For the sake of time, I didn't respond to what I pretty much completely agreed with you on or post where there were no questions to be addressed. Thanks for the response (I was hoping you would).
Economy: I wonder if NB might fix this by capitalizing on the bio tech and other tech industries in the area?
It's diversifying its economy SLOWLY. The industrial park has recently added a number of high tech companies and fairly wide variety of small businesses are opening up. There seems to be a pretty big increase in healthcare too. The service sector (inc. Tourism) is growing too. Again, I know I've beaten this to death, but I think New Bedford will have a harder time attracting even regional headquarters for large companies due to being so close to Providence and Boston (which is one area where Portland beats it).
The fishing is great, but it makes me nervous. It's such a fickle industry and even with the recent improvements, New Bedford is dead in the water without it.
Dining:
I am assuming when you say Portland doesn't offer much by way of Ethnic food that you are referring to upscale (the type of place one would go "out" to) as opposed to regular run of the mill places (where people merely "refuel" at)? Portland is lacking in this regard, with mainly pubs and American food places with a few more upscale (Hugos, Fore Street, Street & Co., Grill Room, etc.) places.
Pretty much. And to be clear, I haven't lived in Portland for over 2 years so even though I've visited, I haven't seen some of the changes. I think Portland does well in some of its niche areas for ethnic food (certainly Asian Markets and Somali food) and even a few other (I don't think Chinese food in Maine is as awful as it's reputed to be). I just think it lacks a little beyond that especially in terms of sit down type ethnic food. I would say that Portland blows most other comparably sized cities out of the water in terms of higher-end American cuisine (Miyake is an awesome sushi place too).
I also enjoy the Front Room, Corner Room, Old Port Sea Grille, and Walters. I have heard Bar Lola, Bresca, and Back Bay Grill are all great too. JP's in Montrose (used to be Rachel's) is a VERY nice place that should be in the Old Port but is in a tiny building tucked away in a residential neighborhood. Everyone raves about Fore Street in Portland, but in my opinion its just as good as the next place. They have great food, but so do a lot of places. I like the Old Port Sea Grille and Walter's and Street & Co. (same owner) atmosphere better.
I didn't love Bresca... It's not terrible, but places like that are plentiful down in Southern New England (Cafe Balena on Water Street in NB is similar in both type of food and atmosphere). I guess I'm just used to it. I know the chef at Back Bay Grill and he does a fantastic job. It is very good. Never tried Bar Lola or JP's but have also heard good things about both of those places.
My feeling about Fore Street is that they take simple, common dishes and execute them perfectly and consistently. I've been probably 5 times and never had even just an OK experience. It's been good every time. I found Street & Co. to be just OK, but have only been once so maybe it was a bad experience. Never tried the Old Port Sea Grille. Hugo's is one of my favorite casual/ semi-upscale restaurants anywhere (great food for not outrageous prices... you'd pay double for the same in Boston) and Duckfat (same chef) has awesome fries.
The Grill Room was one of the worst dining experiences I've ever had. I ordered a $40 Ribeye (wolf's neck farm) and it was just gross. Cooked perfectly, but chewy, sour (I hate grass fed beef) and awful. My girlfriend ordered a salmon and it was actually very good. I think I just ordered the wrong dish.
As for NB, I have never even heard of Entrean cuisine, but it sounds like the city has quite an eclectic mix. Are the places you mentioned for everyone, of for the local crowds of those specific backgrounds (like I feel the somali markets are, unofficially, in Portland)?
It has a good mix. The Portuguese cuisine is for everyone. The Portuguese are fairly assimilated (think Italians in Boston's North End) and there are dozens of Portuguese restaurants markets and festivals and everyone goes. I love Portuguese food. However, the Guatemalan, Brazilian, Haitian, Dominican, and African places are more geared to those ethnic groups. To me, that's half the fun (and most of the time they enjoy "whitey" coming out to eat). Portland's ethnic places are overall more accessible than NB's. NB doesn't come close to matching Portland's fine dining either (Portland has 2 James Beard Award winners- Hugo's and Fore Street while NB has none).
Nightlife:
In my opinion, nightlife in Portland is close to a 10. I know there are better places, but I have yet to see many of them. Montreal was pretty active, and Boston had bigger and more packed bars, but neither had the concentration of places that Portland has.
I don't think Montreal is that great if you're over 21. It's a wonderland if you're 18 or 19, but being 20+ in Montreal can get frustrating unless you're way off of St. Catherine.
Boston certainly has the concentration of bars that Portland does in places like Lansdowne, the Theatre District and Faneuil Hall/Blackstone. They're just sort of separated by type and not a smattering of this an that in one little area.
I would go ahead and say that Newport, RI has the best small city nightlife in New England by a mile. There are tons of places concentrated on Thames Street downtown and on the adjacent wharves (more people on the streets by far than Wharf St. in Portland). What's more is that there are other pockets of bars that offer some different varieties too (Broadway, Bellevue, Lower Thames, etc). Like Portland, it's quieter in the winter, but far from dead.
I agree that Portland needs better and more upscale places, but the concentration of people is quite a boost to what would otherwise be an average nightlife scene.
