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I am a bit of a volleyball junkie. I’ve been playing a couple times a week since last fall. I’ve played pickup ball at the East End Community School in Portland (no longer running due to lack of interest), Falmouth Middle School, Cape Elizabeth, and Gorham Municipal Center. South Portland on Sundays is also a great place to play. Most of these are done for the season, though, so here are three great places to play if you’re looking for pickup play this summer.

• Deering Oaks Park, Portland - Outdoor co-ed pickup play on Mondays and Tuesdays at 6:00 PM. This is fairly regular, but be sure to speak with Dawn Y. about getting on the email list.
• Gorham Municipal Center, Gorham - The only indoor co-ed pickup series still going strong into the summer. They play Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7:00 PM. Cost is $2 per night, but the level of play is generally good.
• Old Orchard Beach - The premier outdoor place to play north of Hampton Beach. Their tournament schedule is posted on the Official OOB Volleyball Blog. Pickup play is generally available outside of tournaments, though I haven’t found a regular schedule.

The Maine State Volleyball Association is the a great place to look for more information about volleyball in the Maine, especially tournaments and leagues. If you’d like to get a rating (I don’t have one yet, but might after this summer so I can play in fall leagues), Andy Winslow seems to be the person to talk to; he can be reached through MSVBA. The outdoor season is fully underway (I played outside twice last week), so get cracking…

If you organize or know of other summer pickup volleyball within reasonable driving distance of Portland, please drop me a line and let me know. I’ll happily add it to this list and might even show up and hit around a bit too.

This past Sunday (June 1) marked the 35th annual Old Port Festival in Portland’s Old Port (what, like you were expecting it to be in Saco or something?). With most of the Old Port blocked off to vehicular traffic, street vendors and bands set up everywhere to serve the throngs of Mainers and those From Away looking to celebrate the unofficial start of summer.

Amber and I were only able to attend for an hour or so due to other social obligations. We managed to get into the Temple Street parking lot (no mean feat given the snarled–by Portland standards–traffic and number of pedestrians exercising their right of way). A band was set up just outside, in front of the Nickelodeon Theatre. Several vendors were set up with food and merchandise along Middle and Exchange Streets.

We were looking for a quick bite to eat and didn’t really feel we had time to explore all that the Festival had to offer, so we grabbed two chicken and veggie wraps from a nearby vendor. After getting our wraps (which were piled high with veggies and really necessitated fork-and-knife consumption), we took a quick jaunt down Exchange Street and headed to Novare Res Bier Café for a beer to wash it down. The clouds you can see encroaching the scene in the photo above yielded two or three rain drops while we were seated on the huge deck enjoying wraps and some great beers, but the sun broke back through and made for a lovely afternoon.

If a quiet stroll through a “rustic” New England sea village is your thing, well, you probably wouldn’t be in Portland in the first place, and definitely should avoid it during Old Port Festival. However, if you’re looking for a good time, some food and live music, and a way to celebrate the arrival of nice weather to southern Maine, I think you owe it to yourself to try Old Port Fest at least once. Amber and I will be doing an extended visit next year.

I posted the announcement for Eco Appetito a few weeks ago. Instead of a Friday night date night this past week, Amber and I decided we’d head down to Cinque Terre on Sunday and sample some of their wonderful food, get some of the first taste’s of Peak’s new Maple Oat Ale, and support a good cause. We are oh so glad we did.

Parking was a bit hard to come by early Sunday afternoon, so we ended up in the parking garage on Fore Street and walked down the hill to Cinque Terre. There were already 15 or 20 people there when we arrived, but Amber and I were definitely among the earliest arrivals. The event details said that 150 tickets were available, and I’m not quite sure they sold out completely, but there were probably 125 guests or so throughout the afternoon. With all of the downstairs tables and most of the upstairs tables removed, it didn’t feel at all crowded.

The food, as expected, was excellent. Amber and I are still developing our seafood palettes, so we shied away from the Winterpoint oysters. The pesto, white bean, and parsnip soup shots (soup served in an espresso cup) were very good. Other passed appetizers included delicious wild mushroom fritters (with just a bit of bite to them), venison and mushroom with dijon mustard, and a white bean spread with roasted rabbit. The venison was some of the best I’ve ever had, and the rabbit was excellent as well. Upstairs, there was a ravioli and gnocchi station in one corner, a French press coffee station in another, and an artisan cheese station in a third.

The ravioli making was featured on a recent episode of 207 and included carrot, beet, and swiss chard. The ravioli and gnocchi were both excellent, though the consensus at our table was that the ravioli was the clear winner.

