U.S.S. Portland Maine tattoo

Another nice addition to the collection of photos we've posted over the years here of Maine-related tattoos!

Matt Anderson obligingly lent his arm for a moment to allow me to capture a shot of this recent inkwork.

Maine tattoos on the map

Julia is one of our longtime readers, and was kind enough to share photos of her two Maine-related tattoos with us! "I do in fact have plans for more," she adds. We hope she keeps us updated. Here they are:

Julia's map of the Portland peninsula (for comparison, see the historic map to the right):
...and her state map, which is handy for drawing out roadtrip plans (demonstrated in the righthand photo). Nifty!!!
Thanks Julia! Anyone else out there with Maine tattoos is welcome to chime in.

Maine tattoo madness!

Port City Life's March issue, which is all about art, has a feature on Portland's tattoo statistics by Peter Smith, including mention of a couple of tattoos that you fair readers have seen here on the blog in the past, namely Angus McFarland's Maine emblem, and my own "Strange Maine" tattoo. Check it out!

To read Peter Smith's article, click here.

Holiday Greetings 2007

Well, it's been a great year here on the Strange Maine blog. We topped 60,000 hits, reached our 2 year anniversary in October, and overall had a great time. I met Loren Coleman, Glenn Chadbourne, and countless other friendly Mainers who intrigue me to no end. Abraham Schechter began adding his lore and research to our archives. I heard a lot of interesting stories which I'm hoping to get onto the blog to share with all of my readers. After two years of walking the path of Strange Maine, I can say with all honesty that I feel at home here still, and I love every minute I spend here. And I will never run out of interesting material!

The last few months have seen a slowdown of posts on the blog, and with the New Year I'm hoping to remedy that as I shift around some of my other obligations that have been leaving the blog unfairly short of my time and attention.

I'd like to take this moment to thank all of my readers, both the new ones and the regulars who have been with us for what seems like a long time now. Thank you for letting me know how much you like the site, and for bearing with us in our slower times. We promise great things as the years go on, and we hope you'll stick around to enjoy them.

We have some great stuff in the works -- interviews with Glenn Chadbourne, William Dufris of "Nightmares on Congress Street" OTR recording fame, exploration of Maine bigfoot sightings, exciting talk about Mark LaFlamme's new book and other great strange Maine fiction, and more, more, more! So stay tuned -- I promise you won't be disappointed.

As the year turns, I would like to share one thing with you all for sure -- my new tattoo. For almost two years I planned on getting a tattoo that commemorates my love of the strangeness of Maine. I finally drew up the design and set a date in late October 2007 with Wil Scherer, at Sanctuary Tattoo in Portland. After three hours in the chair, this was the result. It's official! Once I get organized, I'll be producing t-shirts with the design on them as part of a fund raiser for the blog and the Gazette.

Wicked Sweet Maine Tattoo!

I received an e-mail earlier this week from Chris Bossom, who lives out in Denver, Colorado, but grew up in Maine, where his family still lives. Last week he put ink to skin in tribute of his home state, and was kind enough to share the dazzling results with us!

Chris had one request: "If you use it if we could give proper credit to the artist as well – her name is Heidi Scheck and she’s a tattoo apprentice at Twisted Sol and this is only the 10th tattoo she’s done." No problem, Chris, it looks like she's off to a great start!

Chris also mentioned that oddly enough, he was not the only one in Colorado hankering for a hunk of Maine: "When I went into
the shop to see the sketch Heidi had done, there were 2 other stencils for other people's Maine/Mom tribute tattoos, one of which was put on the leg of my other tattoo artist Sandi, who also grew up in Maine, and the other for another random client. Weird that they got 3 Maine tattoo requests in one week!"

Those of you who have been keeping up on the blog for a while may remember that back in September 2006 we posted about another stunning Maine tattoo, belonging to the proud chest of Angus, Earl of Portland. Read that post here if you missed out. I'm still working on the design for my own. Stay tuned for that later this year! (P.S. Gift certificates for work from Wil Scherer at Sanctuary Tattoo here in Portland gladly accepted!!!)