Tell me all about Eugene, Oregon

In Eugene all seems to breath freedom and peace, and to make one forget the world and its sad turmoils.

Dreams come true in Eugene.

The town itself.

It's the Paris of the lower Willamette V alley.

A name worthy of its beauty

When the Big One hits, Eugene will be under water.

Never heard of her!

The cost of living is very high there. Sometimes, it even drives innocent housewives to a life of crime.

Other than the University, it has a very blue collar/working class vibe. Its main industry used to be forestry and paper products. Like many of the smaller towns on the I5 corridor, I think it has problems with meth and maybe heroine now. Nice climate, very little snow, fairly temperate, pretty surroundings, easy access to the Cascades and to the justly famed Oregon coast.

The river path is nice. You can jog or ride your bike there. It's probably a nice place to live if you're working for the university. Like R9 says, I don't know if there is much industry beyond that.

It felt like a farther northern Arcata to me.

I’ve always liked Arcata. Classic Northern California vibe far removed from everything surrounded by beauty. Impractical but would love to live there.

R11, I agree about Arcata.

I love it. A friend and his wife live there. I would like to move there. Laidback and very casual. Great bike paths! Oddly, the occasional palm tree as a surprise.

Be warned. Lots of anti-vaxxers up there in Oregon. God knows what you'd catch.

I would love to visit again.

Eugene is okay, but I'd pick Salem and Ashland before Eugene. Hell, I'd pick Bend before Eugene.

R16, Bend seems very up-and-coming? It seems like it's a new destination for people who like the outdoors in particular.

[quote] Bend seems very up-and-coming? It seems like it's a new destination for people who like the outdoors in particular.

Yes, you cannot move there if you are fat. Much like Colorado in that sense.

R18, does Bend get as much rain as the more western part of the state?

It has a pretty snappy polonaise!

[quote] does Bend get as much rain as the more western part of the state?

No. Bend is in Oregon's high desert region.

I just moved there this year. Actually I'd moved to Portland but quickly decided it was too big for me. I thought Eugene would be a Portland I could navigate more easily.

Rains relentlessly all through winter, has a very high rainfall rate, higher than Portland's. There's moss and mold all over everything. It did stop raining finally now that it's summer.

[quote] I thought Eugene would be a Portland I could navigate more easily.

So, is it?

r16 Ashland is nice, but it's a LONG way from anywhere.

Yeah r24, I'm sure Portland's more exciting but I was overwhelmed, no family or friends living anywhere near.

This makes it look pretty.

There’s two hot guys in Eugene, according to Scruff.

I love 'How to Beat the High Cost of Living'. Honestly it should be a DL fave because of: early Jessica Lange; Susan St. James and Jane Curtain; crazy 1970's architecture; and lots of mall activity. Housewife grand larceny is always a huge draw too.

Everyone needs to drop what they're doing and watch this moving NOW.

R29 is confused

Bend has loads of fat people. Winter, too.

Klamath Falls is the next big thing.

I liked a little town in Oregon called Cottage Grove, but it's tiny. Their main street was cute.

Dreams come true Klamath Falls.

Dreams end in Merlin.

R35, or Bear Camp Road!

OP could do dinner theater in Grants Pass!

The scenery along the Rogue and Umpqua rivers is pretty gorgeous.

I like Ashland, but like someone else said it's a long way from everywhere. Getting to an airport would be a long drive unless it's a small one. Southern Oregon gets a lot of wildfire smoke which seems to get worse every year.

Bend gets a lot of sun, they also have a real winter if you like snow. It's a great place to backpack, swim and fish in the summer.

I live in Portland and love it, but traffic is getting bad and winters are really grey and rainy so I take off for Palm Springs.

The coast is nice in the summer, but it gets a lot of rain the rest of the time. It's a good place to go if the forest fire smoke is bad.

Lived there and there was nowhere more boring, including Boring, Oregon.

Out of curiosity I looked up Bend on Zillow.

It's quite pricey for a small city (smallish houses seemed to be $600K and up, even 1BR condos were close to $300K)

Given that it's a 3 hour drive to Portland and thus not commutable, what do people do for work there to afford those prices?

I've heard Eugene has a lot a lot of car thefts/break-ins.

Eugene has a crazy high property crime rate. It is also a LONG way to a major airport. It rains constantly and the university isn't actually that great (Oregon has the worst higher education system on the West Coast).

