At the turn of the millennium, sociologist Robert Putnam wrote Bowling Alone, which observed that a successful community relies on successful community organizations and civic participation. “Researchers in such fields as education, urban poverty, unemployment, the control of crime and drug abuse, and even health have discovered that successful outcomes are more likely in civically engaged communities,” Putnam wrote.

It’s hard to argue with that. But Putnam also took the view that, because Americans in general were becoming less and less active in organizations like the Rotary and bowling leagues (hence the title), our nation’s civic life was on the wane — making our communities more vulnerable to social and economic ills.

I don’t really share Putnam’s pessimism — even if bowling leagues and Rotary clubs aren’t as popular anymore, I’m confident that Americans are finding new ways to engage with their communities. Then again, I say that from my privileged position as a resident of Portland, which is a community of remarkably accessible civic institutions.

Almost immediately after I moved here, nearly six years ago now, I joined the city’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee and started a blog dedicated to improving the city’s built environment. That, in turn, introduced me to people who helped me land my first full-time job here, and it put me on (usually) friendly terms with people from City Hall and various environmental organizations.

It’s not unusual for me to see our congresswoman, Chellie Pingree, out on the First Friday Art Walk, or to have a quick chat with one of my state legislators at the farmers’ market or the coffee shop. But easy access to local elected officials is only a small part of Portland’s civic life. The city has an abundance of volunteer committees and organizations that are dedicated to improving the city’s economy, environment, and the quality of life for its residents, from trade-oriented networking organizations to advocacy groups to social clubs.

Here’s a (very) incomplete bullet list of ready-made networks that are ready to make a newcomer feel at home, by empowering them to improve our community:

• The League of Young Voters – whose “Portland 101” series introduces people (of any age) to the workings of municipal government.
• The Telling Room – the volunteers at this nonprofit include many of Portland’s writers and journalists.
• SPACE Gallery – sign up as a volunteer to meet new buddies in Portland’s music and visual arts scenes (and get free admission to shows).
• AIGA Maine – this is a good network of Maine-based graphic designers and freelancers. They also put on periodic events, from cocktail hours to business seminars.
• Portland Society of Architects – for anyone in the building or design trades. Don’t miss their next Drink ‘n Crit.
• The City of Portland Boards and Committees – which offers up unpaid but influential positions in municipal Boards of Commissioners and Task Forces (including the Historic Preservation Board, the Public Art Committee, the Land Bank Commission, and many others). Check for vacancies here around the beginning of each month.
• League Night at Bayside Bowl – it may sound frivolous, but (like most of these groups) Bayside Bowl mixes good times with good citizenship: the owners are a state senator and a former ACLU attorney, and they host a nonprofit benefit night every Monday. Robert Putnam would feel right at home.

Photo: City Hall, by Corey Templeton. You can find many more photos of Portland on Corey’s Portland Daily Photo blog.

Portland is a really peaceful city, that’s true. But it turns out that of all the States in the U.S., Maine is the most peaceful. I don’t mean most yoga studios or spas per capita, though we have plenty of those. I mean peace as in the absence of violence.

For two years in a row, The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) has ranked Maine at the top of their United States Peace Index. And if Maine were a country unto itself (which it feels like sometimes) it would rank fifth on the IEP’s Global Peace Index. To see how striking this is, consider that the U.S. as a whole ranks 82nd out of 153 countries!

The IEP “is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit research organization dedicated to shifting the world’s focus to peace as a positive, achievable, and tangible measure of human well-being and progress,” according to the full report on the rankings. “The second annual edition of the index, produced by Institute for Economics and Peace, provides a comprehensive analysis of peacefulness at the state and city levels, as well as an analysis of the costs associated with violence and the socio-economic measures associated with peace,” explains the report. “The USPI measures peacefulness according to five indicators: the number of homicides, number of violent crimes, the incarceration rate, number of police employees and the availability of small arms.”

