Take is going on the road, checking out New England’s corners for everything from the best bodegas to tiny galleries and music spots. We’ll be adding towns as we come across them. Read our other New England finds. Up now? Scarborough, Maine.

Maine is full of nooks and crannies and while most of them are rocky and cold for the majority of the year, they are gems nonetheless! One of those fabulous little nooks is Scarborough, Maine. Located just south of Portland, this town has sandy beaches, tasty restaurants, and some talented artists. Let’s take a look at our five finds in Scarborough!

Shade Restaurant

Just a stone’s throw from Higgins Beach, the Shade Restaurant at the Higgins Beach Inn is the lively local hangout that you always hope you’ll come across on your travels. Serving up dinner Thursday-Sunday and breakfast every day of the week, the restaurant does the classics well, with its own spin on them, of course. The breakfast is particularly spot on, especially as fuel for a day at the beach or a day shopping in Portland.
Location: Higgins Beach

Sea Dog Brewing Co.

Maine has no shortage of craft breweries and one of my favorites is Sea Dog. Not too far from the Portland Airport, Sea Dog Brewing Co. is a cool brewpub offering up some hearty bar food and craft beer. You have to try their popular flavored beers like the blueberry and raspberry ales. And paring that with a warm pretzel makes for a tasty afternoon. But full disclosure, this is located just over the border into South Portland from Scarborough, but is a Scarborough favorite nonetheless.
Location: 125 Western Ave.

Winslow Homer Studio

A stylish enclave jets out off of Scarborough called Prout’s Neck. Filled with lovely homes and waterfront views, Prout’s Neck is the crown jewel of Scarborough. And at the tip of this lovely point, sits a historical site that all art lovers need to visit while in the area, the Winslow Homer Studio. The former home and art studio of the famous American artist, Winslow Homer, this is the site of one of the most important American artists of the last century.
Location: 5 Winslow Homer Rd.

Chart Room Restaurant

And after you’ve had your fill of art and history, head back up the point to the Black Point Inn’s Chart Room restaurant for a classic New England style meal. The historic hotel is a blast from the past in the best way. The traditional architecture and the warm service will remind you of all the New England charm filling the area. Grab some seared scallops and fresh oysters for a classic seafood dinner while you over look the water at the Chart Room.
Location: 510 Black Point Rd.

Edgecomb Potters

While, not Edgecome Potters is technically located in Scarborough, I always associate it with Scarborough because I first saw a piece of their work in a friend’s home in Scarborough. And when they told me where they picked it up, I just had to make the quick drive to Portland to check it out. The beautiful designs and the quality craftsmanship are a refreshing alternative to its mass produced competitors.
Location: 145 Commercial St.

Top image: Courtesy of Edgecomb Potters

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Located in Cumberland County, Freeport, Maine is perhaps best known for its picturesque outlet stores—even the local McDonald’s has been designed to look like a quaint bed and breakfast. No wonder Yankee Magazine named it “Best Shopping Town in New England.”

Once part of North Yarmouth, Freeport broke off and became its own entity on February 14, 1789. Bordering Brunswick and Durham to the north, Freeport shares borders with Cumberland and Harpswell in Casco Bay. In 1912, Leon Leonwood Bean changed the tenor of the town forever when he began selling the Bean boot in his apparel shop, L.L. Bean, Freeport’s main attraction.

Beyond L.L. Bean, here are five finds in Freeport you don’t want to miss.

Jill McGowan
Location: 56 Main Street

Jill McGowan, a former menswear pattern maker, and her sister and business partner, Jolene McGowan, created their first line—a collection of women’s white shirts—over 20 years ago. The pair started making their own clothes for school in the ’70s, using material and notions from the local fabric store. As entrepreneurs, they were on a mission to create the perfect garment, and so the Great White Shirt was born. Today their iconic shirts and seasonal collections—all made in the USA—can be found in their flagship Freeport store, as well as online and in stores throughout the country.

Azure Cafe
123 Main Street

A few doors down from L.L. Bean, Azure Cafe is owned by Jonas and Kate Werner. The couple left the corporate world in 2003 to open a cafe that features fresh, local ingredients. Their housemade New England Clam Chowder won Freeport’s Chowder Challenge—no small feat in a state known for fresh seafood—and picked up Yankee Magazine’s Editors Choice Award. Dine in or outside under their red umbrellas and watch the hustle and bustle pass you by.

