Gabe Kidd, left, Sam Rush, center, and Levi Rush own Kelp and Cafe 64 in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Three friends, two neighboring businesses and one very unlikely phone call brought a little West Coast energy to Old Orchard Beach. On a rainy summer morning, Kelp feels like a burst of color along Old Orchard Street. A mirrored disco wall catches the light. Plants climb above shelves filled with candles, jewelry, books and locally made goods. A hat embroidered with a lobster pr

Pyper LeBlanc, 6, of Ogunquit, leaps off a rock near a six foot tall metal rooster in Wells, Maine on Tuesday, August 4, 2026. Photo by Cy Cyr For the past month, six-year-old Pyper LeBlanc and her beloved roosters have appeared in news reports across Maine and around the country. On Tuesday,, I saw what happens after the headlines. Dave, Sara and Pyper in Wells, Maine. I followed Pyper and her parents, Sara and Dave LeBlanc, from their family’s Omelette Factory in Ogunquit t

Gary Hill, left and Dennis Boothby pose on the beach at Ocean Park in Saco, Maine on Tuesday, July 28, 2026. The longtime friends and former co-workers use their metal-detecting experience to help strangers recover rings, jewelry and other meaningful belongings. Photo by Cy Cyr Meet Dennis Boothby and Gary Hill of Ring Finders of Maine By 6:30 Tuesday evening, heavy fog had swallowed most of Ocean Park Beach. The horizon was gone. The ocean was barely visible beyond the wet

Painting Joy How Adrienne Kernan LaVallée spent a lifetime finding her own artistic voice Sea Watch Chopped Sea Clams cans make for great paint brush holders. On one of the first truly warm days of summer, the doors to Adrienne Kernan LaVallée's studio stood open in Biddeford. Sunlight spilled across unfinished canvases, palette knives rested beside thick pools of oil paint, and dozens of brushes stood upright in recycled clam cans. Just down the road, Biddeford Pool shimmere

Steve Ryder has dismantled 300 pianos and turned them into art, tables, walls, chairs and more from his shop at 12 Pepperell Square in Saco, Maine. Find additional photos in the gallery below. Photos by Cy Cyr The first thing I noticed was hanging outside a garage door in downtown Saco. Birds made from piano keys. I was walking to lunch at Quiero Cafe with two friends when I spotted them about 50 feet away. Behind the birds were old pianos, furniture, clocks, and enough inte

Ten years after opening a tiny yoga studio in Saco, Sarah Spiegel has created one of Biddeford's most enduring communities. The Ocean She Built Dark clouds drifted across the sky above Biddeford Pool as Sarah Spiegel stepped into the grass and looked toward the horizon. For 45 minutes, the sun had remained hidden behind a thick layer of blue-gray clouds, leaving only hints of what might happen before nightfall. Then, just before disappearing below the horizon, it found a narr

Maureen Massey, left, and Linda McLaughlin, owners of Between the Tides in Biddeford Pool, Maine, have opened for their 16th season. Between the Tides in Biddeford Pool, Maine. Forty years ago, Linda McLaughlin received a collect call about a man she had never met. Actually, she received a collect call about two men. Neither of them was coming home. It was the mid-1980s, before cell phones, text messages, or any easy way to explain that everything was fine. Linda's husband an

The map hangs downstairs at Huston & Company. Hundreds of red pins stretch across Maine, New England, and well beyond, marking homes, libraries, schools, and universities where furniture built in Arundel eventually found a permanent address. The pins trace decades of work, from private dining rooms to some of the most respected academic institutions in the world. At first glance, the display feels like a complete record of the company's history. Then Saer Huston (pronounced '

Fifty Years, Still Moving The first things Avery mentions aren’t big, not the anniversary or the history or even the fact that her family has been doing this for fifty years, but the smaller details that make up her day, like stickers, helping in bulk, and putting things back where they belong. She talks about cleaning the stairs with peach spray and making sure they smelled right, the kind of detail you only notice if you’ve spent time paying attention. Then, without much bu

Grady O'Connor, 16, runs Courtside Cards and Collectibles which is located inside of the SOFIVE Soccer Center at 400 North Street in Saco, Maine. The first thing you notice about Grady O’Connor is his height. At 16, he’s already 6'4", which makes him easy to spot across the indoor fields at the SOFIVE Soccer Center in Saco. Kids run drills. Parents line the sidelines. Games echo off the walls. And tucked just off the action, behind a glass display case filled with cards, is G

