Where's the Party, Bar Harbor?
Bar Harbor After Dark
BAR HARBOR—“Where’s the party?”
The question was almost a mantra in old Bar Harbor, and by old, that just means the last 40 years, during the occasionally hedonistic, cocaine-driven 1980s until the 2010s. It’s still a question of extroverts looking for fun after dark in the tourist town by the ocean. It’s a question that’s answer is sometimes a little harder to find in Bar Harbor 2023, but not impossible.
People who have been here awhile talk about the grinding dance moves at Carmen Veranda’s, the funked-out jazz or the more raucous bands on Rupununi’s deck, standing on tables at Geddy’s, a sort of lawless joy that came from bar hopping late at night, hooking up, tuning out, vibing with the music. And in times before that there were places too, the Bar Harbor Casino on the corner of Cottage and Bridge being one of them.
There was often a little bit of danger right around the corners.
For decades, everybody went to Carmen Veranda’s or Rupununi’s or Geddy’s to dance for closing. You didn’t go to Carmen’s until 11 and that’s where you finished your night for a lot of people. Rupununi’s? Geddy’s? Pretty much the same thing.
The restaurant workers would head to West Street Café for after work decompression, tossing back a few, swapping stories of customers and bosses, trying to find themselves after serving others all night long.
The Acadia Diner (where the Stadium is now) was a 24-hour food experience that fed everyone whose bellies was only full of booze after bar close. An old-school diner, it allowed people to sit who couldn’t stand any longer.
“Where’s the party?” someone called down a pretty chill Main Street last Friday night just after nine.
Nobody answered.
But what is a party, really? It’s community, of course, a happy community. It’s a place of hooking up as friends or more. It’s an event full of shouted secrets and “oh my god, I love you!” It’s a sequence of conversations: new identities, town council intrigue, dancing in the street, belting a tune, and maybe secret crushes. A party is a love story and a celebration and a literal, real-time meet-up in an age where a lot of people’s interactions is primarily with a screen.
Bar Harbor after dark is part time machine and part plea for the future. It’s radical and simple: People are gathering; people are interacting; people are celebrating by a bar stool or crying in a bathroom stall. They’ve come in out of the July fog to mood lighting, bar stools, wooden tables, and clinking glasses and stabbing forks, but they are living. Together. Sometimes they might be living a little too loud for the town’s noise ordinance, but living just the same.
That same Friday night, a group of women of all ages quietly danced on Rodick Street right outside the Annex as Sus4 played inside. Laughing, they spun on the asphalt, knees high, and feet stomping, a to-go box in one of their hands, dog off to the side bearing witness. Inside, people wiggled and leaned into each other’s ears to talk. Men off their shifts at other restaurants gathered at the threshold, laughing, watching, heads moving to the music.
The party was right there. And it was down the street at the Dog and Pony, too, a different kind of party where people gathered in small groups, sharing tales of their days.
A walk down Rodick Place, a connector between Rodick Street and Main Street that runs behind the brick public safety building that towers over the Dog and Pony behind it revealed an employee smoking outside.
“It’s kind of dead,” she said as her smoke mingled with the fog and disappeared, “but this is the in between, too late for dinner, too early for fun.”
The perception that nothing happens at night in Bar Harbor has existed at least since 1969 when Christina Tree wrote for the Boston Globe, “True, the town’s nightlife is limited to a movie at the Criterion and shop-hoping along Main and Cottage Streets.”
And then there’s Life is a Beach, a mid 1980s book by Parke Puterbaugh and Alan Bisbort that says of Bar Harbor, “Nightlife never seems to rise above a polite simmer.”
“People from away don’t get it,” one man at the Barnacle told me about a month ago, “and I get that because I’m from away, but a lot of things happen here. You just have to see it.”
Or feel it.
Walk down Rodick Street and the vibes coming off the Lompoc gently coax you to go inside. The chatter at the Barnacle and Leary’s Landing on Main Street, or Finnback’s and the Cottage Street Pub, or the mellow vibes of the Thirsty Whale on Cottage Street? They do the same. If you let them, the places will draw you in.
Some businesses and people are actively trying to make things happen in ways at night that might lend themselves toward a party and in ways that might lend themselves toward education. The Jesup Memorial Library and College of the Atlantic and Friends of Acadia have lectures and music and events in the earlier evening hours, proving that sometimes the party might lean toward the refined. Places like Lompoc, Pat’s Pizza, Finnback Alehouse, Fogtown, the Dog and Pony, and the Annex host live music and trivia nights, karaoke celebrations. The Criterion and Reel Pizza both feature movies and events. The Criterion brings in people like David Sedaris or the Wallflowers.
“It’s like a scavenger hunt. You have to be motivated. You have to look for things,” one woman said, sighing happily into her cranberry juice and vodka at the Finnback.
Is it worth it?
She wiggled her eyebrows. “It can be.”
Bar Harbor After Dark will hopefully be a new feature of the Bar Harbor Story, giving a flavor of Bar Harbor nightlife at different venues and events. These stories will be tagged #barharborafterdark for easier searching and also be part of Acadia Adventures.
PLACES MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE
Lompoc – Rodick Street
The Annex – Rodick Street
Dog and Pony – Rodick Place
The Barnacle – Main Street
Geddy’s – Main Street
Finnback Alehouse – Cottage Street
Leary’s Landing Irish Pub – Main Street
Fogtown Bar Harbor – Cottage Street
Pizzeria 131 – Cottage Street (far end)
Cottage Street Pub – Cottage Street
The Thirsty Whale – Cottage Street
Pat’s Pizza – Pleasant Street
Criterion Theatre – Cottage Street
Jesup Memorial Library – Mount Desert Street
Reel Pizza – Kennebec Place