Winterguide 2012 I read an article in an AirTran inflight magazine over the holidays and came out of it with the distinct impression that 21st-century boosters and marketeers in Pennsylvania are now crowing about having “invented” the whoopie pie. It’s official, they...
December 2011 Our surveillances are so sophisticated. Who’ll be the fly on the wall at your company Christmas party? Some things, perhaps, we shouldn’t be allowed to see. I’ve just seen one of those things–something PETA might very well call a snuff film for fish....
November 2011 If James Joyce defines a pier as “a disappointed bridge,” I wonder what he’d call the Megaberth–a disappointed pier? Hardly. The Megaberth is a fantastic success. Designed to accommodate some of the largest cruise ships in the world, it’s already enticed...
October 2011 News travels faster than a snow leopard in the Information Age, but if you are culturally relaxed enough to consider Portland’s fortunate geography in relative terms, it traveled even faster in 1805. In fact, our 1805 could blow the doors off the speed at...
September 2011 On a dazzling fall day, it’s hard not to be thoughtful about the evil that flew out of Portland Jetport 10 years ago, on September 11, 2001. The bizarre tidbit that we slept with the enemy the Night Before is something Maine may never live down....
July/August 2011 To celebrate Portland Magazine’s first 25 years, and to get ready for the next 25, I deep-cleaned my desk. Until I reached my lower left-hand drawer, that is, where I keep tokens that defy filing to such a degree that their only commonality is...
Summerguide 2011 I’m driving behind a New Mexico license plate–yellow with red letters in celebration of how much sunshine they enjoy in the great American Southwest. “If you love your ‘Land of Enchantment’ so much,” I laugh, “what brings you to Vacationland?” Because...
May 2011 I love Thursdays. You can see the weekend ahead through your windshield. The world is at your doorstep. Thursday is that hush before the curtain rises. The starter’s gun is up. Ready, set? Come to think of it, that’s why I love May, too. Dylan Thomas has a...
April 2011 “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”* “Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.”** To celebrate the silver anniversary of Portland Magazine’s April 1986 debut–for which I’m so deeply grateful to our...
February/March 2011 What a blast to crack open the Washington Post’s Metro section and run into breathless posturing (even lecturing!) about how the Sidecar should properly be served. The cocktail has as many inventors as baseball, ice cream, or Facebook, but here’s...
Winterguide 2011 By Colin W. Sargent We’re eating crab cakes in Todd Jurich’s Bistro in Norfolk, Virginia, when the waiter drops us with, “These are made with fresh crab from Maine.” But this is Crabtown, USA! “Chesapeake Bay crabs go dormant from December through...
December 2010 By Colin W. Sargent “Lady Gaga, meet the ghost of Lucky Lindy” ran like quicksilver through my brain when I heard the lady in question had chosen Deering Oaks as the perfect place in Maine to make a speech. That’s because famed aviator Charles Lindbergh...
