Portlandia is Cooler than Seattle. We Hate That.

Heads up! Our travels to Portland, meals, stays, activities and such, were covered by Travel Portland.

“We like to make fun of you in Seattle,” I told our indulgent guide. We were standing outside one of Portland’s food card pods eating Bosnian burek, a spinach and feta stuffed pastry. “See, you’re cooler than we are. We grew up and got real jobs.”

“We want real jobs too!” the guide responded, and we all laughed.

We were having a fine morning, full of snacks and chatter. We were riding with Portland’s Pedal Bike Tours on their Bites by Bike ride. We’d been nibbling our way around downtown (mostly), drinking coffee and thick drinking chocolate, eating pizza and fancy salami, rolling past beautifully renovated brick buildings and little plazas punctuated with public art. Our group was small, just us and a couple visiting from Southern California. It was cold, it had been raining, and we were having a lovely time.

It’s true, we do love to make fun of Portland. We did grow up and get real jobs while in Portland everyone(seemingly) stayed cooler than Seattle. They got better public transit, we got real estate. In Seattle, I pine for our hipper than thou days, but also, I envy Portland’s wide, considerably flatter roadways. It’s a bike city for a reason — while the weather is challenging, the streets don’t have Seattle’s vertical gain, commuting by bike doesn’t have the competition edge of our hilly home. We want that, we want easy avenues and to still have crazy hair and to sleep late and then, work on our projects.

Portland isn’t immune from growing up, however. We transit the city regularly and remember when we could not find — the horrors! — a coffee shop open on Saturday afternoon. We remember the 24 Hour Church of Elvis and hours in Powell’s books, of course, but not much else. Portland wasn’t a destination in its own right for us.

Now, we find ourselves regretting that we must continue south. There are dozens of great coffee shops, an inordinate number of them serving Stumptown beans. There are crafty arty galleries and places dishing up righteous breakfasts. There are festivals and bike rides and the Max, Portland’s light rail, assuring that no, you actually don’t need your car, you’ll be just fine without. There’s a Safeway downtown, a real supermarket right there by the performing arts center, for crying out loud!

Portland is changing, downtown isn’t 26 anymore, and serious guys in  suits are having power breakfasts at Nel Centro (at the Moderna, the slick and excellent hotel where we stayed). But in Powell’s I watched a guy with a Mohawk carefully flip through the children’s books. And on 3rd, I noticed a young man in an orange skirt walk by — his mighty beard was just as orange as his attire. Hipster girls in giant cheap sunglasses strolled arm in arm  through the park, the bike racks outside the Stumptown cafe in the Ace Hotel were choked with fixies.

I was envious, not a good quality. Portland, Portland, Portland. Of course we make fun of you. We adore you for still being what we imagined ourselves to be when we were thinner, younger, and so much cooler than we are now.

• Awesome read: Why Seattleites Love Portlandia on Everywhereist