| Meander Editors Invade Maine |
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| Written by Administrator | |||
| Saturday, 11 October 2008 13:42 | |||
Clam Festivals, Somali Immigrants, and the Battle of High Heels and Cobblestone
For Meander's inauguration, we editors decided to take a road trip to Maine; for no reason other than proximity and a slight level of intrigue. In other words, shits and giggles. What we found was the perfect combination of charm and weirdness, with lots of happy accidents (one decidedly unhappy). Day One: The Commute Randall: The drive to Maine from New York City proved one thing: Google Maps is a liar. Also Google Maps does not care about you. "Enter Maine" was their last direction. If Maine had signs, I could negotiate this abandonment. Portland was our specific destination and we did eventually find it. The rest of Day 1 (Night 1, really) in a nutshell was half a deer carcass in the middle of the road (bottom half), "Ima Flirt" on repeat, a rush to a Brewery thirty minutes before last call, a handlebar moustache sighting, and sleep. Chandni: We reached Portland after midnight, giving us a half an hour to spare at the Sebago Brewing Company across the street from our hotel, a sort of Applebee's for drinkers. Used to the crazed bar-hopping of New York, I'd forgotten how comforting it can be to stroll into a restaurant in rank clothes on a Friday night, ask for a beer, slump down in a stool, eavesdrop on families, and stare at men who gaze sulkily at nothing in particular. Day Two R: We skipped free food so that we could buy it. The cocktails more than compensated for the fiscal idiocy. Our hotel was nestled amongst strip malls so we couldn't get to Old Port fast enough. C: Old Port turned out to be exactly what we'd imagined it would be - cobblestone streets, charming restaurants in exposed red stone houses, and a pier. Old Port scenic pics:
R: It's a neighborhood right by the Atlantic and it used to be a warehouse district, populated only by dock workers (surprise there's a large Irish contingent in Portland). But like all gentrification patterns, now it's super trendy and expensive. It's really beautiful as well, if a little precious, and most importantly chock full of bars. And restaurants (bars with food). C: We had brunch at MIMS, the only outdoor restaurant downtown packed with people, next to the pier. By the end of brunch we were buzzed on French cocktails - a feat in mixology - champagne mixed with cassis with a sugar cube drenched in bitters that dissipates while you drink. Drink pic:
R: It was like a high falutin' Alka-Seltzer. C: An exploration of the neighborhood yielded charm by the bucketfuls. We wandered down the touristy Fore street and the cobblestone alleys on Wharf, along the water on Commercial street. A note about Fore Street: If you hear two men discussing foreplay, don't get too excited. They're probably planning a visit to Foreplay, the sports bar. Get it? Scenic pics
Then it was off to Yarmouth, a town a couple of miles north of Portland, to visit the world's largest rotating globe, an object for which I did not know there was a contest. Imagine the world's second largest rotating globe. Pathetic. It's called Eartha (I called it Globey) and it just celebrated its ninth birthday (completed July 23rd, 1998). It sits in a glass room so the outside world can see it glow, and the view from inside can be seen on three different levels. Even from a cynic's point of view, it was quite cool. Eartha itself weighs 5,600 pounds and has a surface area of 5,300 feet. The scale is 1:1,000,000 - one inch of Eartha equals 16 miles of Earth - and the map is a physical one. My favorite fact, however, is one that DeLorme, the company that made the globe, touts itself. They brag that Eartha was made using "computer technology," which indicates less about Eartha than it does about their PR. Globey pics: C: Yarmouth's clam festival happened to be that weekend. The fest hosts one of the biggest parades in the state of Maine, but that probably can't beat the ingenious relay race we saw called the Fireman's Muster. A group of men compete to put on firemen costumes, link up a hose, and douse overexcited kids drunk on lime-rickeys (a clam fest special, basically 7-Up with limes) with water. As if that's not enough delirium there's a final mystery event where a group of blindfolded firemen carry a "victim" through an obstacle course. Firemen pic: R: Yarmouthians can't resist a clam festival. Even though neither of us care for clams and are in fact vegetarians, we were jazzed on the crowds and colors and music, mostly the small-town-ness of it all. Clam fest pics: A row of lobster roll stands gave way to the eatin' tent, complete with a fiddle player. There was a parade that we missed, apparently the biggest one in Maine, but I for one was not heartbroken; a childhood of Mardi Gras immunizes you against any other parade excitement. We did, however, see some rootin' tootin' contests, all of which involved the fire department. Lay people dressed up in the gear and tried to operate the hose and "rescue" some girl. Basically it was like the fire department insisting that its job was challenging, something I doubt anyone protests. There was also the most depressed child in the world having her caricature drawn. Depressed child pic Across the way was a carnival; we rode the Ferris wheel, awesome views, perfect weather. The clam festival was a good time. C: Next up was Lewiston. There's no indication that this is the second largest city in Maine. Instead, it's more of a ghost town with rotting houses, and closed storefronts that are up for sale. In 2003, the town initiated an urban renewal plan to close down all housing and create a new