San Diego vs. Eugene, OR

stay away.

yes the weather is beautiful 365 days a year but the smog hanging over the ocean sort of ruins it (i can see the ocean from my bedroom and i tell you it is becoming an entirely-too-common occurrence)

stay away

coronado and mission valley trolley?

I can't say much about Eugene, but I drove through it to get to Portland, and it didn't look too impressive to me. But Oregon is great and Portland is awesome/only an hour a way, so you could always live there if you don't mind the commute, or maybe live halfway in between or something.

also be careful or ned will school you - apparently coronado != san diego. watch out for those coronado navy mooks.

can't you see i'm trying to defend my quality of life here?? STAY AWAY FROM SAN DIEGO!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!! VICIOUS TOWNIES!!

i find that what i get for food in san diego costs at least 1.5 times as much in LA (drinks, too) if not actually twice as much. there's an amazing amount of good dirt cheap mexican fast food, and lots and lots of nice italian restaurants scattered around town (there's a core italian fishing community that's been here for about 100 years, lots of italian immigrants in the restaurant business too)

anyway this is sheer anecdote and i don't know the specifics of your situation (or even the generalities, i guess) but i thought i'd bring it up anyway.

Eugene is great if you like white dredlock, endless Bob Marley or Dave Matthews Band, and hairs in your vegan pizza!

Eugene and San Diego couldn't... really be any more different.

Eugene is really more akin to Santa Cruz (minus the money) and Olympia (minus the marines, plus rabid Ducks fans).. a smallish town that, while charming, will make you want to go to nearest "big" city on occasion, in this case Portland, which is around 2 hours north.

San Diego has more freeways in its western extremities than major streets now.. (just look at a city map). It has far more marines (hello, Camp Pendleton.), and probably just as much club/record store action as Eugene (which is really saying something). You will most likely need a car in San Diego (But I'm guessing if you work in video games, you have a car anyway.), unless you luck out, and can find a place between Hillcrest and downtown... also San Diego is almost as expensive as the Bay Area, whereas Eugene is far cheaper. (come to think of it, you'll probably need a car in Eugene too.)

I work in video game programming too (although currently without a working car.. gasp!) here in Seattle, and I know Seattle has a large array of TYPES of video game programming opportunities. Alex in SF may not like Seattle as he hinted above (unless he was just talking about the distance from Eugene in that context, which is a long ways, 5 hours), but I like it here, and there are lots of video game companies here.

San Diego is a blight upon California, much like it's richer, bitchier sister city, LA.

Those are on the other side of the Cascade Mountains though!

Ironically, I'm in between contracts now and looking for work myself, but I have been averaging about two interviews a week since mid December...(mind you, not all of them for video game companies specifically)

hmmmmmm

Blah blah blah. We don't like you anyway.

Pokez!
-- Tim Ellison (timelliso...), July 1st, 2005.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

whoa Maria lived in Coburg! No wonder Scott knows House Of Records.

anyway, anybody from Eugene looking for a room? we have two empty ones in our house right now.

how's eugene now? i'm looking at academic library jobs in oregon. u of o looks like my kind of place. oregon state and wou too, but corvalis or monmouth seem too small maybe. portland would be cool but i'm not sure i vibe with portland state, too competitive or big or something, and fuck working for reed or lewis & clark. this is all internexploration though so idk. realistically this is all at least five years down the road.

maybe two or three. and competition is desirable, psu just seems more internally focused and might be a harder nut to crack for other reasons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3vzEuVhnHM

Eugene is a pleasant place full of many nice people. A bit bland. It is only as sophisticated as the university makes it, because it is too small to support cosmopolitanism through other means. The UO does contain interesting people doing interesting things, so you could probably find peers to socialize with.

The hippieness is somewhat oversold, but it is def there. If you like the outdoors, it is well-located for visits to the Oregon coast or the Cascade mountains. The climate is mild, and summers can be really lovely here, but expect frequently overcast skies from mid-October well into June. It isn't so much the rain that gets to newcomers, it's the constant grey shroud over the sun.

What kind of access do you have to fish tacos up in Eugene? That might help me make my decision.

I live up the valley in the Portland area, so I am ill-informed about the fish taco situation. I know they have all the ingredients.

