I lived for about 16 years in Portland and I mostly loved it (I do hate the weather tho, with a passion). I now live in North San Diego county - and I love it too. I honestly can say that there are advantages and disadvantages to both places, but calling SoCal broken down, dry, dirty crowded and gross is not the way I would go. Well, dry is mostly true. It is certainly not any dirtier than Portland, and the way traffic is at Portland nowadays is worse (thus more crowded, imho) than San Diego from my experience. Gross is a personal judgement call, I guess - but having been stupid enough to walk around Burnside at night last month - I would argue that there are gross parts of Portland, for sure. As for drivers in SoCal vs. Portland - People are a lot more accommodating on the roads in Portland, I think. Better drivers tho? I am not certain of that.
FWIW - the entire "higher expectations" nonsense is just that. El doing El trolling things.
While I know that Portland would be somewhat cheaper to live in, for us, the much better weather is well worth it - so I personally would not want to go back to live in Portland. If it was NorCal vs. Portland however, I would have a much harder time to choose (fwiw - there were some lovely things about living in NorCal as well).