RD Allen
13 Middle Street

If you want something to remember your Maine trip by, RD Allen’s affordable Maine watermelon tourmaline could be just the thing. Customers can pick the gem of their choice and help design a piece suited for them on site. In business for 11 years, RD Allen has been voted Best of the Best jewelry and gift store a few times over. Staff artisans handcraft everything from diamond earrings to lobster pendants and, yes, dog tags.

New Beginnings Consignment Boutique
27 Bow Street

Sure, outlets offer lower prices. But savvy shoppers will love the options at New Beginnings Consignment Boutique, Freeport’s first-rate consignment shop. If you are looking for that designer dress and heels or a trendy new bag, this is a must stop. Brands from Burberry and Garnet Hill, to Coach and Boden are not uncommon. Their slogan—“The Look for Less”—means you could leave with a treasure or three.

Scott Bowe Art Gallery
32 Maine Street

Scott Bowe Art Gallery is a mecca for local artists and dedicated to supporting their work. Why not top off your Freeport visit with a piece of Maine art? If you stop by the gallery, your chances of getting to talk with the artist are pretty good.

Top image: Photo courtesy of Azure Cafe.

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John Bisbee’s Brunswick, Maine work and environs was photographed by Take Magazine photo editor (and so much more), Izzy Berdan.

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John Bisbee: Maine sculptor, wannabe songwriter. Photo by Izzy Berdan

When not chopping up and pounding nails into beautiful art, Brunswick, Maine, artist John Bisbee loves to make music. “I write music when I have the chance,” Bisbee says. It’s still my favorite thing to do, to touch that guitar. Music and lyrics. It’s not very good—just what pops into my head. Melancholic, lonesome folk. Sadass white dude. I love it; probably few others do. I don’t really share it. But it is my favorite thing to do, when I’m not doing this. I love to discover chord progressions and try to put poetry to it.”

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On July 16, 2017, SPACE Gallery in Portland, Maine, hosted a fundraising bash to help finance a new roof for Lupinewood, a majority-trans living, arts, and organizing collective in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Providing sweet-ass sounds that encouraged total abandonment on the dance floor were bands Diva Cup, Paper Bee, and DJ Kobold, aka Andrew Huckins.

Portland, Maine and Greenfield, Massachusetts
Website

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Poké is the latest food trend sweeping New England, appearing on menus throughout the region and dedicated poké restaurants opening in Massachusetts and Connecticut. It makes sense, then, that foodie-focused Portland, Maine, would be the next place to jump aboard the poké train.

Jimmy and Samantha Liang, who previously owned a Chinese restaurant in Scarborough, opened Big Fin Poké in the Portland suburb of Westbrook in December 2016. Since then, the community’s response to the state’s first poké-only spot has been so great that they’re planning to expand the brand into a network of shops throughout the region.

Jimmy and Samantha Liang, owners of Big Fin Poke in Portland, Maine. Photo by Dominic Perri

Poké is the Hawaiian verb for “to section,” and that’s exactly what poké is: cut-up, deconstructed sushi. A traditional poké bowl consists of rice, furikake (a Japanese seasoning containing seaweed), poké (usually tuna or salmon), cucumbers, avocado, scallions, and sesame.

“I have always eaten sushi,” states Jimmy, “but it started to be a little boring . . . all wasabi and soy.” After trying poké with some Hawaiian friends in California, he “was amazed by the different flavors that were possible.” Once he got back to Maine, Jimmy started experimenting with the different sauces that now form the basis for the restaurant’s menu.

Photo by Dominic Perri

So what’s Big Fin Poké’s most popular poké bowl?

“It’s a toss-up,” says Jimmy, “between the Spicy Tuna and the Hawaiian Original,” the latter of which features tuna, sweet onion, green onion, chili flakes, sesame oil, seaweed, and Hawaiian sea salt.

With seven bowls to choose from—including meat and veggie options—and the ability to build your own, there’s decidedly nothing boring about this sushi.

