But the best part of springtime in Maine is that the tourists aren’t here yet. For a few more weeks, the streets, benches and parks allow unadulterated glimpses at who Mainers are and what they do.
On a sunny 68˚ afternoon, I slid into my flip-flops for the first time this year and set out for the Old Port to fulfill two cravings. First and foremost, I needed Cold Stone Creamery’s cake batter ice cream. Second, I was long over due for a people-watching adventure in Tommy’s Park.
A flock of 8-year-olds rushed past me as I opened the door into Cold Stone, and all of us lined up impatiently behind a pair of suit-wearing women.
A few girls stood behind me, pulling on their mothers’ sleeves for money to put in the tip jar.
“Mom, can we tip $20?” one asked. Her mother pulled out a handful of change and gave each kid a penny.
While the gaggle of penny-wielding children skipped back and forth in front of the ice cream case, I eyed my options. Cake batter? Or raspberry sorbet?
In a light, fruity kind of mood, I ordered the sorbet with gummy bears and took the overflowing bowl outside, across the street and onto the only empty bench in Tommy’s Park.
Chewing a frozen gummy bear, I looked around from my bench.
In one corner of the park, a group of hipster high school kids were standing around, sneaking cigarettes.
At the center of the park, a handful of park regulars were gathered around a boom box, swaying to ‘80s pop. I recognized a couple of the guys as local break-dancers, so I was waiting for moves to be busted.
The man at the core of the group was the only one I knew by name — Nick Halperin, who’s famous around town as the tall dread-locked man who bikes all over town by day and leads Chronic Funk by night.
A couple skateboarders moved in and out of the group, trying to do tricks and giving up, while a few 30somethings watched quietly from their benches.
People in suits walked along the edges of the park — or sped up to walk through it. One, a fellow Cold Stone customer, took his ice cream to a bench separated from the park by a row of small trees.
As I was wishing that he’d sat next to me, to share in my people-watching adventure, a less invited guest plopped down beside me. Her whole body was cloaked in strangely fit clothing, her huge skirt and jacket topped by a giant sun hat. Her cheeks had too much makeup. Her teeth were brown and crooked.
Like a spy, she poked glances from under her hat at the crowd of high schoolers.
“My daughter, she’s in the wrong crowd,” the woman started. “Do you know those girls?” she scowled. “That one with the blonde hair and sunglasses?”
Uncomfortable, I glanced over but couldn’t locate a blonde in the bunch. Before I could answer, I heard all about how mean the girl was, and how she was ruining this woman’s daughter’s life.
“Do you know those girls?” she asked again. I shook my head and tried not to stare at her teeth.
“No, but maybe it’s just a phase?” I said, as she lit a cigarette.
She smiled at me, not quite agreeing, and started talking about something else.
She was in a band, apparently, and a big fan of Dylan. Her daughter had ruined her chances of meeting him, she said, as she stole a glance back toward the diminishing group of kids.
When I told her that I was a writer, she responded that she, too, had wanted to be a writer. And that if I ever was interested, she had quite a story to tell about corruption in Portland. I smiled politely and let her keep talking, as her big hat flopped in the breeze.
When she got up to leave, she held out her thick, yellowed hand and I took it, saying goodbye.
Meanwhile, the music was turned up and the regulars were starting to dance — two took turns break-dancing, while a young woman tried to teach Nick to salsa.
I took the lens cap off my camera and they noticed as I started snapping photos. Smiling in my direction, the dance moves got more interesting.
They weren’t the only ones who saw the camera. A freckled man, probably in his early 40’s, sat down to replace hat-woman, cradling a camera bag under one arm.
“What are you shooting?” he asked, and threw out a few photography questions I couldn’t begin to answer. He pulled out his own camera — an old medium-format rangefinder camera — and told me all about how shooting street scenes is better on film, and in black and white.
He looked around the park as I pointed my digital, color camera at the dancers and clicked off a few frames.
“So who are these people?” he wondered out loud. “Are they students or vagabonds?”
He put his camera away and said goodbye, leaving me alone again to watch the crowd and wonder the same question. Who are they?
A guy with a crooked baseball cap rolled past on a skateboard and tried to do some kind of jump, but crashed awkwardly to the sidewalk when the board didn’t flip all the way over.
A young man with a T-shirt bashing President Bush rolled through on a bike, and a pair of young Asian women sat with baby strollers on the bench next to me.
A man I recognized from somewhere walked past with a giant black lab, and across the park, another man pulled a sweatshirt hood over his head and rocked back and forth on his bench, muttering to himself.
The boom box was carried away, and a guitarist stepped up to fill the silence.
I snapped a few more shots as Nick and his gang pulled out a hacky-sack.
Students and vagabonds.
On a beautiful spring day in Portland, in a park full of music and dancing and general relaxing, those aren’t bad things to be.