Flo Leighton came to Biddeford in 2021 knowing almost no one. Five years later, the psychiatric nurse practitioner, educator and community advocate has built a life deeply connected to the city she now calls home. Photo by Cy Cyr The rain had moved through Biddeford overnight and finally cleared around 8 on Monday, September 14th. An hour later, Florence “Flo” Leighton walked into the Biddeford Mills carrying a handbag and sunglasses, dressed in white and wearing the enormous

Biddeford eighth graders faced off against Seacoast on Sunday, September 20, 202 at Waterhouse Field in Biddeford, Maine. The Tigers took home a 35-0 victory against the visitors. Brick+Tides celebrates the people, places and businesses that give York County, Maine, its character — through original photography, thoughtful interviews and stories you might not find anywhere else. Each week, we sit down with someone from our community, listen to their story and share a little m

The Biddeford Tigers Womens soccer team hosted the Portland Bulldogs at Waterhouse Field on Thursday, September 17, 2026. Brick+Tides celebrates the people, places and businesses that give York County, Maine, its character — through original photography, thoughtful interviews and stories you might not find anywhere else. Each week, we sit down with someone from our community, listen to their story and share a little more about the people who live, work, create and build thing

Biddeford vs. Noble at Waterhouse Field on Saturday, September 12, 2026. Brick+Tides celebrates the people, places and businesses that give York County, Maine, its character — through original photography, thoughtful interviews and stories you might not find anywhere else. Each week, we sit down with someone from our community, listen to their story and share a little more about the people who live, work, create and build things here. If you enjoy discovering the people behi

Game of the Week: Biddeford Football v. Gorham at Waterhouse Field on September 11, 2026 in Biddeford, Maine. Brick+Tides celebrates the people, places and businesses that give York County, Maine, its character — through original photography, thoughtful interviews and stories you might not find anywhere else. Each week, we sit down with someone from our community, listen to their story and share a little more about the popel who live, work, create and build things here.. If

Emma Bouthillette with Savvy, left and Glinda, right. Photo by Cy Cyr The fog was so thick at Fortunes Rocks Beach Tuesday evening that the Atlantic Ocean seemed to disappear just beyond the breaking waves. Emma Bouthillette walked barefoot across the wet sand with Savvy (11) and Glinda (6), her two corgis, as we settled in for a conversation about Biddeford, writing, history, family, yoga and a life spent telling stories. Over the next hour, several dogs—and their people—wou

Nick Blunier stands atop his Community Art Bus in Biddeford, Maine — a former 1981 school bus transformed into a mobile studio designed to bring art directly into the community. Photo by Cy Cyr / BrickTides.com It is an old four-window school bus covered in paint and graffiti, with sea creatures swimming across its exterior, business names worked into the artwork, solar power on top and a rooftop deck. Children have painted it. Adults have painted it. A graffiti artist has pa

Scott McPheeters and Niki Cousineau pause inside the light-filled studio they created for artists seeking uninterrupted time to explore ideas. Subcircle is one of only a handful of artist residencies in Maine devoted primarily to contemporary performance, dance and interdisciplinary art. Photo by Cy Cyr. On Guinea Road, an old barn has become a place where artists find something increasingly difficult to come by: time. The first thing I did after climbing the stairs was take

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

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

Josh Johnson, of Biddeford, had a front row seat to the start of Instagram. It begins, as it probably should, with a phone call from the two Instagram founders who were still figuring out what they had built. Josh Johnson had been posting every day—quietly, methodically—on an app that had barely introduced itself to the world. Three days after it launched, he downloaded it because someone on a podcast said it made photos look better. There were no hashtags yet, no search, no

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

Randy Forcier, left and Chris Bedard, right, at their office above Social House Kitchen in Saco, Maine. The CMG Home Loans office on Beach Street is quiet in the way a busy place gets when it’s between waves. A couple chairs are pushed in like someone tried to be tidy before the next appointment. A conference room sits ready—four walls, a table, a few pens that don’t belong to anyone in particular. Downstairs, there’s coffee and movement at Social House Kitchen, the kind of p

Driving through Biddeford, you can tell something about a house by how close it sits to the road. The older the house, the less it seems to care about being polite. Steve’s house sits so near the intersection it feels like the road had to adjust its plans. Not the other way around. Steve's house was constructed when the 8th US President was serving, Martin Van Buren. Subscribe to BrickTides.com. The workshop is not where you expect it. To reach it, you have to step outside a

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

The foundation was only a few feet out of the frozen Scarborough ground, a neat geometry of concrete catching the winter sun. Ten degrees, bright and wind-bitten. Snow from last week still rimmed the perimeter, crisp and untouched. An excavator growled to life, a skid steer answered, and the Atlantic glinted coldly just beyond the lot. This is where something long imagined begins to become real. After a year of planning, Christi stands inside the early shape of a home she onc

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