Help Odjn Out!

[Odjn]

So.

I'm moving out on my glorious own soon, preferably to NYC/Portland (OR). I'm looking for apartment shares.

I'm looking for;

1) Advice on finding shares (I'm using craigslist because it's the only one that hasn't tried to trip me off yet, but that's all)

2)Advice about neighborhoods if you know them. Where's ok, where's not ok, where's a big white guy gonna get shot.

3) Advice on finding work in either of the cities!

4) How to deal with crazy people who happen to live where I do.

Greatly appreciated.

[Nique]

NYC is fun to play but it get's overwhelming fast - The enemy AI is way too hard, and figuring out the game's economy? Forget it.

Portland's downtown offers a robust sandbox environment, but features a variety of levels using different landscapes and environments that are easily accessable from where you'll spend most of the game. Leveling up is a little easier, but there are some bugs with the 'job market' feature right now. We're waiting for the GMs to fix that, but apparently it's a pretty common programming error.

The NPCs are generally lot more helpful and interactive than you'd expect, and there's a lot of minigames to distract you.

The Portland worldmap can basically be broken into quadrants with some extra burgs filling the cracks:

North Portland: Portland's 'Fifth quadrant' (my old stomping grounds) Noteable neighborhoods are St Johns, and Mock's Crest. You'll get a variety here - You could have a basically safe middle to upper middle class neighborhood on one block, and the next one will be poor as hell and marked with graffiti, bullet holes, police tape, etc. Generally, the Mock's Crest area is nicer and more expensive, and St Johns is quite a bit more spotty safety wise, but is still a fun place to be. St Johns used to be it's own little town until Portland ate it up, so there's a neat little 'downtown' area over here. St Johns is sort of struggleing to establish any REALLY good eats so new restraunts come and go pretty quickly. Rent will be cheap though.

NE Portland: Similar to St Johns, but certain areas (I'm looking at you Gresham) sort of fancy themselves a bit nicer. All in all there are more pockets of nice neighborhoods in NE. NE portland is home to Benson Highschool, which if it matters at all is probably the best school in the district still. Take a stroll down Sandy and you'll see lots of neat stuff and get a good feel of the neighborhood. There's some pretty decent restaraunts, a comic book shop and a record store over here. Also downtown Portland is a little more accessable from the NE & SE neighborhoods. Portland's mall, Lloyd Center is here, if you enjoy that sort of thing.

NW Portland: This is the trendy burg. Lot's of upper middle class and upper class folks live here, most of them were hippies and protesters in the 70s and then turned into lawyers or something. Housing is EXPENSIVE over here, esspecially in what Portlander's affectionatly call 'The Pearl District'. So, come here to eat but unless you have an extremely rich benefactor or are going into a fabulously lucrative profession or simply enjoy living outside your means, this is just a good place to visit. Lot's of Gelato places and good nice restraunts to take a date or just have a fancy pants night out. NW is home to PGE Park Baseball stadium and 23rd ave which has lots of neat shops.

SW Portland: This is all downtown pretty much. Rent varies here but you'll be lucky to find an extremely good deal. on the plus side everything is within walking distance, and the public transportation system is really quite good - the busses run mostly on time, and the Max trains (portland's lightrail system) are actually pretty fun and will take you anywhere. Cool places like Powell's Bookstore (which is right next to Rocco's pizza which is amazing) also the Portland City Grill at the top of the big pink US Bank building (expensive but less then they'd like you to think) and loads of other neat places in downtown.

SE Portland: The Hotcake house is on powell. That is basically all you need to know.

Other: Beaverton, Hillsboro, Vancouver (WA) and Gresham are more or less Portland suburbs, and they all have their own little charms (except for Gresham). Traffic is always terrible on Hwy 26 but rent is cheaper in Beaverton in my expierience, and there's plenty of stuff nearby (even another Powell's!) to keep you busy.

All in all Portland has 1) a crappy job market & high unemployment 2) a lot of really great places to eat and hangout 3) great attractions (OMSI, Portland Art mueseum, The Oregon Zoo, Chinese Gardens, Jappenesse Garden, 3 or more different Rose Gardens), 4) a Sports Arena with a great hometeam and really passionate fans (Go Blazers!), 5) proximity to outdoor activities that are as varied as they are fun (You're going to be about 2 or less hours in any direction from a mountain, a beach, a dessert, a forest, and a valley 6) bi-polar weather (random, but nothing extreme) and finally 7) friendly people

I am not the most in-the-know person in town, but I like living here and I'm sure you would find a nice niche for yourself here.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I don't know any of these cities but general advice- try and get a job before you get pegged down in any one area. Unless transportation across city is fairly easy it can be an absolute pain commuting every day if you didn't have to.
If you under time pressure, try and move to area where lots of jobs are going.

What kind of area you looking for job in?

[BitVyper]

Clean up after yourself and get a chore rotation going right from the start. You'll save yourself a lot of grief, at least until you can afford your own place where you can be as much of a slob as you want.

