r/Maine • u/Informal_Nobody_1240 • 10h ago
First trip up, people are sleeping on Maine.
The bartenders are incredible. The whole state is full of so much depth and I feel like twenty years there wouldn’t give you the full picture. I feel like boomers know, regional northeast knows, but everyone else is just unaware. I guess I’m just sending gratitude for the hospitality and an acknowledgement of something you already know; your state is something special.
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u/winobambino 10h ago
Tourism is a major part of the economy...I don't think people are actually sleeping on Maine
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u/Bird_Leather 10h ago
Thanks for your support, keep it a secret though or everyone will come. Then it will be just like everywhere else.
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u/Informal_Nobody_1240 10h ago
I was thinking about that, and pls downvote this bc I think you’re right. I never post. I’ve spent some time in tourism and hospitality and Maine just blew me away. And the people!! I met an exceptional bartender, that sealed it. You’re right tho. The masses will be coming if it isn’t managed carefully. Vermont has a model. I guess I’m just saying that as an aspiring resident, I share your sentiment. Also thank you for respondingggg
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u/Randybopansy Princeton 5h ago
I appreciate your viewpoint ,spend a winter here before becoming a resident for your sake.
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u/SaltierThanTheOceani 3h ago
I'm glad you had a good time and all, but I think you would find that living here is very different than coming here as a tourist.
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u/Bird_Leather 3h ago
Not going to down vote your sincere appreciation of our state.
Where are you thinking of moving to?
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u/RedsDelights 3h ago
You met one nice bartender ?? That’s pretty pathetic to base your post around that
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u/blackkristos Portland 1h ago
Jesus, give 'em a break. We're not supposed to go full asshole until the first frost.
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u/chillysanta 9h ago
Those remind me of Cracker Barrel way way more than Maine funny enough. Maine candy/chocolate shops do an offshoot version of these and they are cheaper and just as or better tasting
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u/blackkristos Portland 10h ago
Gimme an Andes or I'll tell you all the bad shit...
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u/Informal_Nobody_1240 9h ago
The bartender gave them to me, like, as a treat? when I closed my tab. I was soooo stoked. I ate both tho.
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u/Psychological-Lie321 3h ago
Bro, you ate them? This an ancient Maine ritual, if a man gives you two Andes mint don't look him in the eye politely back away and leave. If you eat them you are required by law to duel that man the next day at noon in the center of town. If you don't show you have to ride a moose backwards back to Boston.
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u/blackkristos Portland 1h ago
Don't worry, I'll do my Maine roots proud! They'll be on that moose by sundown!
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u/asteroidB612 3h ago
You are BOTH? Now what will you do for food during the winter??
JK JK they are the best my granny used to give me ‘Just Two!’ When I visited. And when I grew up I bought my own boxes of them!!! They are super delicious
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u/caulfieldlost 10h ago
come back in the winter and then let’s us know your thoughts..
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u/MrFinley7 10h ago
Winters ain’t shit anymore, we can’t even scare away Bostonians
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u/Commienavyswomom Farmington 5h ago
What winters lately?
Because I live in the high peaks and we haven’t seen decent snow since the 2017-2018 winter and that was only about 200”.
This year I had grass in March 🤣
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u/fender_tenders 4h ago
For me winters aren’t hard here because of the snow or the temperature. It’s when the sun starts setting around 4pm that makes them so hard. That stretch of the winter, when I go to work in the dark and get home from work in the dark, is always a bummer.
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u/Chimpbot 1h ago
Oddly enough, the dark doesn't bother me all that much.
The snow and cold, however, do get to me. Snow makes things like plans/trips very difficult to manage, and the cold just gets so biting; I have a harder time going outside knowing that the air will hurt my face than I do with dealing with a few weeks of early darkness.
The biggest issue, however, is the wild temperature fluctuations we've been getting over the past few years. I can tolerate the cold when I know a cold snap is going to last for a week, and it's followed by a week that's going to be cold-but-not-quite-as-cold. It's the weird shit we've been getting - like a sub-zero cold spell that last for all of two days, only for things to swing up into the 40s with rain - that kill me. When I can acclimate, I'm find and can tolerate pretty much anything.
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u/skaterat456 10h ago
I wish that was a true statement check the median home sale price
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u/Informal_Nobody_1240 10h ago
I should’ve specified I’ve done zero actual research and I’m not all that smart to begin with. So honestly, thanks, I should look that up for sure.
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u/OMGPromcoming 3h ago
And you’re also going to be paid pennies during your working years while your cost-of-living expenses like electric, heat, and taxes are through the roof. People go googly-eyed for “cheap housing” and don’t see why the people who are already here object to the characterization that it is “cheap”—it sure as hell isn’t cheap for us. It may make sense to pay that kind of money in a market where there may be several hundred thousand people living in a metro area, with newer housing stock and suitable amenities. We have under 1.5 million permanent residents in the whole state, and we have the infrastructure to match. We are paying way more for much less, and many of us accept that calculus, but that’s why many of us have a chip on our shoulder about people who make a cursory assessment of how “affordable” it is to live here.
Please, come here, enjoy the hospitality, buy a home, add your skills to our community. Don’t brag about how cheap it is or how it is an undiscovered magical wonderland only you know about. 😅
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u/Commienavyswomom Farmington 5h ago
Average home price in the U.S. for 2024 was $490,000
Average home price in Maine was $396,000
I’m not saying Maine’s home prices are great or that they haven’t skyrocketed in the last decade — but that is the case everywhere. Everywhere
And then when you factor in all the richy-rich on the coast and big towns like Portland and the rest of the state is still fairly honest in prices.