Our neighbors Vermont and New Hampshire rank right behind us, and Cambridge-Newton-Framingham, MA was ranked the most peaceful of all major U.S. metro areas (Portland was not rated independent of Maine). And, as you can see on the map above, New England is the country’s most peaceful region.

Although Maine as a whole has some significant socio-economic challenges, we all feel the positive effect of the lack of violent crime, the social ease of not requiring large police forces and the commitment to self-improvement that comes along with low incarceration rates.

So when people wonder what they can do to make the world a better, more peaceful place, one of the answers is, be more like Maine!

Through the years, Portland has bestowed many gifts upon the world. Longfellow. Stephen King. Otto’s pizza.

Now we can add to that list the world’s first “Urban RAID.” On June 30th, up to a thousand people will work their way across a 5K obstacle course in Portland’s downtown. This first-ever event has been put together by Tri-Maine Enterprises (which manages races across the state) and Aura360 Ventures, an event/marketing firm. Recently I sat down with Parker Swenson and Lauren St. Clair, from Aura360, to learn more about the upcoming Urban RAID.

Q: Is this like a 5K run? I see you call it “the next generation of obstacle racing.”

Lauren: It’s the antithesis of a 5K run. It’s more of a fitness challenge taking place over a 5K distance. And this is the first time it’s happening anywhere. That’s part of what’s exciting, it’s originating here in Maine, it isn’t being brought in from somewhere else.

Q: Where will the course be?

Parker: It starts and finishes at the Ocean Gateway cueing lanes. The actual run will go along the Eastern Prom Trail to just about where the boat ramp is. Then it’s up the hill of the Eastern Prom and back down Fore Street. Just before the end, there’s a seven-story stair climb up to the top of Ocean Gateway Garage, at Fore and India streets.

Q: And along the way…?

Parker: There are eight major obstacles, including monkey bar sets, 15 rows of high hurdles, 20-foot-tall cargo nets, and a tire field.

Q: But not with hundreds of people scrambling across these all at once?

Parker: The competitors will start in waves, about five to six minutes apart, based on age and gender divisions, all the way from teenagers to 60-plus. There’s also a non-competitive division, if you just want to go through the course, and you don’t want to worry about people passing you, you can do it on your own terms.

Lauren: That way, you get to compete, you get the energy, you get the endorphin rush, but you’re going at your own pace.

Q: And what happens at the finish line?

Lauren: We’ll have medals for the top three competitors in each division, and there’ll be a whole festival at the finish line with music, and product demo’s – and beer, obviously.

Parker: The way the course is laid out, you’ll be going along the Eastern Trail with the harbor right there, so you’ll get the vistas while you’re moving through the obstacles. It’s the best that Portland has to offer.

* * *

The Urban RAID is actually one of a set of three such events occurring in Maine this year. Following our dash through the city streets, there is a Beach RAID in September in Kennebunk, and a Mountain RAID in October at Sunday River. You can learn more about all three raids, and register for them, at www.raidevents.com and you can keep up with news about the events at their Facebook page.

Bicycling is the best way I know of to explore a city. I’ve lived in Portland for over five years now, and I still manage to notice new things almost every time I ride down Congress Street. On a bike, I’m more engaged with my surroundings, and with my community. It makes me a better citizen, and a more creative person.

David Byrne, the former frontman of the Talking Heads, put it best in his book Bicycle Diaries:

[Bicycling through a city] “is like navigating the collective neural pathways of some vast global mind… it facilitates a state of mind that allows some but not too much of the unconscious to bubble up. As someone who believes that much of the source of his work and creativity is to be gleaned from those bubbles, it’s a reliable place to find that connection.”

It’s no surprise that cities that want to attract creative, innovative people are also making big investments in new bike lanes, bikesharing services, and other programs to encourage cycling. As an advocate, I always wish that my hometown would do more, but I’m happy to say that Portland, Maine is making progress, and that I’m seeing more and more bikes on our streets.