I certainly agree that Portland has decent crowds in the summer (it's not "dead" in the winter either) and it deserves points for being so condensed into that small little area. That crowd also makes Portland appear to offer more than it does in terms of nightlife since it's all right there. At the same time, I think it's also Nightlife in Portland's biggest downfall.
Don't get me wrong. The cluster of bars along and near Wharf Street is great. It's central and it makes it easy to do a bar hop for anyone from locals to tourists. However, I think that this leads to a crowd that's almost TOO mixed and the scene at all of these places is fairly similar (whether it's classified as "pub" or "club"). For instance, 51 Wharf is fairly popular. I've been more times than I can count. And when you go in there, there is a tiny dance floor with 10-15 girls and maybe 6 or 7 guys dancing (no, I'm not complaining about the ratio). The rest of the crowd in the place is just the same as the pub crowd down the street in Gritty's or Bulfeeney's. And that crowd ranges from everyone from the 21 year old drunk birthday girl to the 30 year old bachelorette to the 40 year old suburbanites to the 55 year old tourist couple awkwardly swaying to music they've never heard before. It's downright weird sometimes and it throws off the entire vibe.
I think being SO central and SO compact creates an atmosphere that can only be casual (many/most of the places who try to be more, i.e. Cake, Una, etc, fail completely or end up changing their plan) because it must accommodate so many different tastes at once. After living there I found that the Old Port felt one dimensional for this reason. Every bar/club felt the same... the only difference was whether one had a DJ, Live Band, or no music at all. The Old Port has a lot of places close together that do a lot of things OK, but no places that do one thing very well. That's part of why I only gave it a 6.5.
Comparatively, other cities have separate nightlife areas that serve different tastes. You mentioned Boston as not being the same as Portland (though I would argue the Faneuil Hall/Blackstone area is probably more compact and busier). It has a number of nightlife districts that serve mostly different tastes. It has the the Faneuil Hall/Blackstone area which is full of loud pubs and a few dance spots that are chalk full of early 20-somethings looking to get wasted. Not far away you have the Sports Bars on Canal Street. You have large, upscale clubs in the Theatre District (all of which have dress codes and attract people looking to dance only, not people just popping in like in the Old Port). I have a hard time considering the places I've been in Portland "clubs" because of the crowd and size of the places (generally physically small places with only a handful of people dancing). The way I describe it is that it's not easy to find a place in Portland that everyone is specifically going to to dance. There are places with dance floors, but they're often filled with observers and people just popping in to dance a bit. Nothing like real clubs.
In addition, you have sort of an underground/alt. music scene in Central Square, more sports pubs and clubs on Lansdowne and many other places in between. Where you go depends on what you're feeling any particular night.
Providence is similar. You have the clubs downtown, pubs on Wichendon, upscale lounges on Federal Hill, and collegiate bars on Thayer St. Like Boston, those are all clustered together by type and not mashed together in one district.
One of the other things that bothers me about Portland with regards to nightlife is a SEVERE lack of neighborhood bars. Portland's nightlife is ALL right around Wharf Street and the Old Port with very few outliers. Great Lost Bear is nice and there are a few others, but there aren't really many neighborhood joints at all in Portland and that's one area where I felt it lost some other points. I love to have a few small bars outside of downtown to just grab a drink, relax and watch the game, talk, or shoot some pool. There aren't many places like that in Portland at all.
The last weak spot with Portland's nightlife is the 1am closing time (last call is often between 12:30 and 12:45). That's really too early to call a place "good". Boston is often criticized for having a 2am last call. New Bedford is 2am too.
Again, Portland's cluster of bars along a small strip is a positive in that it really centralizes everything. However, there's not much else outside of that strip which means everyone looking to go out is in the same area and goes to the same bars and they all have a fairly similar scene. Even New Bedford has the collegiate bar scene on Lower Union (Catwalk, Fins, Rose Alley, Garden, etc) the "artsy" crowd up on Purchase/William (Pour Farm, No Problemo, Hibernia, etc) and the dancing crowd further up Union and out on Purchase (Stardust, 908, Union City, etc). In addition, NB has some fantastic neighborhood bars (including strips of them along Acushnet Ave.) all over the city.
Like any small city (I feel the same way about NB and even Newport), Portland's nightlife can get pretty stale and fast. Hotel bars are also hotel bars anywhere... sort of "meh" with very few exceptions. To be fair, I haven't tried Ginko Blue, Chocolate Bar, or Forti Fem (unless it's that other room near the bathrooms inside of 51 Wharf in which case I have), so there's a pretty good chance it's gotten better since I've been there. The Old Port just had a "high school reunion" vibe that I really didn't like at all, but that's just personal preference. It's obvious that it's more than adequate for locals and tourists. In fact, I would go so far as to say it's PERFECT for a weekend outing since everything is so close together and it's not hard for visitors to find where to go. However, after a weekend or two, you can see the shortcomings fairly easily.
That lengthy post is why I gave Portland a 6.5 instead of a 10. I'm willing to bet that most people that aren't you and me (we both have our biases) would settle somewhere in the middle of those two numbers.
t is nice to hear NB's nightlife is on the upswing, because I think it is definitely a quality of life factor, for everyone. Any theaters?