Big Fin Poké – Jimmy and Samantha Liang, proprietors
Portland, Maine
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All photography by Dominic Perri

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Take is going on the road, checking out New England’s corners for everything from the best bodegas to tiny galleries and music spots. We’ll be adding towns as we come across them. Check back regularly for the latest New England finds. First up? Brunswick, Maine, home to a lot more than Bowdoin College.

Settled in 1628, Brunswick was initially known by its Native American name, Pejepscot. Indeed, the town’s website, notes that Maine Street—yes, that’s with an “e” of course—was “laid out by the ‘Pejepscot Proprietors’ in 1717 at a width of 12 rods (198 feet) so that travelers between Fort Pejepscot on the Androscoggin River and Maquoit Bay would always be nearly 100 feet from the woods on each side, providing protection from ambush.”

Another historical tidbit? Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabinˆwhile living in Brunswick where her husband taught at Bowdoin. She apparently, or so the story goes, got a vision for the book while praying in First Parish Church, which still sits in the center of town.

Here are five finds in Brunswick, Maine for you to check out during your next visit.

Photo by Katie Bingham-Smith

Danny’s Hot Dog Stand

Locals and visitors alike know that Danny’s is the place to go if you’ve got a hankering for a hot dog. Danny’s has been selling hot dogs—steamed or grilled, you decide—since 1982. Allow a little extra time to grab lunch as the line, while speedly, is almost always long. You can grab a dog, chips, and a drink for around $5.
Location: On the town green, 171-181 Maine Street, Brunswick, Maine

Photo courtesy of Estilo

Estilo

Estilo is the kind of resale place where you just never know what you’ll find. One day, you could score a pair of Frye boots, another day a Coach bag or one-of-a-kind jewelry. Locals know about Estilo. Now you do, too. You’re welcome.
Location: 10 Pleasant Street, Brunswick, Maine

Photo courtesy of Wilbur’s of Maine Chocolate Confections

Wilbur’s of Maine Chocolate Confections

Wilbur’s Of Maine Chocolate Confection’s is a bit of a mouthful, which seems appropriate given that filling your mouth—and belly—with delectable chocolate wonderfulness is their raison d’etre. With a focus on all things local, the family-owned business’s panoply of chocolate offerings includes chocolate-covered blueberries as well as chocolate-covered caramel with Maine sea salt.
Location: 143 Maine Street, Brunswick, Maine

Photo courtesy of Kings and Queens Hair Studio

Kings and Queens Hair Studio

Kings and Queens is both a throwback to the barbershops of yesteryear and a hair studio with its finger on what’s coming in hairstyles. Need a straight razor shave? A classic fade with custom designs? Extensions? Kings and Queens can likely help you.
Location: 50 Maine Street, Brunswick, Maine

Photo by Katie Bingham-Smith

Wyler’s

Wyler’s may have started as a pottery shop, but it’s grown into eclectic store that offers everything from women’s clothing to hand-crafted jewelry from Maine artists, accessories and toys. It’s a great shop to browse; you’re sure to find a gift for a friend and go home with something for yourself.
Location: 150 Maine Street, Brunswick, Maine

Top image Wilbur’s of Maine Chocolate Confections

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Diana Cherbuliez puts in the work. She can fix anything, from a busted car to a glitchy computer to an infestation of carpenter ants. Labor is her passion and tactile problem solving is her wheelhouse, as evidenced by Diana Cherbuliez works, her new exhibition now on view at the Grant Wahlquist Gallery in Portland, Maine.

The Vinalhaven-based sculptor wanted to find a meaningful way to deal with the impasse she reached after the death of her father, with whom she loved talking about art. “I hit a standstill,” she says. “I got clumsy. I had a complete physical disconnect to everything I was doing. I couldn’t sharpen tools. So I started thinking about that, about how I define myself through work.” That thinking led to pieces like Reclamation and quitting Time, fittingly named and made respectively from wasps and hornets nests, PVA glue, and magnets; her own hair, apple wood, and walnut. (To the latter she laughingly notes she is “desperately allergic.”)

