This Just In

Movies are moving, hot dogs are hopping, Binga's is burning

DEIRDRE FULTON — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:07:24 GMT

Venue watch
Even as the temperatures drop and we head into hibernation mode for winter, Portland's drinking, dining, nightlife, and shopping scenes continue to evolve. Here's a round-up of comings and goings.

Even as the temperatures drop and we head into hibernation mode for winter, Portland's drinking, dining, nightlife, and shopping scenes continue to evolve. Here's a round-up of comings and goings:

The independent movie house MOVIES ON EXCHANGE is leaving its 32-year, name-affording home on lower Exchange Street and moving to the PORTLAND MUSEUM OF ART, where it will be known as the Movies at the Museum. In some ways, this is a return for co-owner and film professor Steve Halpert, who showed movies at the museum during the 1970s, and who's owned the theater with his wife Judy since 1980. PMA's director of education, Dana Baldwin, says the Halperts will work closely with the museum to carry forward the Movies' mission to bring high-quality alternative, foreign, and classic films to Portland. The partnership will also afford the PMA a chance to expand its audience, and the scope of its exhibits, thereby making "the museum an even more exciting, bustling place," she said. For example, during this winter's "Backstage Pass: Rock & Roll Photography" exhibit, the Movies at the Museum plans to screen rock-related films. Visit portlandmuseum.org/events/movies for more info.

Since moving a few doors down Free Street, ARABICA has doubled its business, insiders say.

A very nice gentleman at the corporate headquarters of PAPAYA KING in New York City confirmed that James Estabrook, who previously operated a Papaya King cart in Deering Oaks Park, will open a franchise at 5 Dana Street, where Big Mama's Diner used to be. Estabrook, reached via e-mail, says he hopes to open his doors by mid-December, with no major changes inside the space. Papaya King hot dogs, incidentally, are "tastier than filet mignon," according to the parent company's Web site.

PORT CITY MUSIC HALL at 504 Congress Street (the old Keystone Theatre/upstairs of the Stadium), plans to have its first major event on New Year's Eve (with performers TBA). The developers are currently hiring staff. Earlier this month, they submitted their "non-conforming signage" application to the city, which would allow them to remove the huge "The Stadium" lettering from above the door; they hope to replace it with a 1940s-style marquee.

Mad Horse starts new midweek theater series

MEGAN GRUMBLING — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:29:47 GMT

Darkness falls early
This month, Mad Horse Theater Company offers the inaugural installment of a new way to savor theater: in an array of morsels, with no waiting until the weekend.

PACTS priorities are a green-transport victory

DEIRDRE FULTON — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:28:49 GMT

Reality-based community
Portland Area Comprehensive Transportation Committee showed that Southern Maine’s transportation priorities are rooted in our current economic conditions.

Sony’s loss is Portland’s gain

DEIRDRE FULTON — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 06:18:59 GMT

Music money
Three local music entities are reaping the benefits of a major national lawsuit against big-name music institutions.

Out for a spin

JEFF INGLIS — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 06:11:33 GMT

One week, one limited-edition Porsche — what to do?
Driving a 2008 Porsche Boxster RS 60 Spyder Limited Edition is an exercise in ridiculous, indulgent impracticality. But it's fun.

Driving a 2008 Porsche Boxster RS 60 Spyder Limited Edition is an exercise in ridiculous, indulgent impracticality. But it’s fun — and it might get your name written on the inside of teenage girls’ pants.

Through no effort of my own, a man I had never met drove that car — number 296 out of 1960 ever made — into the office parking lot last week, and handed me the key. When he had called out of the blue offering the car as part of a Porsche marketing and promotion effort, all I’d done was tell him I’d drive it and return it in one piece. I made no promise to write about it, and only a vague verbal assurance that I could drive a stick-shift car. (For the record, my regular car, a 1995 Subaru Impreza wagon, is a stick-shift. So I wasn’t lying.)

On the very first night, it failed utterly as a utilitarian object. My wife and I were slated to pick up a friend (who was in town on business) at her hotel and take her to a restaurant for dinner. But the Boxster has just two seats, so within hours of receiving the key to a $65,000 car, one of just 800 in North America, I had to leave it parked in the garage while we picked up our friend in my wife’s 2000 Subaru Impreza Outback wagon.

That was the first of a few downers. Other low points were general paranoia about police officers — my uncle, a genuine “car guy” — had reminded me, when I called to gloat, that “a ticket is wasted money.” And then there was the horrific downturn the nation’s economy took, almost from the moment I received the Porsche’s key. At various points I drove past the panhandlers near the Deering Oaks Park I-295 on-ramp, and along the social-services end of Congress Street, in a car I did not own, could not afford, and could never imagine myself ever actually owning, even if one day I do have that kind of money just sitting in the bank. Don’t ask me what they thought of me — I was studiously avoiding their eyes.

