Portland is America’s saddest city, according to BusinessWeek, which did an unscientific ranking of US cities based on their rates of suicide, depression, divorce, unemployment, job loss, population loss, crime, amount of green space, and cloudy days. They placed the most emphasis on suicide and depression rates, crime, and economic factors.
Seattle didn’t even make the top ten, listed below. (Despite our cloudy days, were No. 21.).
The United States’ (Supposedly) Unhappiest Cities
1. Portland, OR
2. St. Louis, MO
3. New Orleans, LA
4. Detroit, MI
5. Cleveland, OH
6. Jacksonville, FL
7. Las Vegas, NV
8. Nashville, TN
9. Cincinnati, OH
10. Atlanta, GA
Portland sadder than Detroit? hmm, which would you rather live in?
Missed apostrophes make me sad.
Portland: Where everyone who’s anyone goes to die.
There’s no fucking way that Portland is sadder than Jacksonville, FL. Only Jacksonville can have a tropical climate and beaches and still be crushingly depressing.
Someone made a glaring, mistaken omission in not putting Buffalo on that list, right behind Detroit and Cleveland. Why those three aren’t tied for first is beyond me.
Wait, I thought we were tops in terms of suicide and depression!? What happened, Seattle?
@1 motown just got rid of all of their fair-weather citizens. Now the only ones left are eternal optimists and those who know no better.
On the other hand, everyone moved to Portland last year and now they’re all depressed because they can’t handle the winters.
If I lived in any cities 2 through 9 I would have killed myself already. Detroit especially has to be bottom of barrel.
BusinessWeek sucks!
is there not enough business news right now for business week?
We’d rank higher on the unhappy scale if we didn’t lie to pollsters so much.
Either that or it’s our high suicide rate breeding out the unhappy people.
WOOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
We’re number 1! We’re number 1! We’re number 1! We’re number 1! We’re number 1! We’re number 1! We’re number 1!
Oh great, now we’ll have to hear about how Portland does misery better than Seattle.
Every fucking person I know in Portland keeps whining that their city is “turning into Seattle.” This unscientific study will only serve to validate their misery.
Actually, Seattle is No. 20 (we’re on slide 21 because there is an INTRO slide on BusinessWeek’s site).
Ha Ha. Cincinnati made No. 9! Couldn’t have happened to a nicer city. I was unemployed there (check), divorced there (check), depressed there (check), crime victim (check)… It’s the home of psycho-Republican broadcaster Bill Cunningham, too. Good times, good times.
maybe if we’re lucky all the hipsters will move to Portland and we can go back to making music and computer games and comics.
@16, “we”? YOU can’t “go back to making” anything, unless you ever stopped hanging around Slog like a bad smell
That a good list of some pretty depressing places. I’ve never much cared for Portland. Can’t pinpoint why exactly other that I’ve been bored beyond belief there and people who live there seem to be cool with their boredom. I’m from Nashville, and I caught the first train out (euphemistically speaking – Nashville doesn’t have passenger train service) just as soon as I could. Las Vegas always depresses me. It’s the antithesis of mystical, magical things and then there’s all that waste….money, energy, time. The other places are cold, dirty rust belt hells or Southern conservative havens with no time for anything as abstract as diversity. The exception is New Orleans, but New Orleans can be very, very strange and cold to a non-native.
Does this mean California will go back home?
However, during the summer PDX has lovely evenings in which one can sit outside at a cafe and not wear a jacket (like one must do in Seattle).
Ummm PDX summer’s are no match for Seattle’s because there’s no place to swim.
Portland’s just a whack Seattle.
cincinnati is WAY more depressing than portland. i would know.
@ 21 – Huh? There are literally dozens of parks along the rivers here. Lots of swimming.
i’m gonna have to agree with 23 – lake warshington is COLD & Portland gets way hotter than Seattle.
The only thing Portland is to Seattle is smaller.
If that’s your bag, well, I guess you should go to Portland.
Portland and Seattle are both fine cities, and mighty similar. Can we stop having this argument about which is better?
Also, why should we care about a random, unscientific ranking from BusinessWeek?
Seriously, does anybody care what Business Week says?
Fuck Portland, full of green, enviro, vegan, fixie riding assholes….oh my, that’s most of the Strangers readers?
Portland is better than *any* of the other 10. That being said, fuck Portland and everyone who looks like Portland. Tribalism rules! (Tribadism’s not bad, either.)
Then why is it every time I go home to Saint Louis, people always are telling me, “Oh, you’re back! We all thought you would have killed yourself up there already with all that rain and heroin and grudge music.” To Businessweek, I retort: ignorance is bliss.
There is no way Portland is more depressing than The Lou.
Otherwise, that is a pretty comprehensive list. Not sure why KC couldn’t crack the top 10. Maybe they didn’t count suburbs?