Downtown Portland and its surrounding neighborhoods are easy to navigate by bike, and it’s getting easier all the time. City Hall recently hired a dedicated Bicycle and Pedestrian program coordinator, who’s overseen projects to create new bike path connections, make neighborhood streets safer, and make it easier for students to walk to school.

Organizations like Portland Trails (featured in my last post), the Bicycle Coalition of Maine, and Portland’s local Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee (which I chair) help prioritize projects and have helped to ensure that major new infrastructure projects, like the new Veterans Memorial Bridge opening in 2013, include excellent facilities for bicyclists and pedestrians.

Portland also has a great community of bike shops, from the friendly all-purpose shops like Back Bay Bicycles, EMS, and Gorham Bike and Ski, to the stylish Portland Velocipede (specializing in good-looking city bikes, including gorgeous Dutch imports), to Cycle Mania, which serves more of the spandex crowd.

If you’re looking for a ride this spring, mark your calendar for April 29th, when the Bicycle Coalition of Maine hosts its annual Great Maine Bike Swap at the University of Southern Maine’s Sullivan Gymnasium.

And I will not neglect to mention the new Portland Maine Bike Map, which highlights bike routes, lanes, and paths from Falmouth to Scarborough, Casco Bay to Westbrook — almost everyplace you can comfortably reach in an easy hour’s ride from downtown Portland. You can buy copies at any local bike shop, at Longfellow Books, or here at the Bicycle Coalition of Maine’s online store. And please do, because I happen to be the publisher.

If you’re planning a visit to Portland this summer, consider bringing your bike (they’ll let you take them in the luggage compartments of Concord Coach and the Amtrak Downeaster) or renting one while you’re here.  It’s a better way to get acquainted with the city while you’re getting around.

Photo: Biking over Portland Harbor on the Casco Bay Bridge. Photo by Christian MilNeil.

Lil Punisher. Princess Layher Out. Punchy O’Guts. No, these aren’t gang monikers. These colorful names identify some of the lead players on The Port Authorities, the All-Star competition team who along with the “junior varsity or B-team called The Calamity Janes“ comprise the Maine Roller Derby league that competes in the national WFTDA league. MRD competes in the East league with teams from Montreal to Virginia. The East league even includes teams from London, Birmingham and Edinburgh in the UK and a team from Berlin! Not sure how the logistics work on that. Colorful names of teams we’ve rolled against recently include The Montreal Sexpos, the Connecticut Stepford Sabotage and the Hellions of Troy (NY).

If your last memory of roller derby involves watching it on UHF television back in the 1960s, well, the sport has evolved since then. There are still hits, women still go flying across the track, and the contestants are still a curious blend of femininity and fisticuffs.  But the marketing is more sophisticated now, the crowd is less bloodthirsty, and the women appear to be (even more) athletically gifted.

The Port Authorities and calamity Janes start the season skating at Happy Wheels, out on Warren Avenue, before moving to the big time (and banked curves) of the Portland Expo.  On St. Patrick’s Day, the joint was jammed as the women took on the Stepford Sabotage. There were some tough players on the away team (Parker Poison, C. Mya Rage, Luciana Pulverotti), but they were no match for the local lasses, who won handily 200 to 75 in the WFTDA-Sanctioned Bout.

For a ticket price of $5 a head (which goes up to an astronomical $10 at the Expo), how can you go wrong? Heck, even the referees have great names: Ian Fleunza. Roo Lyn Forcer. Ruth of All Evil. Of course, trying to understand the actual rules and scoring of roller derby is like studying cricket and the Kabbalah at the same time. But the crowd was there every (fast) step of the way, couples and families, those in the know, those there for the first time.

There’s one more bout at Happy Wheels next week (Saturday, April 7, at 5 pm) followed by four more Saturdays at the Expo (April 21, May 5, 26 and June 9, at 6 pm). See the full schedule here. And if you like to hang with the skaters there are afterparties each night at Flask Lounge.