The Zeiterion Theatre is the biggest and pretty good. They're in the process of trying to renovate the old Orpheum Threater too.
Walkability:
I'd say downtown Portland is a near 10 for walkability, while much of the rest of the city is more like a 4 or less, with some exceptions. NB downtown looks similar, although I note a few vacant lots that may disperse amenities a bit (but that's true in Portland too).
You're probably right in this regard. NB has some vacant lots along Union (one really noticeable one between Purchase and Pleasant on Union) and a few other not very urban structures (St. Anne's Credit Union). However, William, Purchase, Water, Pleasant and even 6th have great streetwall. I'd probably rank NB about a point below Portland no matter what the overall score.
Transit:
Cool that NB has ferry service...what islands?
Martha's Vineyard and Cuttyhunk. Year round service too. It's nice to have.
In Portland, there is talk about funding a continuous loop transit service bus from the Airport to Thompson's point/Amtrak, to the Casco bay Ferry station
I think that would be awesome. Have you ever seen or heard of
Ecolobus in Quebec City (scroll down that link a little bit to see it)? It's a small, free electric bus that runs along a central loop connecting some of the primary areas. Portland could really benefit from something like that.
The land use patterns in outlying areas make transit difficult here as I imagine might be the case in NB too.
Yeah, same with NB. NB has the benefit of having Fall River as sort of an urban bookend nearby, but Biddeford isn't too far from Portland either. NB's bus system isn't exactly stellar.
As for Amtrak, I don't think it does much for commuters, although it is nice to have the option to get into Boston by train.
I was going to say, at least you have it. It's certainly useful.
Attractions:
Aquarium is needed in Portland, more than anything as far as attractions go. The islands are also a big draw. I can't picture a zoo in Portland. Is NB's in the city or outside?
I think an Aquarium is a must for Portland. I actually thought it would be good for the Maine State Pier. New Bedford's (called the "Ocean Explorium" and it's tiny but currently expanding) was decades in the making and is starting very small (it opened 2 years ago). The Zoo in New Bedford is about 1.5 mile from downtown in Buttonwood Park. It's also expanding too. It's a great location in a great park.
Portland could do a nice zoo just outside the city. I don't think it would need to be too far.
Culture:
I think it is this mix of cultures that makes any city great or enjoyable.
I agree.
People:
I am curious to know more about NB's diversity (and Portland's).
New Bedford is still largely Portuguese (over 38%), but they don't show up in general census stats (considered "white"). In addition, it has a decent African American population for a small New England city as well as a growing Indian population (due to medical and engineering jobs as well as UMass Dartmouth), Guatemalan, and Brazilian (due to the existing Portuguese speaking population) population.
I don't know what the current statistics are, but they are probably one of the most rapid racial and ethnic demographic changes the city has ever seen. The Portland High School (second oldest in the country after Boston Latin) has over 300 languages spoken, and Reiche school is something like 45% white.
I bet it's a significant increase in minorities. I actually worked at Reiche a bit when I lived there and am surprised to hear that it's even 45% white. I worked with a number of Arabic, Chinese, Korean and African children (most of the languages are tribal African dialects). Not many white kids and many of those were first/second generation immigrants.
I'd also be interested in hearing your thoughts on exactly what defines "trash." While I am not an advocate of using that phrase to refer to people literally, it is undeniable that it has taken on a common meaning, and that Portland has quite a bit that arguably fit this definition.
I cringe using the term. However, it's undeniable that they do exist. In my opinion, "trash" could be anyone (ethnic or white) who has never left the city, has little education (or work ethic... college isn't for everyone), no job, drug abusers, welfare system abusers and and overall insular mentality. New Bedford has too many. It is, in my opinion, the city's biggest downfall.
I also consider "trash" to be the Jersey Shore types. Unfortunately, many of the Portuguese youths have adapted that style. Blowouts, fake tans and Ed Hardy make me sick.
It is always funny to point out the stereotypical person from the Fighter of the Town walking around Portland.
Oh, they're everywhere in NB too.
Parks:
Portland 8
New Bedford 7.5
Would be interested to know more about NB's parks.
Buttonwood is the gem due to design and the fact that it contains the zoo. However, Fort Taber is my favorite. It has a great old fort (two, actually), a long public pier and striking views of Buzzard's Bay and Elizabeth Islands. It's like the Eastern Prom. without the hill. The city also has Hazelwood, Brooklawn and Riverside which are nice parks. Custom House Square and Wings Court are nice in downtown but not as nice as Tommy's/Post office.
I'm not sure, so I will let LrFox answer in more detail, but I am going to bet Portland's hotel accommodations are at least twice as great.
More than Twice. Portland wins in everything from quantity to quality.
New Bedford has a bunch of great B&Bs, but only one downtown hotel (and that's only 2 years old). There is a hotel in Fairhaven across the bridge that's within walking distance, but it's still a pain. No, New Bedford needs a lot more to even be close to the same tier as Portland in terms of accommodations.
