BEST PORTLAND BLOGS

Portland Blogs For Baby Boomers; What Works, What Doesn’t.

Test your Oregon smarts. Which city is nearest White Stag’s butt: Gresham, Troutdale, Mosier, Hood River, or The Dalles? No maps allowed.

The best way to know a city is by its blogs. Just make sure you read them before you arrive.

If a blog promises “Gorgeous photos of Portland’s neighborhoods, updated daily,” but you get a warning message instead, what do you do?

The choices start with emailing the owners and telling them, “Your site has a problem.” But that’s not the best choice. Busy people make quick decisions.

Move on and be grateful you didn’t catch a virus. Besides, the odds are it’s on your end and your security settings. That’s what you tell yourself when you skip a good deed. It’s like the bad break-up line, “It’s not you, it’s me.”

Moving on is where I found an important blog hailed as ‘a writers’ collective.’ Last updated in 2013, it appears those writers collectively moved on. People change, times change, but if you’re bailing on your blog say so. Otherwise you look unconcerned, and that’s the last thing a writers’ collective wants.

It’s been good looking at Portland blogs, but where is this going? One page lists Portland blogs and keeps you on their site after clicking a member’s URL. Click it again and it stays the same with a message option you can use to contact the listed owner. This set-up wears out my clicking finger more than the obvious data harvesting.

Instead of moving on, I’m curious. A ‘meet-up’ post from May carries lots of fun pictures of smart looking people. Most of the time engagement means comments. Lots of engagement, lots of comments, and with blogging’s unofficial rule of responding to every comment, a sad fail. One comment, no response. Ouch.

Weak cheese on one blog shouldn’t make other bloggers feel better. You can compare yourself to weak cheese and not be sharp.

When bloggers pump their blogs up as champions of their city, they’ve got to live up to the self gloss. Either lead, follow, or get out of the way. That’s the rule taught in boot camp, track and field, and blogging.

Post every day, respond to every comment, and don’t complain. See how I’m not listing names or sneaking in hypertext for disappointing blogs? BoomerPDX is better than that. If I had named this after me I’d be blog-shaming at a hundred miles and hour, but BoomerPDX aspires to a higher calling.

Taking the last shot. I moved to NW Portland without a car. My trips came by foot, bike, and bus. My Mom asked, “What kind of girl do you expect to meet without a car?”

My answer: I met a woman in the neighborhood. She was not Geologically Undesirable, (GU.) I didn’t even have to cross the street since her office was next door to my apartment building.

Long story short, we got married and moved to the suburbs where I rode the bus for years. I caved to a car with our second kid.

Right here I’d like to celebrate a blog promoting the car-less part of Portland life but the bad blog force is strong today. After a weak landing page with highlighted words without links (really?), every link on the page produced a fatal error message. Portland baby boomers are confused.

Somebody’s got to clean up Portland blogs if we want to be more than other cities. We’ve got hipsters and start-ups and expensive ‘street food’ in recreated Asian restaurant environments. Is it too much to ask bloggers to maintain their work? If so, take it off line and quit wasting readers’ time.

If someone tries to fall in love with Portland through local blogs, it’s not starting off well.

In the meantime, which Oregon city is closest to White Stag’s hind end? Leave a comment if you know and I’ll get right on it.