If you’ve walked down Portland’s Congress Street at night this summer, you may have noticed a mysterious new store at 576A, just past Springer’s Jewelers.
Though there is no sign on the storefront to attract people’s attention, the door is kept invitingly open until late into the night. A colorful display in the front window is filled with all kinds of unusual items, including a giant, hairy, three-foot-long tarantula figure, various vintage LP covers and movie cases, and an Alice Cooper doll. Inside, there are often a few people gathered as music plays on the turntable or a movie plays on the laserdisc player.
The name of the store is Strange Maine, and they sell a fascinating variety of oddities. From Atari 2600 cartridges to a Porky Pig/Bugs Bunny comic book and 1974 movies like “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die” (1962), they’re sure to have something that will surprise or amuse you. They also sell more recent and mainstream movies like “Ali,” “Artificial Intelligence,” and “In the Bedroom.” They also sell works by local artists. The store opened just over five months ago this past April.
And the prices are well within an average student’s budget — most videos are about $5, LPs start at 25 cents, and comic books are $3 each. Paintings and other works by local artists are mostly under $50.
I sat down with owner Brendan Evans recently to ask him about his new store.
Free Press: Why did you decide to call the store Strange Maine?
Brendan: There was a book of horror stories called Strange Maine that was published in the mid ’80s… they’re all by authors that had some sort of tie to Maine… and all the stories took place in Maine… I just think Maine is a really interesting, fascinating state.
FP: How did it start? What was your original idea for the business?
B: My friend and I were originally thinking about driving around in a beat-up old van, renting people videos out of the back, just going from town to town… it was sort of a pipe dream, but we had both always wanted to have a video store since we were kids. And then we just decided to kind of do something that would actually possibly work, whereas the video van probably wouldn’t have gotten off the ground.
FP: Why the hours? Noon to midnight is kind of unusual for Congress Street.
B: Well… I wanted a place like this to exist [in Portland], and since it really didn’t, I figured I should just do it. And a big part of that is being open until midnight. I’m frustrated, being a nighttime person living in a big city and having very few places to go after even six or seven o’clock at night. If even a few people come in after 10 each night, it’s well worth it to me.
FP: When you say you wanted a place like this to exist, how else do you mean that besides the hours?
B: One thing I am always going to strive to do with this space is let pretty much anyone who wants to put their art up in here, and just give a few people a chance to, if not sell some of their art, then at least show it to some people…
I [also] like the idea of this place being sort of a meeting place for a lot of the diverse people working in and around Portland… as far as I can tell, everybody in Portland is doing something pretty interesting, and a lot of them are doing things along similar lines but really never would meet up, just because there really aren’t too many common meeting places for people other than bars and coffee shops.
FP: What’s the most expensive thing you sell?
B: Haven’t ever sold anything for more than 50 bucks… we have an Atari Jaguar for 35 bucks in the box with a game. [That] might be kind of steep though, I might drop that a little bit at some point soon.
FP: What’s the cheapest thing you sell?
B: Got a lot of stuff for a penny and three cents, 30 cents… every once in a while you’ll find some of the books or movies are marked “free” or three cents… sometimes I’ll do it sort of for a joke… I put about eight copies of “Independence Day,” the movie, into the free box out front. I don’t want to have that movie on the shelf for some reason. It’s certainly not that much worse than any other movie that we’ve got, but I don’t know… just can’t stand selling that one.
FP: What item do you have for sale right now that you would recommend?
B: Just got this copy of Led Zeppelin III, which is one of my favorite albums… the thing looks like it just came out of the factory, it’s in such great shape.
FP: Is there anything you’d like readers to know about your store?
B: I think that if anybody just spent a good 10 or 15 minutes looking around they would find something that they wanted.
Brian O’Keefe can be reached at [email protected]