Also always call before you bring people home. Fortunately, one of my roomates knew me beforehand, which apparently resulted in this conversation:

"We should call Chase first."
"Why?"
"He's probably sitting on the floor in the living room without any pants on."

And he was right.

[Sir Pinkleton]

NYC is fun to play but it get's overwhelming fast - The enemy AI is way too hard, and figuring out the game's economy? Forget it.

Portland's downtown offers a robust sandbox environment, but features a variety of levels using different landscapes and environments that are easily accessable from where you'll spend most of the game. Leveling up is a little easier, but there are some bugs with the 'job market' feature right now. We're waiting for the GMs to fix that, but apparently it's a pretty common programming error.

The NPCs are generally lot more helpful and interactive than you'd expect, and there's a lot of minigames to distract you.

The Portland worldmap can basically be broken into quadrants with some extra burgs filling the cracks:

North Portland: Portland's 'Fifth quadrant' (my old stomping grounds) Noteable neighborhoods are St Johns, and Mock's Crest. You'll get a variety here - You could have a basically safe middle to upper middle class neighborhood on one block, and the next one will be poor as hell and marked with graffiti, bullet holes, police tape, etc. Generally, the Mock's Crest area is nicer and more expensive, and St Johns is quite a bit more spotty safety wise, but is still a fun place to be. St Johns used to be it's own little town until Portland ate it up, so there's a neat little 'downtown' area over here. St Johns is sort of struggleing to establish any REALLY good eats so new restraunts come and go pretty quickly. Rent will be cheap though.

NE Portland: Similar to St Johns, but certain areas (I'm looking at you Gresham) sort of fancy themselves a bit nicer. All in all there are more pockets of nice neighborhoods in NE. NE portland is home to Benson Highschool, which if it matters at all is probably the best school in the district still. Take a stroll down Sandy and you'll see lots of neat stuff and get a good feel of the neighborhood. There's some pretty decent restaraunts, a comic book shop and a record store over here. Also downtown Portland is a little more accessable from the NE & SE neighborhoods. Portland's mall, Lloyd Center is here, if you enjoy that sort of thing.

NW Portland: This is the trendy burg. Lot's of upper middle class and upper class folks live here, most of them were hippies and protesters in the 70s and then turned into lawyers or something. Housing is EXPENSIVE over here, esspecially in what Portlander's affectionatly call 'The Pearl District'. So, come here to eat but unless you have an extremely rich benefactor or are going into a fabulously lucrative profession or simply enjoy living outside your means, this is just a good place to visit. Lot's of Gelato places and good nice restraunts to take a date or just have a fancy pants night out. NW is home to PGE Park Baseball stadium and 23rd ave which has lots of neat shops.

SW Portland: This is all downtown pretty much. Rent varies here but you'll be lucky to find an extremely good deal. on the plus side everything is within walking distance, and the public transportation system is really quite good - the busses run mostly on time, and the Max trains (portland's lightrail system) are actually pretty fun and will take you anywhere. Cool places like Powell's Bookstore (which is right next to Rocco's pizza which is amazing) also the Portland City Grill at the top of the big pink US Bank building (expensive but less then they'd like you to think) and loads of other neat places in downtown.

SE Portland: The Hotcake house is on powell. That is basically all you need to know.

Other: Beaverton, Hillsboro, Vancouver (WA) and Gresham are more or less Portland suburbs, and they all have their own little charms (except for Gresham). Traffic is always terrible on Hwy 26 but rent is cheaper in Beaverton in my expierience, and there's plenty of stuff nearby (even another Powell's!) to keep you busy.

All in all Portland has 1) a crappy job market & high unemployment 2) a lot of really great places to eat and hangout 3) great attractions (OMSI, Portland Art mueseum, The Oregon Zoo, Chinese Gardens, Jappenesse Garden, 3 or more different Rose Gardens), 4) a Sports Arena with a great hometeam and really passionate fans (Go Blazers!), 5) proximity to outdoor activities that are as varied as they are fun (You're going to be about 2 or less hours in any direction from a mountain, a beach, a dessert, a forest, and a valley 6) bi-polar weather (random, but nothing extreme) and finally 7) friendly people

I am not the most in-the-know person in town, but I like living here and I'm sure you would find a nice niche for yourself here.

I second such motion, though admittidly my knowledge is more of Hillsboro. still, Hillsboro is connected by the Max train railway, so getting around is easy.

I think most of the houses here (hillsboro) are kinda expensive, and the ones that aren't used to have, or are used to having, meth houses (used to be a big problem I recall, though I suppose it's less so). Also, Pot is apparently really easy to get here, so if you don't like those kind of people, or you are one of those types of people, take note (speaking of notes, side-note: pot smokers seem to be really nice people, as in nicer than "normal." *shrugs*).

Other than that, yeah, we haven't gotten a whole lot of jobs yet, though I'm sure there's room for some being created in the future.