Reclamation, 2017 | wasps and hornets nests, PVA glue, magnets, 6 x 18 ¼ x 9 ¾ in | Photo courtesy of the artist and Grant Wahlquist Gallery

None of this art was easy to create, and that’s the point. Cherbuliez enjoys the “torture” some of her work presents, and while she openly admits its persistent diaristic quality, she says she “wanted to not just make work about personal sadness, because it’s always more complex than that.” Multiplicities of meaning and material abound in her art, suffused with accessible wordplay and jokes as it elucidates the strenuous effort required to produce it.

“There’s so much art out there, there’s so much crap out there,” she says. “We all make crap, and I don’t see any need to make it unless it’s unique, unless I alone can make it.” Even though she lightheartedly writes off a lot of her work as “making things out of junk” and a byproduct of “the audacity of an arts education,” it’s hard to imagine anyone else crafting a piece like Cul-de-sac, a scale model of a half-made bed under which lies a naked wooden carving of the sculptor herself.

Cherbuliez speaks with acerbic wit, threading her perspective with humor as freely as she does in her artwork. “This world is so continually troubling,” she laments, describing how the scorched earth policies we’re facing affect her tastes in other kinds of art. “I can listen to some old country, but I’m pretty much unable to listen to anything other than rap and hip hop right now. Someone put on Joni Mitchell the other night, and I was like, ‘I’m gonna strangle that bitch.’”

In light of disturbing world events, Cherbuliez finds comfort in “conversations with strangers who probably have the opposite life experience,” which are doubly special when she has the chance to have such exchanges in galleries. She also likes the “limitless highway and limiting barrier” of the ocean around her. “On Vinalhaven the ferryboat could get canceled. And it gets canceled pretty frequently. It gets taken out of your hands, just like a blizzard will take options out of your hands. And I kind of like that.”

Homemaker (3), 2017 | worn-out Carhartt work pants, thread | 10 x 11 ¾ in | photo courtesy of the artist and Grant Wahlquist Gallery

Living on an island requires resourcefulness, a trait the artist can also attribute in part to environmentalist parents and to grandparents who weathered the Great Depression. Worn-down Carhartt pants are one among many salvaged materials Cherbuliez fashions into her work, which inspires frugality and patience in the face of excess. She thinks America’s lust for “prurient thrills” erodes the value placed on intellectual and physical craft. Her work could be considered a reaffirmation of both. “When you slow down your making of something, you invite the slowing down, I hope, of the visual investigation.”

She’s deeply unpretentious already, but New England’s immensely historical landscape gives Cherbuliez further motivation to stay modest. The old buildings, the trees, and the time-straddling isolation of Vinalhaven all inspire a particular humility. “It’s one of those places where I can relish my absolute momentary existence and complete irrelevance. It’s actually freeing. I am not important. I never will be.” Embracing life’s impermanence, Cherbuliez rejects the notion of honing celebrity over craft. “It’s not worth the space, or the materials, or the electricity, or filling up museums.”

As the title of her exhibition clearly underlines, Diana Cherbuliez will always value good work more than ego. “I’m here for a moment. The only thing I feel I really have a right to waste is my own time.”

Diana Cherbuliez—Sculptor
Vinalhaven, Maine
Website

Top image: Cul-de-sac, 2017 (detail) | spruce, scrap walnut, Masonite, tung oil, foam, broadcloth, chicken down, cotton | 10 ½ x 5 ¾ x 16 in.

All images courtesy of the artist and Grant Wahlquist Gallery

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Maine performance artist Sara Juli makes a point of saying the word vagina at least once a day. “It’s a perfectly lovely word,” Juli says from her home in Portland, Maine, where she in moved in 2014 with her husband and two children after 15 years in Brooklyn.

“It’s not a curse word or an offensive word,” she says. “It’s a body part. How can you empower girls if they can’t say a part of their body? It should be celebrated, not shunned.”

Unfortunately for Juli as a new mother, that vagina gave her a lot of trouble, going into spasms that led to four years of urinary incontinence. Luckily for her as an artist, she found a way to use humor as the basis of a performance piece based on her actual diagnosis of tense vagina, the treatment for it, and the chaotic years of new motherhood.

