PORTLAND, Maine — In its latest edition, the foodie magazine Bon Appetit describes Portland, Maine, as "the new Portland," meaning that Maine's biggest city could now be on an equal footing with its much bigger, ultra-hip namesake on the West Coast.
"Despite its small size", the article says, "Portland is growing its food scene at breakneck pace," citing the profileration of high end restaurants, coffee bars, food trucks and craft breweries.
While some may celebrate the move toward trendy, others are wondering whether Portland has perhaps become too "hip" for its own good, and are seeking out other, less gentrified communities.
In the industrial zone in Portland's East Bayside neighborhood is a 16,000 square foot former warehouse that leases workspace to a variety of artists. Rents are relatively inexpensive, between $150 and $800 a month.
"The mission of it is to create a sustainable workspace for artists on the peninsula that we can all guarantee will be around hopefully for a long, long time," says Kate Anker, who heads the art collective called Running With Scissors that took over the building last year.
Anker, who's originally from Minnesota, says the project has attracted nearly 60 artists, many of them priced out of their downtown studios by Portland's residential property boom.
That boom is being fueled in part by reputation — Portland last year was voted as one of the nine cities that's "getting it right", by Time magazine, another feather in the cap of a small city now recognized nationally for its food, livability, artistic and cultural scene, and more.
"We have crossed some invisible line and become special," says business consultant and commentator Perry Newman, a longtime Portland resident. He describes the changing nature of his home city in a recent OpEd in the Forecaster, a southern Maine weekly newspaper.
"I think it's the recent proliferation of very special places, where people can no longer simply have a meal, have a coffee, have a conversation, we have to be doing it almost in character," he says. "And that seems to have happened with increasing frequency and is a trend which I think is accelerating."
Think high prices, small portions.
But Newman, who admits to being a bit of a curmudgeon at times, says the issue goes beyond food. He's concerned that Portland has become so "cool" that it has lost sight of the authentic, unpretentious charm that made it such an appealing city in the first place.
He says he first became aware of this trend about 8 years ago when he visited the newly opened Whole Foods in Bayside.
"And I saw an entire cohort of people that I'd never seen before, and I said to myself, 'Who are these people?'" Newman says. "And I came home and mentioned it to my wife and she said, 'You're just getting old,' and that may be part of it, but I also think there has been an influx of new people bringing with them new ideas and trends that don't originate here."
Some have dubbed Maine's largest city "The New Portland," a reference to the larger, uber-hip Portland that sits on the other side of the country.
"No, it's definitely not the new Portland, it's actually the first one," says Jennifer Hutchins, executive director of Creative Portland, a nonprofit that seeks to sustain and grow the city's cultural and artistic economy.
She's sitting at a table sipping an iced tea at the Tandem Coffee and Bakery in Portland's West End, which typifies the city's hipster image.
Retro '80s pop — on vinyl, of course — provides the soundtrack. Airy and spacious, set in a restored gas station, the place opened last year, selling locally roasted coffee and what Bon Appetit describes as "some of the most innovative baked goods this country has seen in years."
"People are finally waking up to the fact that what we have here is a great thing," she says. "We're not doing anything new, we're just being ourselves and more people are coming here and enjoying it."
Hutchins admits that Portland does face a challenge in preserving its hipster status as the city's increasing appeal drives up the cost of living and threatens to drive out the people who made it hip in the first place.
"That's a pretty classic scenario isn't it?" she says. "It's happened all over the country. The actually authentically interesting places get discovered and unfortunately it's a natural progression."
And it's that natural progression that has prompted some young artists and entrepreneurs to relocate up Route 1 to the midcoast, or to other, more affordable communities down the turnpike from Portland.
"There's a lot of room to grow here," says Greg Mitchell, who with his business partner Chad Conley run the Palace Diner in downtown Biddeford, which first opened its doors in 1927. Both have worked at top restaurants in New York City and Portland.
"We were trying to open a restaurant in Portland, and we had been looking for restaurant spaces and seeing what was available on the market, weren't finding a lot and what we were finding was pricey," Mitchell says.
So they expanded their search and landed in Biddeford, a one-time booming mill town 20 miles to the south that fell on hard times and is now undergoing something of a downtown resurgence.
They bought the diner last year and they don't regret it.
"There's a lot of support in the community and you see the impact that you're making," Mitchell says.
A few minutes walk from the diner is the Elements bookstore and coffee shop - part of a building complex that includes the Engine arts center, a nonprofit that aims to grow Biddeford's creative economy by organizing exhibits and community art projects.
"It has incredibly good bones," says Engine Executive Director Tammy Ackerman. "You know it's a walkable community, the architecture is spectacular."
Sipping a coffee before heading to work next door, Ackerman sings the praises of Biddeford's imposing mill district and its huge empty industrial spaces that are now starting to be repurposed for new commercial ventures.
Ackerman says key to Biddeford's hipster appeal is its blue-collar authenticity.
"And I think that authenticity piece is what's at risk when we're talking about the dirty 'G' word, the gentrification word," she says.
So far, Ackerman says Biddeford has avoided the kind of gentrification that she believes has overtaken much of Portland.
So which community is the "hippest"? Well that all depends on what you mean by "hip."