Al Diamon
Chalk Squawk
I like Bar Harbor. It has that ocean thing going on. Atlantic, I think. And there’s the big outdoor Acadia whatsit. But mostly when I visit, I hang out, depending on my mood, at the Lompoc Café (“poetry is dead, but bocce is alive”), the Thirsty Whale (“poetry is dead, but NASCAR is alive”) or Geddy’s Pub (“I think I’m dead – get me a Bloody Mary”). Perhaps anticipating that potential customers traveling on their hands and knees might have difficulty locating their establishments, the owners of some Bar Harbor businesses have taken chalk in hand and drawn advertisements on the sidewalks outside their doors.
Geddy’s has been doing this for years, and I’ve never had any trouble finding the place.
But, as with so many other useful things (enriched uranium, puffin parts), the police don’t like it. Town councilors have even called it “cheesy” and “tacky.”
Trouble is, there doesn’t appear to be any law in Bar Harbor against being cheesy and tacky. (Wouldn’t be good for the souvenir trade.) While the cops have threatened to cite sidewalk artists for criminal mischief, defacing public property and even soliciting (“hey, sailor, want to buy a t-shirt that says ‘Maine Is For Lovers’?”), the police chief admitted the district attorney (alleged to be in the pocket of the powerful chalk industry) was unlikely to prosecute such cases. Town officials are currently studying whether a specific ordinance dealing with scribbling on sidewalks is needed.
Hope they remember to exempt kids playing hopscotch and the Dig Safe folks.
The issue of what you can and cannot do on municipal pedestrian walkways isn’t limited to Bar Harbor. In Portland, residents of the Parkside neighborhood have taken to running out in the streets and shouting at alleged prostitutes standing on street corners and whistling at passing vehicles.
Whistling even disrupted a recent meeting of the neighborhood association called to discuss the issue, although the offender turned out to be a man.
Even though it’s legal to dance and sing for the tourists on most Portland streets, the performers claim the cops are forcing them to move along. A city councilor promised to investigate.
A legal matter of a different sort got the attention of Wallace Paul, chairman of the Millinocket Town Council. Paul was asked to submit evidence that the son of a local couple was not a polygamist.
Millinocket native Ben Clark is a Peace Corps volunteer in Bandjoun, Cameroon, where he applied for a marriage license. Not so fast, said the mayor of Bandjoun, how do we know you’re not a polygamist? Polygamy is apparently legal in Cameroon, but potential grooms must state a preference for one wife or many. Clark was opting for the uni-spouse route. The mayor wrote to Paul asking for confirmation of Clark’s unmarried status. Paul checked the records in Maine and wrote back, stating there no weddings or other blots on Clark’s record.
In Ogunquit, it’s the municipality itself that may have run afoul of the law, although not because the town has been married multiple times or spends its leisure time inscribing messages in chalk on its sidewalks. Ogunquit’s offense is that it operates public parking lots at a profit.
State law says once municipal parking facilities are paid for, the charge for leaving a vehicle there must be adjusted downward so that the money collected doesn’t amount to more than the cost of maintaining and operating the lot. The town’s lawyer is reviewing the statute, but if it’s valid, it could require Ogunquit to forfeit much of the $1.5 million a year it earns from providing places for tourists to park. Such a loss would probably result in higher property taxes.
To offset that increased expense, some less-than-honest people may be resorting to drastic measures. The U.S. Coast Guard and Maine Marine Patrol report that thieves are swiping brass and bronze bells from navigational buoys.
At least seven bells, each valued at between $400 and $1,500, have been stolen. Suddenly, chalk drawings on sidewalks don’t seem nearly as serious.
One final legal note: The Wildlife Alliance of Maine (who knew moose, squirrels and bears were that organized?) and the Animal Welfare Institute (they get welfare!!?!) have sued the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife in an attempt to further restrict trappers from accidentally catching endangered Canada lynx.
To settle a previous lawsuit, the state has already reduced the size of foothold traps permitted, but the number of lynx captured has still been increasing, with eight snagged in just 29 days. All were released unharmed and given coupons good for free parking in Ogunquit, but that wasn’t sufficient to appease the plaintiffs.
And now some news items as brief as a whistle in the Parkside evening or the life of a chalk drawing on a rainy Bar Harbor afternoon:
Traffic in Maine is down this summer by 7 percent, the second-steepest decline in the nation.
High gas prices get the blame.
That might actually be good news, because the state can’t afford to resurface all the roads that were supposed to get new pavement this summer.
High prices for liquid asphalt are at fault. Eighty-five miles of highway – about 10 percent of the total paving schedule – will have to wait until next year.
Mainers are doing well at the Olympics. Well, former Mainers, mostly, since many of them have moved away.
But they’re still ours at heart, and they’ve won four medals, which is more than can be said for Bulgaria.
Maine beaches are suffering from the rainy summer. Eight had to be posted last week, advising people to stay out of the water due to bacteria-laden runoff.
All have since re-opened. You can check here to see if your favorite spot is affected.
Hard to tell if that’s good or bad.
Five finalists have been announced in the Maine Center for Creativity’s contest to turn the ugly oil tanks in South Portland into ugly oil tanks with art on their sides.
This is legal and chalk drawing on the sidewalk isn’t?
Al Diamon can be e-mailed at aldiamon@herniahill.net.
Posted on Monday, August 18, 2008 in Permalink
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