I’m actually a little shocked that St. Louis ranked worse than Detroit & Cleveland.
bbbbbbut they have light rail, bike lanes, bike boxes and bike parking. and they have a gay mayor that isn’t fat and unattractive and some of our coolest hipters stop there on their way to bigger and better places to be hip in. hell they have streetcars and green density zoning, how could they say this bout pdx – they even have a company that exploits workers worldwide….
there are not enuf tall, shiny buildings in Portland.
tall shiny buildings make me happy.
or a little less prone to fits of gun eating.
How in the world did Sack-Ra-Mental not crack the top 10? Oppressive heat in the summer, swimming with ex-cons, the Gubbernator, barbed penises…
Having grown up in St. Louis, spent a lot of time in Kansas City, lived in Seattle for 5 years and currently living in Pittsburgh, I can say that those rankings correlate pretty well with my own experience. My goal is to blast out of Pittsburgh and get back to Seattle some day. Vegas and Detroit are my idea of Hell.
Wow…no Baltimore. Maybe the murder rate livens things up a bit.
Erie, PA is Buffalo’s Portland.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml…
Washington has the lowest suicide rate in the west.
I refuse to believe that any place where you can look at naked ladies and drink beer at the same time can be sad.
Vegas really should be #1. I grew up there. It sucks, big time.
I’m glad this ranking got published. I tell people from other parts of the country that yes, it DOES RAIN ALL THE TIME in Portland. The last great city I lived in was San Francisco and all of a sudden in the 80’s everbody in the fucking country wanted to live there, turning it from a great place to live to a truly awful place. So to all of you thinking of moving to Portland, DON’T. We’re all boring and suicidal and we’re all hipsters and the food sucks. Want a great city to move to? Seattle’s your place
#5 – Yeah, Buffalo should be on there. But you can make one sweeping gesture including all of western NY state, Ohio, and most of PA(I’m looking at you, Erie, PA)
@42: Chemung Valley (Elmira, Corning) is gorgeous. No jobs, no hope, but man is it pretty.
St. Louis is a great place to live, with just about the highest ratio of cost of living to quality of life. We have tons of world-class culture (much of which can be enjoyed for free), a wide array of collegiate types contributing to our film and music scenes, and ridiculously low rent. I’ll never understand the bad rap we get. (Please, don’t everyone fall over yourselves trying to prove me wrong.)
@44:
you know that means it sucks where you live, right?
Then maybe I got it backwards. What I mean is that the cost of living is infinitesimal compared to the standard of living. It’s an excellent place to live, and it’s ridiculously cheap to boot.
I’m new to Portland from Kansas City. I love it here, even though Portland’s motto seems to be “no new people.” I’ll bet some of the ‘keep Portland weird” bumper sticker people paid BW for the saddest ranking either because it fits in with their weirdness agenda or they want to keep people out. I don’t know about the saddest city, but it could rank among the top of the flakiest. I’ve never visited a city more unwelcoming to visitors and newcomers…but I’m going to stick it out! So Portland needs to turn that frown upside down…I miss the warmth and sincerity of the midwest, but not the politics and I love living right in the middle of the ocean and a mountain along the Columbia. I’m not going away until Portland loves me back…and maybe not even then.
Portland has crappy weather…and crappy weather can make you sad. Shocker. With great weather comes the seemingly inevitable wrecking ball crushing all that is good about a place and replacing it with people, cars, buildings and pollution. Portland’s weather, thankfully, is a terrific deterrant from that happening, but at some point, even that may not be enough to stop those escaping cities that are already ruined. Bad weather can also make you really appreciate nice weather. I contend no one appreciates a sunny day quite as much as a Portlander.
Portland doesn’t have a major league baseball team, or great delis or top musical artists that perform regularly or other offerings, but in what other city just over a million can you leave your home and be downtown within fifteen minutes AND find a parking spot? Or, slip into a parking spot on the West side and hop on MAX – for free – on the way to a Blazer game.. Try that in San Francisco. From the more bohemian neighborhoods on the East side to the Pearl to hopping the streetcar to see the Jefferson Dancers to sipping one of the city’s best margaritas at Por Que No? on Mississippi Ave–Portland does gritty to upscale and it is easy to get around.
For my money, I’ll keep downing my Starbucks during the day, microbrews and margaritas at night, and the minute the sun shines, I’ll grab my sneakers and dog and will make hay while the rays are still strong.
We got some really good bud too. Helps with the sadness – seriously!
I am from KC, never lived in St.Louis, both Missouri towns, but visited there. I moved to Portland at 15, and lived in Seattle, for several years, after I got married. Portland is a wonderful town…..I moved back….no comparison.
KC is much cleaner than ST. Louis….a very nice city. Skip St. Louis, the other 3 are better….Portland rules!!!!!!!!!!!!!