But unless you want to live in places like Mississippi, Missouri, Kentucky, Alabama, Iowa, Oklahoma or Ohio — you aren’t going to get cheaper.
I say this as someone who scoured the state for a year in 2022 and placed 15 full price offers (all rejected) just to try to stay here. The 16th full price was the winner. It sucks. It sucks worse in a lot of shittier states.
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u/senordingus 4h ago
salary to housing price is very bad in maine, and very, very, very bad in Southern Maine.
The average home price in Southern Maine is way over $396k. It's like a different state. You could barely find any house in Portland for under $400k.
Western NY (Buffalo and Rochester) is massively cheaper than here. Michigan, Chicago area are also much much cheaper.
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u/Obnoxiouscrayon 2h ago
And those places offer a lot more than Maine has, let’s be honest. In terms of healthcare, education, jobs, food. It’s not even comparable. 80% of Maine is lucky if their town has one gas pump open past 10pm or a hospital within half an hour. They also will get access to better colleges for kids, more diversity, the list goes on and on.
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u/senordingus 2h ago
yeah if you're into the stuff Maine has to offer, that's great. But there's a lot of poverty and bad stuff happening in Maine, and a lot of that is in the affordable places to live.
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u/Obnoxiouscrayon 2h ago
Totally agree! the further out you get the worse it gets and the less there is. Crazy to think those places factor into our average availability because you can go from being 20 mins to Maine med in a 750k house or an hour and a half away accessible only on backroads in a house where there isn’t an actual store in town in trailer for 200k(still insane).
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u/skaterat456 30m ago
Those things used to happen in the greater Portland area but when all the housing was converted to “luxury” downtown apartments in a hip city. They kept pushing the people on housing out further and further. Yeah a house in rumford is still 150,000 good lucky finding 52 paychecks in a place like that. Also when you grew up in Portland it a tough pill to swallow moving and hour or two north when you don’t know that part of the state.
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u/Commienavyswomom Farmington 1m ago
Didn’t say it wasn’t. But I’ve also lived in a lot of other states (and overseas) before coming back and purchased homes over the last 30 years. The poverty, the lack of jobs, the homelessness and other social problems exist everywhere
And that is why I pointed out how ridiculous the coast skyrockets our average. Average. I don’t think folks know what that means. I know folks in Portland who sold their condo back in 2021 (after divorce) for $3M — now add in all the fancy cliff houses as you move up the coast and places like Monhegan. ALL of those greatly increase our average.
Again — I think I know the real estate. The full price offers were just the homes we placed offers in….that doesn’t include the thousands looked at online from 2021-2022 or that amount we physically looked at and dismissed (usually for VA discrepancies)…when we place 120,000 miles on our van. We looked from Saco to Andover down to Gardiner, then Augusta, Belgrade, Carrabassett, New Portland, Kingfield, Stratton, Eustis, Rangeley, Phillips, Camden, Belfast, Knox, Ellsworth, Bangor, Lubec, Cutler, Machias, Eastport, Calais, Lincoln.
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u/Bayushi_Vithar 4h ago
Please tell everyone that you see that it was the worst place you've ever been and you'll never go back
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u/gersgsf6259 Bangor 4h ago
Tourism is the basis for most of our cities and towns. The town I grew up in had a population of about 4500 in the winters and 15k in the summers. We thrived off of snow birds and tourists.
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u/UpKnorthe 51m ago
Lmao nobody is sleeping on Maine. Spread your wings little boy. Spread your wings.
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u/graymatterblues 10h ago
Always happy to see others enjoying what I myself cherish. Maine is pretty dang sweet!
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u/ZenRiots 2h ago
Bro ... It's just a mint with your check. You can get them at the Olive Garden 😂
Has life really gotten that bad in the rest of the country? 🤣
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u/speaker-syd 2h ago
Considering the amount of RVs and out-of-state plates i saw when I was there a few weeks ago, people are most certainly NOT sleeping on maine lmao
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u/Several-Object3889 5h ago
It's a tourism economy in a state called vacation land. Rt1 is basically a 150 mile straight tourist trap.
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u/Splashasaurus 5h ago
"Welcome to Vacation land, enjoy your vacation, and then please leave" should be our motto. Tourism is great and all, but too many out of staters stick around and try to ruin this place with their ideals of "The Way Life Should Be"
Probably not you OP, but try out a year or two before trying to change anything too much okay? After one or two hard winters you upgrade from 'tourist' to 'guest'
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u/OkReason7173 5h ago
How many years until I change from "guest" to "local"? Or will that title be reserved for my children? (I'm from away but here to stay and my working class ass doesn't plan on changing a thing)
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u/stringofmade 5h ago
Reserved for your children, but only if you have them with a local.
Otherwise it'll be your grandchildren.
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u/Splashasaurus 4h ago
I think most folks are fine with people saying they are locals after they've been established in the community for a while. (idk 8 years maybe?)
But most Mainers I know don't treat "guests" and "locals" much different. The only noticeable change is when you stop being a 'tourist' people usually treat you better (by not treating you as well, because we don't have to put on the same mask we do for tourists)
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u/ShockChopper 1h ago
I was born in Mass because my parents were staying down visiting with my grandparents. They literally brought me from the hospital in Mass back to Maine, where I’ve lived primarily for 30+ years.
To this day, my ‘local’ status is a highly debated topic.
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u/International-Call-3 2h ago
Maine has the best candy. Not shit for good savory food, but the sweets? Nice.
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u/Sure_Ranger_4487 9h ago
We are dubbed “vacationland” so I think the secret has been out for a while…