. -Smith Rock State Park has some phenomenal rock climbing in the area. I don't rock climb but my friends who do say it's very, very good... -Winter sports include multiple area's to ski at Mt. Bachelor, an hour and some change away from Mt Hood, multiple groomed nordic skiing trails, snow shoeing, backcountry skiing.. I would say most cars you pass on the road will have ski racks on the car in the winter, bike racks on during the summer... The beer is really, really good You have Deschutes brewery, Worthy Brewing Company, Crux Brewing Company, 10 barrel brewing co, Boneyard Brewing Co, Silver Moon Brewing Co, Immersion... There's a lot.. On top of that, there's a plethora of breweries/brew pubs that don't distribute like they do, but have a fantastic selection of beer. Moving here from Southern NM has added 10 lbs to my waistline and I consider myself to be a pretty active cyclist... So it's either a blessing or a curse depending on your love for beer. Also: Distilleries are starting to become more of a thing around here, so finding local spirits is also common place these days The town is pretty easy to navigate through The people who grew up in Bend/Redmond aren't a fan of the influx of people because of "traffic woes." However, the traffic really isn't all that bad in comparison to a big city. Rush hour traffic will definitely cause a bit of slow down but I have yet to see gridlocked or standstill traffic unless a vehicle accident occurred and our big 6 lane highway has been reduced to 4/3/2 lanes... It happens from time to time, and in comparison to other cities of similar population size it's noticeable but nothing I'd consider to be a huge issue. All in all, the city has done a decent job at keeping traffic flowing and I think continued planning as the city expands will keep traffic from turning into a nightmare... The deschutes river runs straight through the city, and you can float/paddle/swim in it Pretty much as stated, you can hang out on the river and float through town. It's pretty neat The food is really good You can find near whatever type of food you're looking for in Bend/Redmond. Some of it is upscale and delicious or you can hit up the food trucks at Wild Ride and get some great taco's or gyro's. Also, there usually parked near outdoor breweries so you can drink while you eat good food. I don't think Bend Oregon will ever be a food paradise but you won't go home unsatisfied with wherever you decided to eat. The weather is awesome Sunshine throughout the summer, the winter's are usually not brutal and you'll experience a few snowstorms throughout the 6 months of "winter." Although last year saw record snow falls in the city and it kinda sucked... So mixed bag depending on what your preference for seasons are. We get all 4 of them here, with cold weather being the dominant type. The bad Everyone is loving moving here As mentioned before, the city is crowded, and the city just recently allowed for zoning of houses to expand, which is going to bring in an estimated 30,000 people to this city of ~90k people. With that, housing is expensive in terms of cost of living... Kinda. The median price range for a house is around 350k, but you're looking at a 1,350 square ft house that was built pretty cheap on a small plot of land.. Small enough that you don't have a backyard and if you open a window on the side of your house you may end up being able to touch the neighbors house if you reached your hand out. Land in Bend/Redmond is very, very expensive... Finding a house on a nice half acre will run you around 500K+, and you may end up with a manufactured home sitting on it... I know that it's nowhere near as expensive as one would find in Portland/Seattle but the job market isn't terribly ideal unless you are part of the tech/medical industry and have some decent specialized education. It seems like every job that you apply for you'll have 5-6 people applying for the same one, and this goes with entry level jobs all the way up to the more skilled jobs.. It's definitely a renters market, and you're looking at $1,200 for a 2 bed 2 bath apartment.. Houses go for $1700+, pets usually not allowed and most property managers require a security deposit equal to one months rent. Also: if you have any blemishes on your renting record, good loving luck. I found my house that I'm renting on Craigslist for $1500 a month and I e-mailed the guy literally an hour after it was posted with a completed resume, I.D and check to run my credit report. I was number THREE on the list. You have to be aggressive as a mother fucker to find a place to live, and prepare your rectum for the pounding it'll take to jump through the hoops to secure a place to live. It's crowded.. even worse in the summer Tourism is huge here, the summers get a HUGE influx of people and your local hiking/biking trails are socked down with tourists from all parts of the country. If you want to beat the crowd you gotta get your fun in early in the morning. Your favorite bar will be full of drunk tourists by noon and wont let up until they close. The best time in the town is definitely the spring and the fall/early parts of summer, where the volume of people hasn't increased and you can generally enjoy everything you want to do in peace. The job market kinda sucks There's a small but up and coming tech industry that's coming here which is bringing some decent-ish jobs, but it's not going to provide jobs for many.. The biggest employers around here are the city/county, St. Charles health system, the school district and tourism jobs. If you have a specialized degree you could possibly find a job if your niche/degree is here but finding work isn't the easiest, at least one that would sustain someone to be able to proliferate around here. I work as a registered Nurse for the St. Charles system and while I make a decent wage, it would be a bit difficult to afford a 400k house on my salary in bend, thus I am somewhat relegated to living in Redmond to afford a house and live the non lavish/cycling lifestyle that I enjoy. YMMV depending on how you like to live. There's a significant difference in political views between bend/redmond and inside of the cities Driving to/from bend and you'll see trump