Focusing more on the exercise side of the sport, and catering to more mature rollers, Portland now even boasts Derby Lite, where you get the workout minus the black-and-blue marks. So come on, jammers (young and old)! Get out of that pack!

For more on Maine Roller Derby, see our post from last year as well.

Photo of The Port Authority by John Spritz

Happy is the city with great architecture. In Portland, that happy list includes the brick edifices along Commercial Street, the varied homes of the West End, the Wishcamper and Abromson buildings at USM, the Observatory, the Victorian houses perched in Deering Highlands, the Art Museum – an embarrassment of riches.

Happy, too, is the city, with great architects. In Portland, we have long supported significant architects, going back to the 19^th Century, with Francis Fassett and John Calvin Stephens and Frederick Law Olmsted (what, you didn’t know? After New York’s Central Park, Olmsted designed Deering Oaks).

Today, the hundreds of members of the Portland Society of Architects (PSA) encourage “…innovation and vision in design and planning” throughout the city. The PSA offers a wealth of programs, from the “Unbuilt Design Awards” to “10 Minute Architect” (a free clinic for anyone thinking about whether they need an architect) to last year’s Symposium on Sea Level Rise and the biannual “Drink’n Crit.”

What is “Drink’n Crit”?  Twice a year, the PSA recreates the student experience of an architectural studio. Only this time around, the students are local professionals who, with some trepidation, present their current projects to the public, as well as a critical review by fellow architects. Unlike an actual charette in architecture school, this event does not involve pulling an all-nighter!

The most recent Drink’n Crit was on March 12^th, at the SPACE Gallery on Congress Street. As guests milled about, talked, and had a beer, four architectural teams were taping drawings and photos of their projects on the walls. The team of jurors was introduced and then, one by one, each team presented its project and listened to the critiques.

The crowd may have been most energized by the team working with the City of Portland to re-imagine the several blocks of Spring Street that bisect much of downtown, past the Holiday Inn and the Civic Center.  Should Spring Street be two lanes wide, instead of four? Become a “bicycle boulevard”? Foster new garden spaces and stairways leading off to other streets?

The suggestions flew fast and furious, and the give-and-take was emblematic of the best of Portland. Some of us worked for the city, some of us worked in the city, some of us lived in the city – but all of us cared deeply about the city, wanting it always to be a better place.

If you, too, want to weigh in on Portland’s built landscape, Greater Portland Landmarks and Maine Historical Society are co-hosting a series of panel discussions about specific streets and spaces demanding our attention (including Spring Street, and our bridges, and our waterfront). Step up to the microphone and state your opinion!

Commercial Street and Wishcamper Center, University of Sourthern Maine, photos by Corey Templeton

Erin Kiley and Nathaniel Baldwin went through two years’ worth of business planning, real estate hunting, and city permitting so that dozens of other entrepreneurs won’t have to. Their enterprise, the Portland Flea-for-All, is about to open its doors in 3 stories of a gorgeously wood-beamed former mattress factory in the heart of Bayside.

The Flea-for-All is a flea market for Portland’s craftspeople, yard sale recyclers, and other creators. When it opens for business on the weekend of April 14-15, it will offer a brick-and-mortar presence for dozens of small entrepreneurs for as low as $30 a day for a 6 foot square booth. The market will also sell crafts on consignment, and wall space will be available for artists to show and sell their work outside of a gallery setting.

“We won’t be a typical junk market,” says Erin. “We’re cultivating quality sellers, and a variety of goods — we’ll have furniture, housewares, crafters…”

“The more diverse our vendors, the more people we can bring in as customers,” Nathaniel adds.

“We want it to be a market for every age, style, and budget,” says Erin.

Erin and Nathaniel moved to Portland two years ago from Santa Monica, California. They came here, they say, because they were attracted to Portland’s affordability, its potential to grow, and its entrepreneurial culture.

Finding a space large enough and inexpensive enough for their vision was a big challenge, as was the long slog through permitting and financing the new enterprise. “For a new entrepreneur, it was often hard to find the right path through the process,” says Erin. Still, after nearly two years’ worth of groundwork, “at least we know now that we’re really ready. The fun stuff lies ahead.”