We met several interesting people at the event. Drew Dumsch, FBES’s Executive Director, chatted with Amber about ecology education (teacher talk) and some of the programs offered by the school. We spoke with the residential director’s fiancé for a while about his move out from Seattle, life in Maine, and the new Peak ale. The highlight, however, was sharing ravioli and conversation with local artist Elizabeth Fraser and her partner Maureen over several plates of ravioli and a few beers. Ms. Fraser painted a portrait of Spring Point Light that was auctioned off as part of the silent auction fundraiser. She also did paintings of Cinque Terre and Vignola as thank you gifts for the owners who donated their time, space, and staff to the event. We’ll definitely be checking out Elizabeth’s studio on Munjoy Hill during the May First Friday Art Walk and are considering commissioning a portrait of our pooch, Cindy Lu.

The plans for the second annual Eco Appetito are already underway, and I sincerely hope they’ll continue the event. It was great fun and well worth the cost of admission.

Cinque Terre will usher in the first signs of spring on Sunday, March 16th when it holds its First Annual “Eco Appetito – Good Eating for a Good Earth” event at its Portland restaurant, located at 36 Wharf Street. Scheduled for 1:00 - 4:00 pm, the festive Eco Appetito event will showcase abundant samples of local Maine food and beverages from dozens of producers. Most notably, guests will enjoy hand-crafted beer selections from Portland’s Allagash Brewing Company and the debut of Maine Oat & Maple Beer, brewed by Peak Organic Brewing Company.

The open house event, expected to draw a capacity crowd, will benefit the “Food for Thought” program, offered at Ferry Beach Ecology School (FBES) in Saco, Maine. The innovative program at the school’s coastal campus teaches the value of eating naturally grown and organic food, and how to live and eat sustainably.

DETAILS:

What: Eco Appetito – Good Eating for a Good Earth

Where: Cinque Terre, 36 Wharf Street, Portland

When: Sunday, March 16th 1:00 - 4:00 pm

How (much): $50 per person. All proceeds will benefit the Ferry Beach Ecology School and its “Food for Thought” program.

To purchase tickets or locate additional event information, visit www.fbes.org or call Maggie Daigle at (207) 671-0643.

To learn more about the Ferry Beach Ecology School and its acclaimed programs and offerings, visit www.fbes.org.

She and I try to go out at least once a week for a “date night.” On a few occasions, we’ve gone to a movie. So far we’ve been to three different theaters in the area, so I thought I’d share my thoughts on them.

First, in downtown Portland, you have the Nickelodeon Theater on Temple Street. Containing six theaters using analog projectors, this cinema has an indie theater feel to it. Small theaters are the norm, and stadium seating is nowhere to be found. They also use analog projectors and we’ve noticed that they’re not always monitored as closely as one might like–we saw the top half of I Am Legend for about three minutes until someone fixed the projector. The prices are decent ($7.50 for adults; $5.00 all day on Tuesday) and the selection is usually pretty current. If you’re planning an evening out in Old Port, this is a pretty good option. If the object of your evening is to go see a movie, you may want to look elsewhere.

The second theater we watched a movie in up here was the CineMagic Theater on County Road in Westbrook. This is the most up-to-date (and therefore most expensive) theater we’ve been to up here, but not by much. At $9.00 each, the tickets are not as bad as Crossgates 18 in Albany (where I believe they’re now up over $10 a piece). The selection is great (they currently have 20 films on the schedule) and the stadium seating ideal. They even have an IMAX theater for $13.00. We don’t spend much time over that way though, so we’ve settled on the next theater as our regular movie night destination.

The Hoyt’s Cinemas Falmouth 10 is both slightly more convenient and slightly less expensive that CineMagic (only by $0.50 a ticket). It offers 10 THX certified theaters, a good selection of current films, and some decent restaurants nearby on Rte. 1 for before or after snacking. She happens to be a waitress up there too, so we get to eat at one of those restaurants for a discount (don’t worry, I won’t shill for them here). Our most recent movie night found us seeing The Bucket List at Falmouth. Though the theater lacked CineMagic’s stadium seating, the view was great nonetheless, and the digital projector was a much nicer experience than Nickelodeon’s older analog.

Weighing all the pros and cons, I think we’ll stick to Falmouth except for those movies that just cry out for IMAX. The fact that we got a $50 gift certificate to Hoyt’s for Christmas certainly helps make that decision easier too.