"POLITICS AND OTHER MISTAKES"
Blame it on the city
By Al Diamon
Most of Maine detests Portland.Take rural areas, for example. They get hostile when the state's most populous burg boasts about all its restaurants, museums and School Committee members from the Green Independent Party who keep getting arrested. It's hard for the boonies to compete, with nothing but the occasional Tim Horton's, a few hippies making pottery and a couple of town treasurers who disappeared shortly after using municipal checks to take possession of new Hummers complete with cases of Johnny Walker Blue in the back seat.
Maine's other large cities are jealous of Portland's economy, with all those New Age shops in the Old Port, not to mention the architecturally fascinating remnants of the Portland Public Market. Then there are the bank foreclosure departments, law firms specializing in bankruptcies and the un-staffed ticket counter once used by now-insolvent Independence Air. Portland also offers opportunities for further growth - as soon as the fishing industry can be cleared off the waterfront, the scrapyards can be evicted from Bayside and the last poor people on Munjoy Hill can be shipped to relocation camps in Township 2 Range 6. What can Maine's lesser cities put up against that? Just rusting paper mills and the booming market for housing dangerous sex offenders.
Hostility toward Portland is even reflected in the city's Latin motto, "Colluvies vitiorum," which, roughly (very roughly) translated, means, "If we didn't live here, we'd hate us, too."
But the stereotype of the typical Portlander - arrogant, insensitive, with a bigger credit-card debt than the gross domestic product of Tajikistan - may no longer be accurate. Portland is trying to change its attitude. Except for people who list their occupations as developer, artist or potential owner of a Hooters franchise.
If current initiatives are successful, Portland will soon have a lot in common with other parts of Maine.
It'll be destitute.
Unlike the rest of the state, however, Portland's poverty will be self-inflicted.
This drift into destitution began innocently enough. National companies had been snapping up Portland-based businesses, including a health-food store, e-commerce operations and even the city's only strip club. In reaction, a group of Portland business owners began a "Buy Local" campaign, urging consumers to patronize native stores. The B.L. crowd argued that keeping Portlanders' money circulating among Portlanders was the path to prosperity.
Worked real well in the former Soviet Union.
The campaign didn't have much impact. Not a single Starbucks, Subway or Cold Stone Creamery closed. And an enterprising fellow even announced plans to bring in the aforementioned Hooters. That attracted the attention of the Portland City Council (motto: None Of Our Green Independent Party Members Has Been Arrested. Yet). In a desperate attempt to save the city from being served overpriced beer and burgers by scantily clad women with large breasts, councilors in September approved a moratorium on new "formula" restaurants in the Old Port and downtown. In October, the Buy-Local yokels urged the council to expand that ordinance by limiting all national chains. One business owner, who described herself as "a functioning artist and entrepreneur," told councilors that if a franchise operation moved in near her storefront, she'd "feel quite threatened."
While I've never felt intimidated by, say, The Gap, I have experienced a certain queasiness at being in close proximity to a Bed Bath & Beyond. Perhaps councilors had been similarly distressed, because they hastily expanded the ban to include retail stores. As an afterthought, they also created a committee to study whether what they'd just done was incredibly stupid.
In February, faced with a petition drive to repeal the new law, as well as the dawning realization that their action called into question their status as members of a species equipped with an upper nervous system capable of reasoning, councilors reluctantly reversed themselves and re-opened Portland to national franchises. They also created something called the Business Diversity Task Force, charged with determining what mix of national and local operations would be best for the city.
Because there's no way the free-enterprise system could do that by itself.
Since then, Augusta, Lewiston, Biddeford, Bangor and Farmington have been busy courting any and all national chains, including the Don Imus Sensitivity Institute and the Green Party Bail Bond Project. In contrast, Portland has been boosting its economy by making it tougher for downtown businesses to renovate their historic buildings and almost impossible for new bars and restaurants to obtain entertainment licenses.
The rest of Maine hates Portland. What it should feel is pity.
This column is entirely local. Except for my computer. And Internet service. And desk, chair and bookcase. Oh, and the bourbon.
Comments from afar can be e-mailed to aldiamon@herniahill.net.
