To Have and to Hold: My Vinyl Year

Until very recently, I had not been to Maine. Hence, what I had in my head was an idea of Maine. A Family Feud-esque word association: Lobsters. LL Bean. And I guess Steven King lives there? As an outsider, Maine feels way the hell up there and that seems to be the appeal: it’s away from stuff. Untouched—maybe?—from all the noise down here. A thing that comes to mind is this sketch from the very short-lived Dana Carvey show: skinheads in Maine:  (Yes, that's Stephen Colbert on the right.) What’s the joke here? I mean, they probably do have bigotry there, but the sort of self-conscious, “bigotry is my identity” thing feels hilariously out of place. Wouldn’t a true Mainer be too busy—lacing up their Bean Boots…hiking in Acadia…pulling up a lobster trap—to bother hating anyone? It's easy to romanticize a place when you haven’t been there…or when you spend a week there at a quaint AirBnB on a quiet street in a nice neighborhood...or when you visit a famously cold place in J...