Frank Coletti, owner of Coletti's Pizza in Biddeford, Maine, owns one of the most popular pizza shops in the state of Maine. At five years old, Frank lived through the 1980 earthquake in Naples, Italy. His family spent the next five years in temporary housing. I’ve been gone a long time. Twenty-five years. Most of that time was in Orlando, where the pizza restaurants tend to feel interchangeable after a while—Ferrara's, Nona Street, Flame, Blaze—different names, same menus,

Tori and Abby opened Bird Bones Tattoo Studio on Elm Street in Biddeford in 2024. The Entrance Tori, left, and Abby in the lobby of Bird Bones Tattoo Studio. The door opens into something that doesn’t feel like a waiting room. A desk sits just inside, but it’s surrounded—framed, stacked, layered. A mounted muskrat looks out from the wall to the left. Above it, turkey wings. Behind the desk, shelves hold objects that feel collected over time, not ordered all at once. The wall

Michael Macomber and Katie Pinard outside Elements on a cold March morning in Biddeford. Inside, the shop has been a gathering place on Main Street for 13 years. On the second day of March, winter in Biddeford feels less certain. The cold is still sharp enough to stiffen your fingers, but the light has changed. It comes in clearer now, a brighter blue stretched over Main Street. Snowbanks along the curb have thinned and grayed at the edges. Meltwater runs in narrow ribbons to

Peter McPheeters, of Biddeford Pool, rows his boat around Wood Island Lighthouse during sunrise on February 22, 2025. Photo by Cy Cyr/ BrickTides.com The flagpole snapped in the dark. The wind came hard through Biddeford Pool on Monday — snow moving sideways, drifts building against the harbor-facing buildings, the kind of February storm that reminds you who owns the coastline. By Tuesday morning the blizzard had moved offshore. The sky was hard blue. The Pool lay exposed at

Nick and Emily Conley, of Waterboro, are on pace to sells tens of thousands of bags of their Ruff Pine Dog Treats in 2026. The story of Ruff Pine Dog Treats starts with a purchase on Facebook Marketplace. In 2019, Nick and Emily Conley are twenty-one, recently out of college, and five years into a relationship that started when they were sixteen. Nick is from Biddeford. Emily is from Saco. They buy a 1993 Ford Falcon camper van and decide to travel the country. They don’t

Jacqui DeFranca and Jon Denton, owners of Sweetcream Dairy in Biddeford, Maine. The science, the stubbornness, and the shared joy that brought Jon Denton back home to Biddeford — and let his wife Jacqui build a life around it The Sweetcream Dairy storefront. Sweetcream Dairy sits on Main Street in Biddeford like it belongs there, like it always knew it would end up exactly where it is. Not because the path was obvious. Not because it was easy. But because this is what happens

Sarah Hoover, program director at Apex Youth Connection in Biddeford, Maine. From the outside, Apex Youth Connection doesn’t try to impress you. The building on Granite Street isn’t pretty. It’s scrappy. It looks like a place built for use, not for show. The kind of place that gets the job done and doesn’t apologize for it. Inside, the order reveals itself. Bikes and bike parts are everywhere, but nothing is careless. Handlebars hang in clean rows. Cranks, chains, gears — al

Heather Paquette, President of Good Shepherd Food Bank of Maine. Photo by Cy Cyr Outside the Good Shepherd Food Bank in Auburn, the morning felt unmistakably like Maine. The sun was bright, the air was cold, the wind was sharp, and snow clung to the edges of the parking lot. It was the kind of day that makes you hurry from your car to the door. Inside, the world felt entirely different. The warehouse moved with purpose. Volunteers sorted boxes beneath lights that cast winte

Denis Garriepy, Chief Operating Officer of Landry / French Construction, at a job site in Alfred, Maine on Wednesday, November, 26, 2025. On a recent morning in Alfred, Denis Garriepy checked the time before stepping into the unfinished York County First Responders Training Center. He had already visited one project earlier that day and had two more scheduled before heading back to the office. Landry / French Construction currently has fifteen active projects across the regio

Michelle and John Corgan outside Bell Farm Shops. They purchased the property in 2017 and have transformed it into one of the most beloved shopping destinations on the Seacoast. Bell Farm Shops in York has a presence that stops people in their tracks. The tall red barn at 244 US Route 1 looks like it could be the set of a movie. The cupola rises above the rooftops with a horse weathervane. The morning sun rests on the shingles and the red picket fence. Wind chimes move on the