York Beach, Maine - Land of Nostalgia

I got to spend half the day in one of my most favorite and nostalgia inspiring places - York Beach, Maine. It isn't just that I have spent some part of almost every summer of my life there (whether it be a weekend or a few weeks), it's also that York is pleasantly stranded somewhere in the 50's. Not the oppressive, socially restrictive 50's, but the idealized, Shirley-Temple-drinking, golly-gee-whiz 50's.


My husband and I hit all the usual hot spots, our only break from tradition was going to Short Sands with some friends rather than Long Sands. After lounging on the beach and doing some end of the season boogie boarding, we ate at the Goldenrod. Nothing like grilled cheese with tomato, potato chips and bread & butter pickles to make you feel like you are 7 again and that nothing could possibly ever go wrong in the world.

Then it was time to get serious, we played a 10 game series of Skee-Ball at Fun-O-Rama. Once again, I got beat badly by my husband, this time by 7 games to 3. I need to figure out some way to get there and practice without him so I am ready next time.

Inspired by our trip to Fun-O-Rama (despite my crushing defeat), I thought I would check out Etsy to see if I could find anything that captured the glory of 25 cent Skee-Ball and I wasn't disappointed. This screenprint, titled Boardwalk Arcade, was made by fellow New Englander Alisha Gould and I have to say, it's totally awesome. You should look at the other items in Alisha's Etsy shop, a lot of items have the air of nostalgia and the ocean about them without being the least bit cliché. She has some very fun, hip prints, not to mention a kick-ass Queen Elizabeth I art doll. Wow, seaweed, Skee-Ball, and Queen Elizabeth - were we seperated at birth?

We wrapped up our brief visit at Brown's. When I was young I would always get bubble-gum ice cream there because it felt like a super treat. When else would my mom let me have both ice cream and bubblegum? Never. But Brown's made it OK, and I took full advantage. Today I got the strawberry cheesecake frozen yogurt, which I don't recommend. While I did suffer a mild case of food regret, we still had a good time with friends anyway. On some level the ice cream doesn’t matter anymore, it's the experience that brings us back. Which in a way is what nostalgia is - the experience of being brought back, whether or not you were ever "there" in the first place.