February/March 2013 Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? Who knew the baseball that dribbled past Red Sox star Bill Buckner in Game 6 of the ‘86 World Series vs. the Mets was picked up by sweet, shy Charlie Sheen, pre-tiger blood, in 1992 for $93,000? In...
October 2013 It’s zero dark thirty on Route 1 in front of Maine Medical Center in Scarborough. A snow plow tunnels through the darkness, widening the road for safe passage when…BOOM! What the heck was that? Sadly, it was history going bump in the night. The winter was...
Winterguide 2013 The new release of Gwen Thompson’s prizewinning novella Men Beware Women brings to light a very three-dimensional sense of our magazine. Across 28 years, so many gifted writers and artists with incredible talent have been drawn here to work with us so...
December 2012 Jamie Wyeth says he can hear the horn from his house on Monhegan. “It constantly blows. It’s so funny. People ask, ‘Aren’t you bothered by this horn?’ You get used to it. Manana is so different from Monhegan. Manana is very stark, no trees, exposed....
November 2012 I don’t know this house, but I know this house. We love bringing you “extraordinary perspective” at Portland Magazine. Sometimes, it catches us by surprise, too. I was touring our House of the Month on the windswept edge of Bald Head Cliff when I felt...
October 2012 In the span of five days, two talented Mainers gave their final bows and went to that great sound stage in the sky. Aren’t they now playing wonderfully against each other, even if they never happened to share the limelight here on earth? Phyllis Thaxter...
September 2012 I’m driving on Route 1 in Falmouth behind a silver SUV with the vanity plate FUGAWE. Hello, 1920s vaudeville (look it up–that’s what the Internet is for). The “Church Lady,” the functionary at the Department of Motor Vehicles who decides whether our...
July/August 2012 It’s the latest pub talk in the Old Port. What would you do with House Island–if you could pony up the $4.85 million to buy it? John Cougar Mellencamp toured Clapboard Island in Falmouth Foreside after we came out with our “Dream Islands” story...
Summerguide 2012 Portland, we hardly know the North, South, East, and West of you. At the eastern extreme of our city on Jewell Island (next stop, London) is a circular enclosure called The Punch Bowl. Even when the sea is storming around it, inside the bowl it’s as...
May 2012 Oscar-winning actress Helen Hunt’s great-great grandparents owned and lived in the landmark brick townhouse that’s our magazine’s headquarters at 165 State Street. This came to light when Hunt appeared in the television show Who Do You Think You Are? and...
April 2012 “Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.’ –Bob Seger How could we have known that when Whitney Houston visited Portland in February, 1996, she was at the top of her game? Just 32, she’d dazzled audiences with The Bodyguard and seemed to have an...
February/March 2012 He’s an artistic gadfly and bohemian, engaging downtown denizens in animated discourse about politics and current events. But don’t look for him at Starbucks on Congress Square. Because he’s dead. The name Ralph Frizzell, a colorful artist born in...
