Can I say Jailblazers? Oh wait never mind all that shit got traded the new crew is awesome! Sometimes more rain than sun. Micro brews Strip clubs (just because we have quantity in something doesn't mean there all quality) Bridges (that don't collapse...yet) Afford-ability (over-all the city is fairly easy to live in compared to other larger metropolitan areas) Parks geeks (tons of them) ;-) Volcano within the city (Mt Tabor) Gorgeous views of Mt St Helen's and Mt Hood

When I think about Portland the Rose Garden comes to mind... the real one in Washington Park... and I also think about Washington and Forest Park when I think of Portland. Portland has a great location as well, the fact that we are an equal distance from snowy mountains to the Oregon Coast is something that makes Portland quite unique.

i also tend to think of the businesses that make portland unique... we are definitely a shoe/activewear hub, with adidas, nike, keen, and columbia sportswear headquartered here. I think of all the restaurants and the farmers market and the proximity to farms (perhaps the best found bounty in the nation) as we are certainly a food town, and then i think of the huge microbrew and microdistillery industry we have here, as well as our proclivity for two happy hours. The morning after all this happy houring, the city has lots of coffee, by way of stumptown, and historically Boyd's and Kobos, and tea, by way of Tazo and Stash.

I think of our beautiful bridges, our mountain views, of the beaches at sauvie island, the views at council crest and from the st. johns bridge. I think a lot about transport - trains, trams, bikes, skateboarders, unicyclists, and scooters, lots of scooters.

We also have an abundance of Art and people trying to make Art - I think it is pretty typical and expected for most Portlanders to have 3 things going on - a job they dont like, a job they do like, and they are also trying to be an artist or a musician. We have a lot of good music venus like the Crystal and the aladdin, and lots of places to see art like Blackfish and Elizabeth Leach and all the little galleries in the everett street lofts.

As eschnide alluded to above, I think something that separates Portland from the rest of the west coast is that people are less concerned with money. It is a bit of an affordable place (although that is changing) so the city attracts a lot of people who wanted to go west but had to factor in price into their decision. This is coupled with a local attitude that promotes creativity, lifting up the community, and having fun over making a bunch of money. This is reflected in the population in many different ways - people go out and have fun outdoors on the weekend instead of stay at home working, people do fun public or private art projects just for the sake of doing them, people start up businesses that have a social bottom line as well as a financial one. What a great place to live, eh?

more later...

Many of you have listed stuff that can be found in most seaboard metropolis, things like mass transit, business, shopping, art, coffee, etc. These things are common in Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Charlotte and so on...and I would argue that the cost of living is now a negligible uniquness of the city, maybe this wasn't true in 2002 but just in the last few years it seems that the price of a pint and a small studio rent have gone up a lot (at least in NW neighb).

Portland uniqueness is not something set-in-stone because of various materialistic aspects, instead it is more of an contingency related to time and place. Uniqueness requires relations with other similar cases that which the thing unique is set apart fromm by contrast. It is the time and age of the country and the overall political atmosphere of the world in relation to our fine city, that gives Portland a temporal uniqueness.

It is the novelty of Portland that makes it unique. Portland has an edge of freshness over other major U.S. cities. Portland is a young and growing city and has a more recent history of liberalism coupled with a very bloodless past compared to many other cities that have seen their share of turmoils (disasters, race riots, civil war, slavery etc..).

Portland on the other hand has no history of disaster or colonial conflict. By the time the pioneers started filing into Portland most of the native Indian populations were already decimated by disease and reduced to small groups. Besides maybe the Rouge River Wars, there was little conflict between white settlers and the indigenous populations.

So, Oregon was very much a clean slate of natural resources ripe for the picking when Lewis and Clark strolled through in 1805-06. The city itself stems from the engendering of the American West migration, but it is much younger than San Fran or Los Angeles (which were founded in the late 1700's). Portland is the second youngest sibling of the major west coast cities (second to Seattle). This might be in part why the rich elitist economies of New England are not as settled in here (there is/was no historical precedent for it!).

Portland is a land of opportunity just by the very fact of its novelty and banal historical-ness  . Small business thrives here because small business embodies the very ideals of the American Westward migration, the American dream in a nutshell: Endure hardships (wagon west), start fresh, live autonomously off the land and sell your goods (old school small business), reaping what you sow. These sort of ideals have carried over into the urban-migration of Portland today but in the form of entrepreneurshi  p's, startups, and mom-n-pop shops. Liberalism thrives here because of this newness.

I agree with previous comments, that the natural resources/envir  onment are probably one of the "freshest" aspects surrounding our great city, unlike many other cities, we get our water and most of our power from within or around the state and not outside of it. In short, Portland has had less time to be abused by pollution and industrializati  on and the raping of natural resources (although many argue this is happening now), which also has left more outdoor commons for people to enjoy.

Portland must be like the grandchild taking care of the elderly grandparent, through our liberal and novel vantage point we can push Earth-first responsibilitie  s and Political Liberalism to the fullest extent, leading the way in these portent first decades of the 21st century.

Well you did say events and ideas... I wouldn't say its anymore philosophical than taking a bunch of material ("real") things and having them abstractly represent the *love* of a city (an intangible idea/opinion).

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But yeah I see your point. I was just trying to stimulate some meta-physical ideas. =)