Wetlands, bars and the Bard

If attendance at public hearings is any indication, what is most important to the people of South Portland seems to be wetlands and bars, but maybe not in that order.

While the seats at last week's Board of Appeals meeting filled with residents determined to keep new development out of the Sawyer Marsh, a council meeting a week earlier overflowed with patrons of the Spring Point Tavern determined to keep bands playing at their cherished hang-out. Supporters of the bar took turns at the podium praising the integrity of the establishment and calling for councilors to give it a second chance. The crowd lobbying for the bar certainly drew on a different South Portland demographic than the “Save Sawyer Marsh” crew– I doubt there was any overlap. While the marsh supporters tended to be a little more sharply dressed and smelling a little less of cigarettes, the bar supporters win the prize for sheer personality. I never thought a city meeting could be so entertaining or that a dive-looking bar could be defended with such creativity and sincerity. I’d go as far as to say the folks that showed up that night were downright Shakespearean, right out of the Boar’s Head Tavern in Eastcheap.

I half expected Falstaff to ramble up to the dais for a few jests. That didn’t happen, but one man actually did quote to the council from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night:

If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.

It’s a worthy sentiment, but I think the council would prefer to sustain any love there may be on Spring Point rather than surfeit it. Perhaps Falstaff’s pleading with the soon-to-be King Henry V is a more apt passage to persuade the council to use their powers gently:

Marry, then, sweet wag, when thou art king,
let not us that are squires of the night’s body be call’d
theives of the day’s beauty. Let us be Diana’s
foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon,
and let men say we be men of good government, being
govern’d, as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress
the moon, under whose countenance we steal.

The bar did end up getting their special amusement permit conditionally renewed, and people headed back to the bar for a celebratory drink.

SMCC president Jim Ortiz had described the bar as a vortex of vice and debauchery corrupting his students and neighbors had said the bar was leaving them sleepless with the booming bass drums. With any luck, the soundproofing the bar is required to undergo will resolve the neighbor’s difficulties. South Portland has a major shortage of live music– something that, when you’re not trying to sleep, is a very valuable thing for a community to have.

Speaking of the value of live performance, I’ve seen two local plays recently that are worthy of attention, both timed just right for Halloween. Wharf Rats, being put on by Running Over Productions, is written by a local playwright and is being performed at the Presumpscot Grange Hall in Portland. Surreal, hilarious and terrifying all at once, the play is certainly one to see. And the banana cream pie offered at intermission is worth the trip there alone.

And if the rockin’ music at the Spring Point Tavern isn’t your style, you can always head a ways down the street to the Portland Players for the Passion of Dracula. They don’t serve beer or banana cream pie, but they do have some tasty cookies, and plenty of available flesh for vampires.