Bangor? I never met 'er!

I wasn’t trying to say Bangor should become a Portland clone. Just that there are some similarities, but it’s much further up 95, so it would weed out most of the pretentious people from the big city.

> They did this by not catering to their college communities but their 20-40communities.

Bangor is doing this exact thing, though. Bars, pubs, restaurants, social activities, etc are all mostly available in town or nearby. I'm square in the middle of the age range you mention, and nearly everything in Bangor falls within my rough interests. I'd go so far as to say that Bangor could be doing a better job by prioritizing things for kids, parents, and older folks to do.

• Year-round family-friendly indoor entertainment. Where I live now, we have indoor playgrounds for kids of all ages that also have bars. They're apparently great for meeting other parents, arranging playdates (without having to clean up your house for company), hosting birthday parties, etc.
• A barbershop/cigar lounge/social club/billiards hall combo for folks who are into that kind of thing.
• A real wine bar. Bangor Wine & Cheese is a good stop-gap (especially for oils.. my god, I miss that place), but a dedicated drinking space would get many women's perpetual patronage.

> This is everything from the sushi and steal restaurant, to mexicali blues to walmart. A cursory look at the products from local shops tell you this.

Did you mean Smoke and Steel? They cater to people who like meat, beer, and throwing axes... and they're priced in such a way that it pretty much cuts out college students. I used to live right next to Mexicali Blues, and the only people I'd ever see in there aside from tourists were new-age hippy girls and older women. Walmart caters to everyone (which is why two of them can exist so close together).

Honestly, the only stores I can think of that primarily serve college students are the vape stores and maybe dispensaries... and even then, there's a healthy mix of folks who enjoy both of those things.

Genuinely curious here: What would you like to see as far as new businesses go in Bangor? A great skates revival? Another bowling alley or movie theater that can't turn a profit? Another microbrewery that sells skunky IPA with a Maine-based pun for the name?

It’s a state university with a budget bigger than we can imagine, yet it’s facilities are poor and run down, of course it’s got poor leadership.

I don't know how it is these days, but Perry's Nut House freaked me right tf out when I was a kid. To the point that I refuse to go back as an adult.

Bars and clubs are commercial spaces. That’s all they need to survive, right?

People from the county will drive down to Bangor for lunch and drive back home. To say it doesn’t draw from the north isn’t accurate. Bangor just doesn’t have a lot of pull from any direction. However the north relies on it heavily as it is the closest place of convenience for a lot of things.

Seconding this, if only for the books on the second floor.

No way go to one of the little motels in Millinocket!

Yeah, that relativity paired with our expectations is just fun to think about. Brains are weird.

I assume you mean grown,

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I played 4 sports year round all the way to freshmen year highschool. I quit all of them because I couldn’t take the parents anymore. I just wasn’t as competitive/ took it as serious, and it was ridiculous that brown adult parents would shit talk kids

If you like being bored and disappointed. A commenter already suggested your best bet. The coast or the woods. There is nothing in Bangor you probably can't find at home.

it would take longer to go to the airport, get through security, wait, board, pre-flight checks, land, deplane than it would just be to make the flight. There's a bus for those that don't want to drive.

Oh, I know all about traffic. I lived in a major metro for several years precovid and during, and was stuck in multi hour jams and commuted through horrendous rush hour traffic daily. Bangor is nothing in the grand scheme, but that doesn’t mean traffic by the mall on the weekend isn’t relatively horrible for the area.

Bangor’s a great place to get a hotel room and take a nice hot shower after a few days of hiking in Baxter State Park. I recommend it as a central location utilized to make day trips to some of the most beautiful spots in Maine. Get up at dawn’s crack and climb Katahdin, or head to Belfast, or hike Gulf Hagas then keep driving to eat lunch at Abbott Bakery… visit Fort Knox and go up to the Penobscot Narrows Bridge observatory.

I said the same thing, only phrased it differently and have been down voted. 🤷🏼‍♀️

It isn't that bad. There's a food truck scene that is kinda there. The summer concerts rival what Portland sees. There's several festivals.

Really it is a very nice city to live in, or near by.

It's a damn shame, that attitude hurts the future of the state economy.

The bunker fuel argument doesn't hold water (🤣) because those ships remove far more emissions from the roadways. Though it sounds like you're the type of person that knows that. 😁

Not picking on you, but it's wild to see how we all experience things relatively. I know exactly what you're talking about, and I also used to think that was bad... until I moved out of state. Stillwater and Hogan wouldn't even register on my radar as "traffic" now.

INCREDIBLY low pay for coaching, and horrible attitudes of parents. /thread

PLEASE, I am begging you, watch this clip. Dick Stacy was some sort of genius!

TV ad for Dick Stacey’s Plaza Motel

It should, but that’s not the way Portland perceives it from my experience. They don’t want more trucks in town and are already looking at emissions from ships due to bunker fuel being dirtier. Maybe with the railhead? Basically, they don’t want the commercial on Commercial Street.

I had a similar experience a couple years ago. I was renting a very nice, newly built, 600 sq ft apartment in Portland for $1800. Moving up to Bangor I was looking for something similar. Couldn’t find it. A comparable apartment within walking distance to work was $2,500/month and I couldn’t justify paying more for the Bangor apartment than I had been paying in Portland. I ended up in an 1,100 sq ft apartment in Orono for $1,200/month.

As someone who makes much more than the average Bangor salary I would have happily paid more for a place but I couldn’t justify paying that much more for no more space or amenities so I ended up competing with college kids. And who is going to rent to a college kid when the other option is a couple that works works full time and had previously been renting a place 50% more expensive?