Does this museum have a gift shop? Would not be antiquey- but def has weird covered.

https://cryptozoologymuseum.com

Watch out, I made a similar point in a housing cost discussion a few weeks ago and got accused of supporting "trickle down housing" lmao.

Bangor was the short adventure for my family of five growing up in the 80s and 90s in The County. The Mall! Borders! Strawberrys! Knapps for some reason! It was the 'fancy' trip my family could afford in gasoline to get away from the country up north.

I remember in the 2010s Bangor was on the up and up....Perhaps Covid killed the momentum?

Pro Libris was the one I was thinking about. Good prices for old books

The current state of UMO and all of the umaine schools is stagnant to declining. So, I just don’t see how it’s surrounding town can possibly benefit unless there is actual intentional growth of the university. In fact, we moved here from out of state and I have a high school aged kid. He has no interest in the Maine schools. Very few of his friends have interest in the maine schools. They lack resources compared to other state universities, that’s the problem. Why would they go there? Especially if they are mid to high achievers that will get scholarships to other state schools with more resources and thriving towns with more people their age?

Given the aging population here, Umaine and Maine should be investing in a medical school. You want people to stay in Bangor and fulfill the workforce needs? Get a good medical program going. It’s already an R1, but doing very little to build on that status. Heck, I had a friend who was told not to apply to their physics grad program by a physics professor that works there because of how bad the resources are, and they really want to stay in Maine for grad school.

Maybe it was better pre COVID though.

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Best I can do is a worse version of portland.

The videos coming out of the public school bathrooms are all over the public fight reddits. Bangors future is dark.

If your high school basketball team stinks and you want a chance at playing basketball beyond high school, you’re going to go find a better team to play on so you can get noticed.

Bull Moose comes to mind although not strictly books

Lakeside Antiques in Manchester has some weird stuff. There's a booth on the far side of the ground floor where I got a giant preserves scorpion in a frame. Make sure you poke around upstairs as well. Think they are only open Wed-Sun, or something like that.

Twin Bridges Market in Leeds has a fake skeleton dressed in funky clothes, with a sign that says "Free hugs." I may have hugged the skeleton at least once. It's on the way to the river portage, which has an old cemetery and fantastic views of the Androscoggin River rapids. Free walking trails around the island.

So I'd visit Lakeside Antiques, then drive to Leeds, get a sub at Twin Bridges, hug the skeleton, and have a picnic at the river portage.

Perry's Nut House on route 1 if you're hungry.... or feel like you belong in a nut house.

Movie theater with the experience of the Alamo Draft House might do okay. Especially as it could also double as a small band/music venue.

Doesn’t seem to be much in the way of marketing Bangor to those that don’t already live there—tourists, southern Maine residents etc. There’s an underlying Down East vibe of not wanting to be found or inundated with outsiders IMO

I actually do have autism. And if you're the Pope then Bob Marley would be fucking estatic to have one from Maine. I'm not a damn ableist. Now you can very kindly go fuck yourself and dispose of your retarded ideologies.

Wow thank you everyone this list is great! Can’t wait to check them out

Ugh, I went to a show there when they were just opening up last year.. the restroom line was so long (waited close to an hour) that we just left next time either of us needed to pee. Hopefully things will be better this summer, but definitely hesitant to go back.

Bangor’s infrastructure is overextended. As economies shift and population declines, there’s an over abundance of infrastructure. Also not to mention, urban renewal hit Bangor hard with destruction of its first city hall for the Haymarket parking garage and Union Station being a strip mall, among other things.

The city has a good chance to get it together. I think when passenger rail service returns we’ll see a downtown-centric approach to revamping the city’s and regions economy.

I have celiac and may be moving there, so I'm curious too

Use MapQuest

Just went there Friday with my girlfriend, can confirm it does have quite the wide variety of oddities.

Good used books stores? Anything other than Pro Libris?

I was in Bangor last week...it didn't seem so different than what OP described.

This being r/Maine, so do I

There's a booth in Gurley Antiques on Route 1 in Scarborough that specializes in antique funeral and medical equipment.

> I have autism

Lmfao. Sure, and I'm the Pope.

I'm not being a keyboard warrior at all. "Retarded" is a slur whether you like it or not, and if you use it then you're not just ableist, but you are absolutely piss-poor at using the English language. That's not even my own personal opinion--that's just pure straight facts. There are a shit-ton of better adjectives to use.

All you're doing is making yourself out to be an ableist who has a 50/50 chance of playing the autism card for empathy points.