Kinda weird reading this thread - my sis was a special collections librarian in San Diego (SDSU - she totally hated the town/uni, but I loved visiting the warm weather), and now she has the same role at OSU in Corvallis. Corvallis is actually a pretty cool town, and it's so near Portland and the Coast and Hood Riv. area, it seems ideal - I love visting her there too!

Eugene has had a development explosion in the last year, there are like a dozen new restaurants, most of which are as least OK and some of which are excellent (Soubise, Belly, Mame sushi). Also a ton of new breweries. We have good fish tacos.

nine years, wow. all three of those restaurants in my last post are gone.

there are still lots of good-to-great taco places

I was actually posting here because of this great new archival release focusing on the Eugene scene of the late 80s and early 90s

https://harrietrecords.bandcamp.com/album/wild-gift-music-by-robert-christie-and-friends-1984-1996

Between 1980, when I first met him, and 1996, when his last band called it quits, Robert Christie played drums (and occasionally played guitar, and occasionally sang) for close to a dozen different bands, the first in Astoria, Oregon, the second two bouncing between Eugene, Oregon and San Francisco, and the rest in Eugene. He was the uncommon denominator in all these bands, including those featured on this CD. Robert’s first band was MIP, fellow students at Astoria High School. When he decamped to Eugene in 1983, his first band, with bass player Matt Colgan and guitarist Dan McClure, was Young Death, which he once summed up in an interview: “it would be hard for us to slow down.” They went through two singers before summering in San Francisco, where a local named Kara picked up the mic and recorded a cassette tape’s worth of songs with them. Down the street, musical genius Tom Doskow gathered Robert and Matt together for a project he started (and hasn’t yet finished) called Merchants of the New Bizarre. They reunited in Eugene that fall to record some more songs. After getting back from SF, Robert supplemented his sophomore year at the University of Oregon with five different bands. The first, and the one closest to his heart, was Snakepit, what he called “a country and western car wreck band,” which he formed with Al Larsen, Dan Schmid and Steve Perry. Mike Johnson (later in Dinosaur Jr) soon joined, followed by Joe Argast and Laura MacDougal on bass and Billy Karren (later in Bikini Kill) on guitar. Johnson Unit came next, with Robert drumming (and sometimes singing) with Steve Nordby and John O’Neil. Like all drummers, Robert was in great demand, and during 1984-5 he also performed with The Evil Shape, Mind Garage, and The Four Horsemen of Rock (Snakepit with Dan filling in for Al in summer ’85). In 1987, Al and Robert created Some Velvet Sidewalk, which released several cassettes, a single and an LP in its first incarnation as a duo. Robert left Johnson Unit in 1986 and Snakepit broke up in 1990.

In 1989, Robert invited Diane Beck, Gary Schartz and Joe Brooks to form Oswald Five-O. In this early incarnation, Robert played guitar, sang, and wrote all the songs, with Joe on drums and Diane on bass. O5O soon settled into a trio, with Nick Tucker on guitar and singing harmonies with Diane, while Robert moved back to drums. They recorded two CDs on Eugene’s Grinning Idiot label along with several singles. They lasted until 1996, managing one US tour with Some Velvet Sidewalk (Al had relocated to Olympia, with a new supporting cast). Decades later, Diane and Nick collaborated on a song she wrote, “Small Town,” which remembers the difference Robert made in her life. Last November they joined Don Blair (ex-SVS) to record it in a Portland studio. Over the years, Robert started writing songs, the first few for Snakepit and several more for O5O. Three of Robert’s previously-unreleased solo recordings are included here; also “Animal Box” (an amazing Rich Jensen cover), which appeared on “The Way of Things”—a cassette that documented a show in Eugene on a cold night in November 1987, made warm by the amazing grace of music and friends. Its liner notes describe Robert as I will always remember him: “He practices Christ-like innocence when he’s not busy playing or studying.” He once compared my fanzine to a church bulletin, and I’d like to think we shared an evangelical zeal when it came to preaching about the music we loved. Although he had a hand in a few fanzines of his own, he practiced as well as preached. He set an example. He set the beat.

Yeah, picked that up the other week. A fine listen, but what a sad ending for him and his family.

Visited Eugene last summer for the World Atheltics Championships. I appreciated the protestors and flyers calling out bullshit.