Let’s move on to the high points.

Some of the people I took for rides surprised me, and even themselves. A freelancer who normally bums around in a 1980s-era Volvo with more than 300,000 miles on it turned out to also own an ancient sports car he keeps in good repair. And an utterly grounded, down-to-earth college friend became totally flighty upon sitting in the passenger seat, and spent much of the ride extolling the just-discovered virtues of expensive cars (except when she was feeling guilty for being so materialistic).

Skatepark design picked

JEFF INGLIS — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 21:14:27 GMT

Results

Portlandhenge returns

CHRISTIAN MCNEIL — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 05:00:53 GMT

Alignments
Sorry to be a drag, but summer is officially over: at 11:44 am on Monday, September 22, the sun passed directly over the Earth’s equator to mark the autumnal equinox.

STRAIGHT SHOT: Right down West Street.

Remember the halcyon days of July, when we watched fireworks explode over the East End? Sorry to be a drag, but summer is officially over: at 11:44 am on Monday, September 22, the sun passed directly over the Earth’s equator to mark the autumnal equinox. But as a parting gift, summer is leaving us with another, quieter spectacle in the sky — this time over the streets of the West End.

Besides marking the beginning of fall and roughly equal time between day and night, there’s another quirk about this time of year: on the equinox, no matter where you are on the globe, the sun rises due east, and sets due west. Here in Portland, there are four streets in the West End — Bowdoin, Carroll, Pine, and West — which happen to follow a precise east-to-west course to the Western Prom.

For a few days on either side of the equinoxes, the setting sun shines directly down the middle of those streets, and nearly every house along these streets — even if it’s blocks away from the Prom — has a view of the sunset. One of the best vantage points, in fact, is in front of the Soap Bubble Laundromat at the end of West Street, nearly 600 yards from the park.

This is happening all over the country, wherever there’s a city with a street grid oriented to the cardinal directions and open views to the horizon. On the National Mall, the Washington Monument casts its first shadow of the day over Lincoln’s statue, and then, 12 hours later, over the peak of the Capitol dome. In Houston, the setting sun is blinding commuters on the Katy Freeway. Throughout most of Chicago, people can watch the sun rise over Lake Michigan and set over the prairie.

Over the next few days, though, the sunsets will move rapidly to the southwest as the days get shorter. Still, if you miss it this week, the show repeats itself in the West End on the first day of spring — and also on different streets, at different times of the year. Portland’s skewed, inconsistent street grid can function as a sort of Stonehenge, marking the passage of the seasons by the march of sunrises and sunsets across the horizon.

On the winter solstice, the rising sun’s rays line up roughly with the course of Winter Street. On the summer solstice, daybreak lights up Pleasant Street. Are these just coincidences, or were the seafaring founders who surveyed and named these streets employing their knowledge of celestial navigation?

Celebrate Words and Images

MEGAN GRUMBLING — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 04:59:40 GMT

Speed talking
There will be plenty of zoom, dynamism, and edge in the multi-media celebration that will launch the latest Words and Images .

Vote for your favorite design online

DEIRDRE FULTON — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:53:45 GMT

Skatepark rolls forward
Slowly but surely, the city’s skaters (and bikers) are moving closer to getting the skatepark they need.

Will FairPoint run out of money?

JEFF INGLIS — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:43:34 GMT

Land-line woes
Wall Street’s melt down could burn consumers throughout Northern New England — especially those in Maine.

Wall Street’s melt down could burn consumers throughout Northern New England — especially those in Maine.

The flashpoint is FairPoint Communications, the state and the region’s principal phone company.

On Monday, FairPoint borrowed $200 million in cash for fear its major lenders might collapse and make that money unavailable.

FairPoint’s financial positions have been under scrutiny since the January 2007 announcement that the North Carolina-based company would buy Verizon’s northern New England landline operations (see “We Told You So,” by Jeff Inglis, July 4).

But the company’s financial struggles worsened Monday, when Lehman Brothers, a major lender to FairPoint, filed for bankruptcy protection.

Lehman was one of a group of lenders who collectively had offered to loan FairPoint $400 million. Of that total, Lehman was responsible for 30 percent, or $120 million, according to financial statements from the publicly traded FairPoint. (Spokesmen for the company did not return phone calls before the Phoenix’s deadline.)

Before this week, FairPoint had already borrowed $170 million of that group’s $400 million. Monday’s loan, also from those lenders, maxed out one of its largest available lines of credit and gave FairPoint $200 million more cash on hand. A company spokesman told CNN that he expected the $30 million in remaining credit to become unavailable due to the financial market problems. (It may sound like a lot of money, but it’s really small potatoes in the context of corporate financing. FairPoint, for example, borrowed most of the $2.3 billion it paid Verizon for the land-lines.)