Sara Juli performing Tense Vagina: an Actual Diagnosis at Asheville Masonic Temple in 2016, photo by Kristofer Alan Thompson

The piece, “Tense Vagina: an Actual Diagnosis,” premiered at the experimental SPACE Gallery in Portland in 2015 and has been touring ever since. “I was quietly suffering,” Juli says. “I assumed that peeing in your pants all the time was part of the experience of having a baby. Women say they suffer their whole life from this. What I love about using humor on a taboo topic is that it allows people to listen to you.”

Treatment for dysfunctional pelvic floor muscles at a pelvic floor rehabilitation center in Portland form the basis of Juli’s piece. At her first visit, she started choreographing her performance. She weaves in what she calls “the underbelly of motherhood, the loneliness in the early years of raising children.”

This hour-long solo uses humor, movement, sounds, songs, text and audience participation, Kegel exercises, and vibrators “in a non-sexualized way,” Juli says. “I think it’s empowering for women to think about their vaginas and what their vaginas need.” In program notes, she includes information about the location of local pelvic floor rehabilitation centers.

A native of Waterford, Connecticut, Juli trained in modern and improvisational dance, graduating from Skidmore College with a degree in dance and anthropology. To Juli, the two fields are related. “Dance is all about connecting with people,” she says, “and anthropology is about connecting with people in all cultures.”

Juli’s work has been performed in New York at such places as Performance Space 122, Danspace Project, Movement Research at Judson Church, and Joe’s Pub as part of the Dancenow/NYC Festival, as well as nationally and internationally. She will perform “Tense Vagina” at Ko Festival of Performance in mid-July in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Juli credits the move to Maine with invigorating her creation of new solo work. “In New York, thousands of voices are similar to yours,” she says. “My career has taken off since I moved to New England. My voice is stronger. The air quality alone makes you feel happy.”

When she is not working on new performance projects, Juli is building a fundraising consulting practice, Surala Consulting. In the practice, she advises national artists and non-profits on strategic fundraising solutions. “The arts are threatened in a major way,” she says, “and making sure that artists have a diverse fundraising profile is critical.”

Sara Juli–performance artist
Portland, Maine
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Top Image Sara Juli performing Tense Vagina: an Actual Diagnosis at American Dance Festival 2016, photo by Grant Halverson

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Matthew Delamater was searching for his passion after graduating college with a degree in business administration and found it right in his hometown of Oxford, Maine. He was 25 and had just landed his first acting role playing a salesman on the train in the opening scene of The Music Man.

“There was no pay, no ego—just people working so hard to create the best production they could,” he says. Although Delamater admits he had no idea what he was doing, he fell in love with acting because of that performance. “I loved the teamwork aspect of it, that you had a role to play, and that the overall goal was for the show to connect with people and when you did it, it was amazing,” he says.

Matthew Delamater in American Odyssey, photo courtesy NBC

As a lifelong Maine resident, Delamater says he has done and seen some of his favorite work right here in Portland. “There is great theater here, film and even commercial work for an actor, and though it’s certainly not as plentiful as the bigger markets of course,” he says. “But given how accessible it is to great film markets like Boston and even New York, you can really make it work.”

Delamater’s past year proves his point. He had a part in Detroit, a film directed by Kathryn Bigelow, which releases on August 4, 2017, as well as in the major motion picture Daddy’s Home 2 to be released November 10, 2017.

Delamater keeps himself plenty busy in Portland’s thriving local theater scene. He was recently is in a production of Constellations by Nick Payne at SPACE Gallery in Portland, directed by Sean Mewshaw. “It’s a beautiful play about relationships and the infinite possibilities that the universe creates,” he says. “It’s basically about the choices we make in our lives and and how different choices can manifest entirely different universes.”

Like most actors, Delamater has a wish list. “One dream I do have I suppose is to play a significant supporting role in a significant independent film. Having the access to the kind of roles that I do in Boston is amazing, but usually it’s the theater that allows you to explore larger characters,” he says. “Some day I’d love to really dive into a character on screen that has the depth and development that typically I have only been able to explore on stage. But truly, any opportunity to do real, honest work that connects with people really is the dream.”

In the meantime, he’s enjoying theater life in Maine. “I feel blessed that I can live in the beautiful state and city that I love and be a part of a community that is so vibrant and supportive and be able to act as much as I do.”

Matthew Delamater–actor
Portland, Maine
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Top image by Emily Delamater Photography

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