The Flea-for-All finally found a home in a former mattress factory between Preble and Elm Streets in Bayside, a former industrial neighborhood that has been the target of City Hall’s economic development initiatives for the past decade. They give their landlord, Tod Dana, a lot of credit for supporting their idea and sharing their entrepreneurial enthusiasm.

The market’s front entrance is just steps away from the western terminus of the new Bayside Trail (Kiley and Baldwin want to offer special incentives to shoppers who arrive by foot or by bike) and the new-ish Trader Joe’s. Bayside Bowl is a block away in the opposite direction. A string of empty lots alongside the trail, where a railroad yard used to be, may soon start sprouting high-rise apartment buildings. And their next-door neighbor is Portland Architectural Salvage, a business that seems to share the recycled-value aesthetic that the Flea-for-All aspires to.

“There’s good growth around here, a lot of potential,” says Erin. “I think we got here at the right time.”

Portland Flea-for-All will be accepting applications from potential vendors on a rolling basis, but if you’re interested in getting in in time for the grand opening weekend in April, you should fill out their handy online application by this Friday, March 16th.

Photo: Erin Kiley and Nathaniel Baldwin, founders of Portland Flea-for-All, on the top floor of the future market space. Photo by Christian MilNeil.

Admittedly, it hasn’t been much of a winter here, or anywhere else in North America. But Portland, Maine does occupy the northern latitudes, which means that we get snowstorms, even in a globally-heated world. This week, March came in like a lion and dropped a foot of snow over the city.

Some people gripe about the winter weather. But a lot of us (the author included) love it. On snow days, schools are closed, and so are many offices. It’s the perfect opportunity to hunker down for a day of compulsory relaxation.

Or you can head outside. In 2010, Outside magazine named Portland the best “adventure town” in the east, thanks to the abundance of outdoor recreation within day-tripping distance of the city. For skiers, there are big mountains like Saddleback and smaller, more affordable areas like Mount Abram, and then there are the miles of groomed nordic skiing trails at Pineland Farms, just 20 minutes up the road in New Gloucester, Maine.

But even when driving is terrible, there are numerous ski trips you can make within city limits.

On the Eastern Prom, a short hill that’s popular for sledding can also be skied, from the end of Congress Street to a stone’s throw from the Atlantic Ocean. There’s also a shorter, steeper pitch through the trees next to the playground. The slope between the street and the ocean is short and not terribly steep, but how many ski runs end on a beach? Even though it’s only in the 20s, on a sunny day you can still manage to get a suntan.

The Eastern Prom area is also good for cross-country skiing. It’s about a mile from the abandoned railroad trestle to the north and around to the Portland Company complex to the south, and finding a few lines of untracked powder on the hills in between.

Skiers less concerned with scenery can find a slightly bigger hill on the other side of town, at the Western Prom. New Hampshire’s Mount Washington is also visible from the top on clear days, which lends this ski run more of an alpine flavor. It’s also longer and steeper, although you’ll have to watch out for the plowed walkway that traverses the hill in switchbacks. This is a good place to ski off into the sunset at the end of your workday (as my wife Jess is doing in the photo at the top of this post).

On the other side of Back Cove, the city parks and recreation department has been building a terrain park on the hill in Payson Park for the past several winters, thanks to donated equipment from some of the state’s big ski areas and local enthusiasts. The hill even has snowmaking equipment to keep it going through snow droughts.

On the outskirts of the city, several large parks and open spaces host extensive trail networks for cross-country skiing. My favorite places include the Fore River Sanctuary (where you can ski along the edges of Portland’s biggest salt marsh), and the Riverside Golf Course, where volunteers from the Portland Nordic Ski Club groom trails for skate-skiing (they ask for a small donation, but it’s a bargain).

So if global warming’s got you down, there’s no need to burn gallons of petrochemicals to get away to the mountains – ski Portland instead!