Maine utilities regulators say having a cash reserve that the company spends down over time is better than not being able to pay for investments because money isn’t available from loans. But it’s a sign of how much FairPoint is relying on credit — rather than revenue from customers — to keep its finances afloat.

Making that sign more ominous is FairPoint’s admission to CNN that this move is more expensive than borrowing cash as the company needs to spend it, because the interest FairPoint earns on the funds it hoards will be less than the interest it owes on the loans. So FairPoint will be losing money just sitting still.

Also Monday, the company announced it would sit still longer, delaying its full takeover of telecommunications land-lines in northern New England until at least January 2009. In the meantime, FairPoint is paying Verizon $16 million a month to run the phone systems in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

Local races heat up

DEIRDRE FULTON — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:53:44 GMT

Get involved
Your attention may have been on national politics over the past few weeks, but it’s time to switch gears a bit.

The mentally ill, criminalized

LANCE TAPLEY — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:39:26 GMT

Common nonsense
She is afraid he will continue to be kept in the Supermax, which will make him worse, she says.

Hate-crime victim needs help, justice

JEFF INGLIS AND DEIRDRE FULTON — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:38:13 GMT

Public safety
In response to a hate crime and the serious injuries inflicted on its victim over the weekend, there will be a concert at 9 pm Friday at the Asylum.

Moving

DEIRDRE FULTON — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:27:49 GMT

Going green
I moved in August, from a largish two-bedroom on the Hill to a smallish one-bedroom downtown.

I moved in August, from a largish two-bedroom on the Hill to a smallish one-bedroom downtown. Aside from the lasting psychological damage inflicted on my two skittish cats, and the general chaos that comes with any move, things went relatively smoothly. Still, relocating can have a sizeable carbon footprint. I tried to be mindful; here are some steps I took — or ideas I'll remember for next time:

PURGE
Of course, getting rid of stuff would have been easier if I hadn’t purchased it in the first place. But since that wasn’t the case, I had to be brutal: When was the last time I used/wore/enjoyed this item? If the answer was more than a year ago (if ever), it got tossed — even if it was a gift, even if it had sentimental value. From now on, I’m giving my memory more credit: photos, smells, and stories are effective nostalgia-inducers that take up decidedly less space than sweatshirts and nonsense tchotchkes.

DISCARD
A big (and headache-inducing) part of purging was actually disposing of the stuff I wasn’t keeping, especially because I wanted to ensure maximum reuse and recycling. I used the following resources:

Riverside Recycling Center Open from 7 am to 4 pm Monday through Saturday, the city’s recycling center accepts large household items, bulky waste, and all types of construction debris. Disposal rates are fairly reasonable, and you can find them at publicworks.portlandmaine.gov/riversiderecyclingfacility.asp. (And in case you’re wondering, no one snickers if you cry and take camera-phone pics as you bid farewell to a much-loved sofa.)

Material Objects For sellable clothes, purses, and shoes. (Once you acknowledge that you’re never going to wear those pants, no matter how cool or small they are, call to make an appointment to consign: 207.774.1241.)

Goodwill For less-great clothing (why did I have six navy-blue hooded sweatshirts?) and various household goods.

Friends/acquaintances I’d rather my dartboard be enjoyed by someone I know than have a stranger use it.

Though I didn’t use either of them this time around, Freecycle and Craigslist are also good ways to unload random objects — and even to vet future owners. Yard sales are always a possibility, if you have a lot of desirable stuff. And sites like Gazelle.com, BookMooch.com, and CashforLaptops.com (I’ve used this one and had a good experience) specialize in giving specific types of items new lives.

A threat, but not to security

LANCE TAPLEY — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:20:46 GMT

Deane Brown battles on
Maine prisoner Deane Brown, 44, is no longer in solitary confinement, though he remains far from Maine.

Facebooking the convention

DEIRDRE FULTON — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:11:09 GMT

News feed
We rounded up a few Maine luminaries who’ve alighted in the Mile High City for the Democratic National Convention, and translated their observations into Facebook speak.

Mainers off to Denver

DEIRDRE FULTON — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:43:11 GMT

Peace talks
Two well-known Mainers will take a peace petition to the Democratic National Convention in Denver this weekend, aimed specifically at opposing military action, flat-out war, and economic sanctions against Iran.

Portland City Council highlights water needs

DEIRDRE FULTON — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:44:58 GMT

Water ways
City councilor Dave Marshall will speak at this Wednesday’s farmers’ market in Monument Square about the importance of creating a national water trust fund.

Stoned in Starks — for a cause

DEIRDRE FULTON — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:40:32 GMT

Pot party
It’s not just toking and tunes that the weekend is intended to promote.

Is the Mountain of Rock crumbling?

DEIRDRE FULTON — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 22:00:03 GMT

Changes at WTOS
The rock radio station in Augusta that helped launch the careers of bands such as Civil Disturbance and Dead Season is undergoing major changes.