signs, confederate flags and people driving trucks with U.S flags waving from the back. At the same time, there's a bunch of people who have bernie sanders stickers, Obama stickers and live the "progressive left" lifestyle. It's not bad, and I kinda enjoy having a mixing pot of different political views personally, but i suppose for some people that's a bad thing. Some people are dicks There's definitely an ego that comes with being from bend I think. Maybe it's because I moved from the Midwest/the southwest where usually people err'd on the side of being friendly to strangers but there's a lot of people here who are generally just lovely people.. Some people drive like idiots, and the whole "friendly oregon" driving has definitely lots its meaning apparently. All in all though, it's kind of a mix bag.. You have a lot of really friendly people who will strike up a conversation with you at the brewery and they're genuinely good people.. And then you have assholes who get pissed when their beer has "too much foam" on it... I know there there's a huge stereotype against people from California that moved to central Oregon for being complete assholes, and the unfortunate thing i've noticed is that they usually are.. Most of the people who get irate over small things like what i've mentioned above get huffy and storm out to their car sporting California plates. While I know it's not the standard for all Californians they seem to be the one's that stick out the most... Overall it's a pretty great place to live. You get to do a lot and have a lot at your disposal when it comes to being outdoors and other things that young professionals do. If you're looking for that "small town" feel it's probably not here, there's definitely more hustle and bustle/things going on than you'd find in a town of similar size, but you get a lot of nice perks of the area that you find in big cities without the big city headaches. Nice and hot piss fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Oct 10, 2017 |
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Oct 10, 2017 00:41
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My favorite city that I lived in was probably Las Cruces, NM Pro's: -amazing mexican food -College town (albeit new mexico state univ was pretty low tier) so you can go to basketball/football games if you want to watch a team lose but drink copious amounts of booze and fight frat kids -decent amount of amenities for the size of the town -100k live there but the traffic isn't unbearable, lots of side routes and other avenues to where you want to go. The main arteries of town get a bit busy during rush hour but going from one side of town to the other seems to be easier than the other towns that I've lived in which comparable population sizes -The people are pretty friendly overall. I don't remember wanting to stab everyone in the face so that's always good! -El Paso Texas is 40 minutes away, so big city amenities also exist and I-10 actually flows quite well except for rush hour times -You can go to Juarez and get kidnapped in an hour drive -Very, very bike friendly community. Zia Velo cycling team/biking community has established what I feel is a good relationship with the community, and with the large amounts of cyclists it's expected to see them cruise the street. Lots of bike paths introduced as road construction has gone on. Also: the mountain biking is phenomenal..Plus you're at 4k ft elevation so if you compete out of state you're decently acclimated to the elevation, unless you find yourself in Colorado racing up towards 7-8k elevation then you're hosed lol. -Want to get up in the cold mountains? Silver city and Cloudcroft are 2 hours and 1 hours away respectively. Gila National Forest in Silver city lets you get into the woods, same with Cloudcroft. I don't think there's much in terms of skiing and that's something you'd have to travel to Albuquerque for which is 3 ish hours away -If you like the sun, you'll like Las Cruces. Tons of sun, you get "monsoon" storms in the evening that make the whole place a nice 10-15 degrees cooler and just pummel the area with rain. Then it won't rain for another 24-72 hours and you'll get hit with the storm all over again. The winters are cold from like Jan-Feb, then you're back in the 60's-70's from March til late april then it gets hot as fuuuuck. Like 100+ days, which I think is awesome. It also will snow once or twice in the winter, causing everyone to go crazy and do stupid poo poo but it'll be gone in like 4 hours. -"A" mountain is a nice tall mountain that has 3-4 ish miles of single track trails that you can run or bike on. -Dona ana mountains are probably 10 minutes west of town and tons of fun to mountain bike on. You can bike to the trailhead, which is about 6 miles or get there by car. -Fruit and veggies are fresh and taste amazing. I've never had such good produce before, but I used to live in Kansas so YMMV. Cons: -Poverty is an issue. The cost of living is cheap but there's a large portion of individuals who are significant low income (not a bad thing to be poor of course, just jobs aren't super plentiful if you're career field doesn't have jobs available). Your main jobs are the two hospitals *Mountain View/Memorial Medical* the University or the city/government. There's other jobs of course but the other employers are at white sands missile range, NASA has a small contingency there but you aren't going to find massive employers. Lots of people commute to work in El Paso, like I did working air ambulance. -It's pretty dirty. When biking I've run over a couple of used syringes, that I doubt were used for insulin... -The drivers are either super kind and obey traffic laws, or they're old people that have no clue how to drive. -Jobs, again.. You're limited on to what you can do there so it's not like a huge city where all types of businesses and job specialties are available. All in all, I think Las Cruces is essentially a diamond in the rough if you're into outdoorsy stuff and hate winter. Nice and hot piss fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Feb 28, 2018 |
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Feb 27, 2018 23:10
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