I'm going to assume druggies/panhandlers are doing the breaking in?

They have a big homeless / street people problem in Eugene

Christopher Alexander came to Eugene and worked briefly. They kicked him out, but the work and its principles stand up.

R43 Eugene has an airport with many daily flights to Portland, SF, Seattle and other hubs. It is only a @2hr drive to Portland International Airport, so it's not a LONG way to a major airport.

That said, unless you're going to the university, Eugene is boring as fuck. It has a good live (local) music scene, but few big name acts come through town. The restaurant scene is pretty dismal. If you like beer or wine, you can spend a lot of time drinking. There are a lot of outdoor activities you can take part in, and a lot of natural beauty. Job wise, there aren't a lot of large employers and the cost of housing is surprisingly high for the income. The homeless/crime situation is bad.

I grew up in rural outside Eugene and went to the university. Most of my friends who still live there, complain about it A LOT - mainly about the homeless/crime situation and how the local government is doing nothing about it.

When I go home to visit family, I want to kill myself out of boredom.

R47, yes obviously Eugene has a small airport with service to Portland, etc. I grew up in rural Oregon so I know what premium you pay to fly out of those small airports. It can add $200 to your ticket easily and it often makes more sense to drive to Portland instead.

I remember Eugene in the late 90s. It was fun with lots going on for the size of the town. Meth has taken such a horrible toll on that entire area. The property crime rates are awful. Santa Cruz is another college town that went through much the same. People get tired of having to deal with their car broken into three times a year.

Was in Eugene a few months ago. Was pretty unimpressed with the town. After years of hearing how hip it was, I was expecting Ann Arbor and it's more like Muncie, Indiana (home of Ball state). The airport is tiny.

Anyone else kind of surprised how many DLers are familiar with a random place like Eugene, OR?

R50 Eugene is random, but is quite well known as a hotbed of hippie/counterculture. The Oregon Country Fair is still going strong, the Dead used to come through town so many times I lost count growing up, Ken Kesey, etc.

I don't think they have a true gay bar these days, something sad for a town of it's size/with a university. There were 3-4 all through my teens/20's when I lived there.

R51, do any of the bars at least host gay nights?

I grew up doing community theater in Eugene, some of it at the glorious Hult Center. After hitting it big on TV, I returned to Eugene to star in Pirates of Penzance opposite Christiane and Richard White!

R52 There are a few that I see through social media connections, but the last full-time gay bar closed a few years ago. I was following it all on social media and it was quite controversial/dramatic.

It is part of the USA. So nothing special. Better than Florida I guess.

No, I need multiple boys for sale on certain websites, which means I have to live in larger cities. I don’t have time for hicks or hunting for man cunt.

R41 Bend has a lot of rich semi retired people from the PNW and California living there now. Very sporty town (recreational sports not team sports), so I’m not sure why someone upthread claims residents are fat. Everyone seems to be A) Biking B) Jogging C) Climbing D) Skiing or E) All four.

As for Eugene it’s ok but it doesn’t have the appeal of Madison with its lakeside setting or Ann Arbor, which is fairly sophisticated and wealthy.

[quote] Anyone else kind of surprised how many DLers are familiar with a random place like Eugene, OR?

DLers are quite a well-traveled bunch, familiar with some of the more far-flung and remote parts of the world -- so not too surprising.

This house in Eugene looks pretty unique.

It sounds like Bend has a lot going for it.

The Oregon coast has some lovely, dramatic scenery. I don't know what one would do for work way out there though.

Sure. Eugene is about 6'1", 200 pounds, brown hair and eyes, very friendly. Not overly handsome but still pleasing to the eye. Works as an X ray technicin...

A former colleague and her husband moved to Bend. They like it, have become more outdoors-active since they got there, worked themselves into better shape.

The local saying is, "Bend is a lifestyle."

I've visited, liked it a lot. It's not big and tiresome, not small and dull.

I'm no avid hiker, enjoy getting out and tromping around some and there are gorgeous places for that.

The winter is serious. Everyone has snow tires. Good skiing nearby.

With the cost of living, I hear that Bend has attracted a decent number of people who can live anywhere, maybe have to be in SF or Seattle once or twice a month. Those folks drool and weep in public over housing prices that are orders of magnitude lower than they are in the big, techhy cities.

Is Bend gay-friendly?

