40 year old tattooed couple unexpectedly becoming parents looking for the inside scoop on Portlandia neighborhoods for a relocation to your town

My husband and I , who are NOT native Californians (Hahaha! The "Portland hates Californians" comes through loud and clear), have been considering a move to Portland for about ten years. And now it's back on! YAY!

We are unexpectedly becoming parents, and would like to leave our home of the past six years... which has been California. Sorry about that, Portland. But it is Long Beach and that's about as ghetto as it gets, so we're not from the richie rich sector responsible for driving up property values in your fair city.

I am so clueless about the Portland neighborhoods. I have read the books, checked the blogs, and know the names of the neighborhoods and what each neighborhood states about itself, but I don't have any friends in Portland to get a real report on the pros and cons of each area.  I was hoping that lots of Portlandians come to this forum and can help us out with their own biased views. 

I am looking for a neighborhood that has the demographic of tattooed people with children. Lol! Okay, there is no such demographic, but there are an awful lot of people like us, especially in Portland, so perhaps there is such a thing.  There seems to be a chasm between the... I don't know what to call them... the body modification crowd (?) and the 'breeders' on the Portland blogs and forums I've found. Surely there are a lot of families that are both?

I would like to find a friendly 'walkable' neighborhood, close by restaurants, groceries, bookstores, and all that good stuff. We are not amongst those fortunate few that can purchase a $500K house, so the tony neighborhoods that are most raved about are out of budget. From reading the blogs it would appear that we wouldn't be comfortable in Portland's more suburban neighborhoods. I've found that those people seem quite vocal about tattoos and piercings. I've read threads about their not wanting their children 'to think such disfiguration is okay or normal'.  And on the other hand the threads about hating the 'breeders and their strollers and crying kids'. Is there a neighborhood where families outside of the mainstream soccer-mom type seem to congregate?

I would appreciate anyone's opinions and feedback. It is so difficult to gather 'real' information beyond misleading statistics and official neighborhood PR.