Sorry, heavily edited incoming wall of text. /u/AntiLuke was vaguely referring to the current circumstance of lead detected in the drinking fountains in Portland's schools. Also, you sounded concerned enough and maybe hinted at some sort of Oregon/California rivalry, I figured someone owed you a thorough explanation. Tl;dr: I think that there is a mild Calirfornia hate campaign that is probably part of an unorganized and unplanned community-driven awareness campaign that Portlanders stage online and elsewhere to try to displace some the current housing burden in Portland. It's mostly sharing.articles and statistics, but I guess some people might be taking it to personally, although I don't notice it often. I find it's usually someone venting and misplacing their stress with a little humor through satirical cynicism, maybe with a hint of slight and actual disdain, but in reality a lot of us are Californian and we speak to each other like normal, decent people. Don't let the Portland internet trolls discourage you. There's a colorful(less?) history of Oregon shunning incoming residents dating back to a famous quote of governer Tom McCall, circa 1970-something, something like "you can visit, but don't move here." It's really not supposed to be mean, our entire state is historically depressed economically and has always been very slow to accommodate growth, the side effects of which hit us harder in Portland than the more robust local economies of cities like Seattle, SF or Vancouver.

You're hilarious about the water. I know it's a dismal situation, in sincerity, but I'm humorously imaging a scenario where you PM me your address and I'll drop by a few jugs to your post-apocalyptic survivor camp and even though there's now more saltwater than ever lining the entire length of your entire coastline, there's none to drink and your camp will ultimately suffer the fate of the future California island/peninsula and float away out to sea.

I take it your friend probably bad a bad luck of the draw with the tickets. Never heard anything like that about the cops here. If he could show how he was targeted or upload some videos, we would have activists up in arms about it and rightly so. We have a huge protest community here. We don't hate Californians, we just hate the environmental and housing situations and I know it's mutual for you guys. In candid daily conversations people here talk about just the facts when it comes to the issues that plague not just our underside neighbors down south, but the southernmost parts of our own state as well. It's very easy to point fingers and it often sounds like we're generalizing when we say "Californians do this", and I occasionally hear some old fart sounding snide about it, but it's never anyone I like or find very likable.

But yeah, I'm a native here and it has gotten pretty weird. I had a conversation with a rich transplant couple at the park the other day who just sold a bunch of property around Yosemite. The guy was a 70-or-so Vietnam veteran, raving about chemtrails and FEMA camps, but he was surprisingly not politically conservative on environmental issues, which was pretty much all we discussed. I know his lunacy doesn't reflect on Californians in general, but I know his stern views on environmentalism are a very common view for Californians in general and rightly so.

What really struck me as most weird was his blond trophy wife who backed up his wildest conspiracy theories and whose face was all screwed up with Botox and the areas of taught skin that appears after face lifts. I've been noticing so many bad facial surgeries, seemingly correlating to all the transplant movement we've seen over the last few years. I always feel sorry for whatever self-image dysmorphia they suffer, but it saddens me that these are well-to-do people who looked far better before their facial work. Natural aging is far more appealing. I don't feel that this is a subjective matter. That, along with the uncontrollable droughts are the only California trends that I feel can't die soon enough.

I don't mean to disparage them or anyone, they were the nicest couple. The reason I brought it up is that (aside from their driving habits) Californians are super nice, in general and after the guy basically apologized on behalf of his entire state for causing our current housing burden (we reached 100% housing capacity) I just I told him what I tell everyone here, that there's an impending mass migration that will eventually affect everyone worldwide and that the pilfered tribal lands of Cascadia (the Northwest) have laid waste to its entire native population, so it is now meant to be shared equally with all of mankind alike so that the burden of drought can be better dispersed, as it should be. As easy as it was for me to judge these nice people as the caricatures of Californians that they were, it was just as easy for me to sincerely welcome them and overlook their extremes.l