R51 Ah. Memories. I grew up in Eugene. The Riviera Room was my first ever gay bar. I started going there at 16 and was never carded or hassled. I guess they liked the fresh chicken! It was not long after that I lost my virginity in the basement of the First Baptist Church, now known as The Shedd. Of course "The Riv" is long gone as a bar and is now the Actors Cabaret Theater. Which brings me to...

R53 Do I know you? I was very active in community theater (VLT, Eugene Opera, Sheldon Theater, etc.) while I lived there and still maintain contacts with friends who are active.

R43 Eugene has non-stop flights to PDX, LAX, SFO, LAS, PHX, DEN, SLC, SEA and now even ORD. R47 I agree. I want to kill myself when I go home to visit my mother.

Native Oregonian here, born and raised in Portland. I have family in Eugene and have always thought it was a backwater shithole logging town with a small faction of burnout hippies (and their offspring) who migrated north from San Francisco in the '70s. It's also full of annoying college kids because of the university, and has a sizable population of skinheads. It is not some hippie mecca despite what some would have you believe. Bend, by comparison, is full of yuppies originally from California who have recently fled Portland for the frontiers of "eastern Oregon" (it's actually not eastern at all, but these people do not know what maps are). Bend is very different from Eugene—way more $$$ there, less of a laidback burnout lifestyle; it seems that everyone who moved there in the last 10 years opened a new trendy brewery. I knew a couple who moved from Portland to Bend with their kids, and they told me the housing market was insane because it's been inundated with so many families. Bend's climate is way different from Eugene/Portland as well—it's in high desert and is much drier (and cooler in the winter) than the Willamette Valley, which is mildly chilly and sopping wet for 80% of the year.

R51 If you don't mind me being nosey, what year did you start going to the Riv? When I started sneaking into the bars before I was of age, there was Perry's/Arena, The Riv, Cassidy's (a block east and kitty corner from the Bijou) and if I remember correctly, there was one other bar that was either a few doors down from The Riv or connected to it. Do you recall the name?

Baker City, baby!

Once upon a time there were several extremely cruisy book stores in Eugene, where college kids had figured out that those holes between booths were designed for them to stick their dicks in and get sucked off. At least, that's what a friend told me......

Baker City = yikes, R68. My dad was born/raised in LA and moved to eastern Oregon when in junior high, near Baker City. I can't imagine the culture shock of that. There are some backwards redneck weirdos in that part of the state, and a lot of Mormons because of the proximity to Idaho (specifically Boise).

Funny R69 a "friend" told me the same rumor. One was footsteps from several frat houses and was quite heavenly during dead/finals week. Or so my friend told me.

r69 and r71 Not just bookstores. The University of Oregon had a legendary glory hole scene at one time in the 80's to early '90s. This coincided with the tenure of a gay UofO Police Chief you turned a blind eye to all restroom fun and ofter even participated. For this cocksucker that campus was a smorgasbord of cock.

R67 I was going to The Riv in 1978-1980. I don't think the bar lasted much into the 80s. Seymour's Restaurant was connected to The Riveria. I want to say that Perry's/Arena opened after The Riv closed. Cassidy's overlapped both bars. IIRC, Cassidy's closed in the late '80s. I believe Perry's/Arena was Eugene's longest lasting gay bar. Sad that there is no longer any gay bar in Eugene. I desperately need a place to escape to when I am there to visit family.

R72 Yes! The downstairs bathroom at the Knight Library was legendary until they finally padlocked it shut. There were spots all over campus, the library, various halls, EMU, the locker room at the pool, etc. At one point after I moved away, I heard they redid the entire downstairs at EMU and that spot went away, then as we all know, the internet slowly killed all in person cruising. For the size of the town, Eugene used to have quite an amazing cruising scene with the bookstores, UofO, various parks and the nude beach. It used to be a fun town (not just because of the cruising), but as times changed, the vibe of the city changed as well imho.

R73 I didn't start sneaking into the bars until mid-late 80's so we may have overlapped depending on how long you lived there. The Riv was still open when I first started going out. Perry's/Arena was a constant during my late-teens until I moved away in my 20's. I only had a few Cassidy's experiences before it closed, but one involved me and some friends sneaking in only to be caught by my mom who was there with a co-worker. We have had many good laughs about that over the years.

And yes it is sad that a town the size of Eugene can no longer support a gay bar.

Yes, you bend over in Bend, R64.

Well, he had a decent cock, but wasn’t really great in the sack.

I’d do him again, though.

Oh, wait. OREGON?

My bad.