infrastructure but no progress seems to have been made. Lewiston abandoned pics: R: The best place to go after Caucasian-bloated street party is to Lewiston. It made headlines in 2001 and 2002 because a surge of Somalian refugees settled there. In 2001, there were zero Somalians in Lewiston, a town of 35,000, largely white and Catholic, and less than an hour north of Portland. The American government originally placed the Somalian refugees in Atlanta, Georgia, but the Somali immigrant group sent out some people to find a new place to settle, much like what is known as sahan, the way nomadic cultures search for water for their cattle. They found Lewiston and apparently liked how boring it was (boredom's better than war). Approximately 1,200 Somalis moved to Lewiston in two years; that's almost 30% of the entire population. Then in 2002 the mayor, Laurier Raymond, wrote an open letter asking the Somalians to stop immigrating to his town; controversy ensued. He did not, incidentally, seek re-election. C: The only signs of life can be found around downtown African grocery stores that sell hookahs and Vimto, a popular non-alcoholic drink among Muslims. Somali pics: R: It was a lot like Queens, New York, but in a clearly non-urban environment. C: We tried to snap pictures of Somali girls riding their bikes and a drunken man began to heckle us. "Are you taking pictures of them?" he asked. R: We ducked into a store before he had a chance to say anything disparaging. This was the only sign (and not a very clear one) of any type of race relations in Lewiston, because the place was so deserted. That night we headed back to Old Port because apparently we crave familiarity. Every restaurant showcased white tablecloths and organic menus. So we went to Amiga, because no one does Mexican like the northernmost state. We complained about the weakness of our margaritas until we stood up. The waitress told us to go to Ri Ra, an Irish pub down the road, which we struggled across (cobblestone). Inside featured two bachelorettes and the dorkiest cover band in the world. We danced until they started singing "U Can't Touch This." Irony has its breaking point. Then it was back to the battle of the cobblestone. We passed a courtyard that had become a make-shift dance party. There was a lesbian DJ clad with her lesbian posse. Therefore the place was cool. And it was great music too; we stayed until last call, which is an absurd 1 AM. Then it was time for the Porlandians to all try and get laid. People poured out onto the street, since all the bars are concentrated in one area, and started to pick each other up. Lance, our first encounter, used the pickup line "My dad fought in Vietnam."
We wandered up and down the street until we came across some karaoke, behind which was an empty dance floor. Euro music accompanied by lasers and armored knights in every doorway were more than enough reasons for us to stay. We danced until they made us leave. Party pics:
R: We had a slightly depressing continental breakfast, as anything eaten off of Styrofoam tends to be, and then it was off to drive down Maine's Route 1, which is famous for some reason, even though we caught zero glimpse of the ocean. Our destination was Kennebunkport, so we could see the house where the Bush family stands around their cauldron. We did not find said vacation house, instead we found a beach and had the bright idea to take a quick dip. C: Excited to see the coast at last, we threw off our flip flops, ran to dip our feet in water, took a lot of crap photos, and then couldn't find our way back to our shoes or our car. The next hour was spent hopping around on burning concrete barefoot, trying to locate our car using objects in our photos as markers (like sand), all the while half-crying and laughing hysterically and wiping mascara off our faces. R: Asking someone, "where's that entrance to the beach, the one with the sand? There was a red bike, a raft . . ." doesn't get you anywhere. Going shoeless sort of feels like being naked, or like a child, hence our nervous breakdowns. We found them after an hour of combing the beach and came back to the car to find a ticket. Kennebunkport is an awful place. Foot pic: Who needs Maine's Route 1 when you have Ocean Avenue? It's a lovely drive along the coast in Kennebunkport. On one side, the waves turn to foam over rocks, on the other are large pretty houses. We came across an Episcopal Church that overlooked the ocean. The stone walls outside were the same as the stone walls inside - a perfect background for stained glass. Church/view pics: The building and estate were pretty enough to make me a churchgoer. Instead we left to get margaritas. C: We had lunch in Kennebunk, a cheesy coastal village with whale excursions and bayside seafood restaurants. We found a quiet restaurant with a tiny patio big enough for three tables. An unbelievably nice bartender custom made a bloody Mary to make up for a mortifying last hour of heatstroke. Lunch pics:
Monastery pics: If we had stayed at this monastery, set on rolling green hills, we probably would have never left. But there's only about 30 second parking in Kennebunk, and we had to get to a blueberry farm. Or so we thought. Blueberry farms close, who knew? Our big plan was to pick them and sell them at a local farm that lets tourist work the fields, the suckers. But we spent all our time panicking at the beach and having vague religious experiences, so back to New York we went. No deer carcass on the road this time. It might have been a nice bookending for our Maine, a place picturesque in the center, the outskirts a thin pall of weirdness, controversy, sometimes ugliness. Our kind of weekend getaway.
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