The Weird Revolution: Portland, ME

“Keep Portland weird!” begs a flier taped to the side of an electrical box on a street corner. We perceive the flier as more of an invitation than a demand, like suggested donations at church or vaccinations for HPV. We were craving some weird, especially after almost a month of the picket-fenced land of the haves and have-nots that is New England. Trying to find something weird in New England is like trying to find a black person at a Jimmy Buffett concert - it is just not going to happen.

The Portland of the east is kind of what we imagine the Portland of the west to be like, or at least what we know from pop culture — liberal, quirky, and proud. Unlike so many cities in the Mid-Atlantic and into New England, Portland possesses something that is borderline extinct in modern-day America: a strong sense of community.

We'll try...

...and fail.

Congress Street, Portland’s main thruway, won most of our attention for the day with countless record stores, vintage shops, and adorable restaurants. Our narrow budget keeps us from making unnecessary purchases, but we could not resist browsing around. In one store, Alex got a high-five from the clerk for correctly guessing the song being played over the speakers: the title track to Frank Zappa’s Jazz From Hell album. Talk about your deep cuts.

They also had this.

And this.

We spent 45 minutes at a toy store that specialized in action figures from the 80s and 90s, showing each other the ones we owned and played with as kids. They even had a bridal Barbie figurine I got in a Happy Meal when I was in elementary school. I did not think I would ever see that thing again, definitely not in a toy store in Portland, Maine.

For lunch, we grabbed Eritrean food at a tiny restaurant off the main street. The spot was family operated and halfway through our meal, the owner’s daughter and a friend came in for lunch. Family owned restaurants are always a delight. The recipes are family favorites, having been passed down for generations, giving an authentic taste of what “back home” is for your hosts.

We spent the rest of the day getting lost among rows of books in a labyrinth-style bookstore called YES Books and picking up a small ET figurine for Alex’s brother Eric. When the town began to shut down around 6 p.m. we called it a day and headed for the car.

By New England’s standards, Portland is weird, solely for the fact that it is not a city filled with Revolutionary War memorials, big wooden galleons in the harbor, and places to get clams. If the Green Party ran the world, this is what its capital city would look like. Portland is a unique mix of Mid-Atlantic cosmopolitan, New England seaside, and - perhaps the missing ingredient in the equation - Mainer charm. Portland has gained two more super-weird fans.