Photo: Jessica skis the Western Prom. Photo by Christian MilNeil.

Three o’clock in the morning is when a city is most still, most calm. One day’s activities have ended and the next day’s have yet to begin.

New York City may never sleep, but Portland does close its eyes for a bit in the middle of the night. At 3 a.m., the first thing one notices is the lack of people and traffic. When else can one experience Congress Square, or Longfellow Square, or Monument Square, with no vehicles passing through, none at all?

A few nighthawks are around, of course. Allison, at the reception desk at Maine Med’s Emergency Center (17 patients have been checked in since midnight). Kevin, working the 4 p.m.-4 a.m. shift in his taxi near the Eastland Hotel. Josh, behind the counter at the all-night Irving station on Commercial Street. And the police. And the street-sweepers. And the baker rolling out dough at Standard Baking.

But in general, on a mild Wednesday night in February, town is tranquil. Down by the water, no boats are yet moving in or out of the docks. The Casco Bay Line’s ferries are quietly moored under a crescent moon – it’s still a few hours until the first ferry departs. Even Becky’s Diner is empty.

At 3 a.m., the town’s statues reassert themselves. In Longfellow Square, the seated poet gazes down a quiet Congress Street. Outside the Nickelodeon Cinema, the lobsterman statue has a usually busy intersection all to himself.

Most office buildings are dark, but the refrigerated trucks keep up their hum here and there, and the B&M Baked Bean plant seems active. Then, as the hour hand moves towards four, a few more cars appear, a few more people hurry down the streets, a few more lights flicker on…and a new day starts.

Photos by John Spritz

A few weekends ago, sociologist Eric Klinenberg published an essay in the Sunday New York Times in which he shared his observations about Americans who live alone (there are more single-person households now than at any other period of history):

“Living alone comports with modern values. It promotes freedom, personal control and self-realization — all prized aspects of contemporary life.… ”It is less feared, too, for the crucial reason that living alone no longer suggests an isolated or less-social life. After interviewing more than 300 singletons (my term for people who live alone) during nearly a decade of research, living alone seems to encourage more, not less, social interaction… living alone can make it easier to be social, because single people have more free time, absent family obligations, to engage in social activities.”

Today is Valentine’s Day—and though many of our holidays don’t look fondly on people who would prefer to be by themselves, this one lays the guilt on particularly thickly. If you live in Portland, though, you’re not alone in being alone.

Many of our one-person households are people over 65, and either widowed or divorced. And Portland is just the place for them! This past fall, AARP magazine highlighted Portland as one of its Top Ten Affordable Cities for Retirement, citing our low cost of living and social opportunities.

And just last week, Men’s Health magazine “undertook a nonpartisan examination of the data on datable citizens: the ratio of single women to single men, the percentage of college-educated women, the percentage of gainfully employed single women (all from the Census), and the number who work out.”

The feminist headline writers at Men’s Health named the report “Where the Babes Are.”  The number one spot for “most eligible women,” according to this demographic analysis, was Washington, DC.

But squeaking in at the #2 spot was none other than Portland, Maine! It must be all of our workout-obsessed AARP readers.

Then again, it might be all the lesbians. The same 2010 Census data that Men’s Health looked at also revealed that Maine has more same-sex couples than all but six states. “South Portland and Portland have become particular hot spots for gay couples, the statistics show, outpacing Boston, Cambridge and other gay-friendly cities,” a Portland Press Herald report revealed.

Side note: gay couples aren’t single, obviously, but something about the presentation of the “Where the Babes Are” report — maybe it was the mudflap girl illustration? — makes me suspect that the quantum statisticians at Men’s Health neglected to do the math to subtract out the population lesbians from their “eligible women” accounting. If so, we may soon find wandering packs of Bros roaming our city, searching in vain for the eligible women, scouring magazine racks for the last precious copies of Maxim…

At any rate, no matter how eligible or single you may be, have a happy Valentine’s Day.