Tour de Thrift – Stage 8
Part of the reason for beginning the Tour de Thrift was to explore new areas of Maine, while the other was to visit thrift shops, flea markets and antique shops. These types of second hand shopping locations seldom get written up in guide books or mentioned online. The Tour de Thrift is our way of sharing with you what we discover so you can plan your next thrift shopping adventure.
Stage 8 of the Tour de Thrift took us to Bangor and Brewer Maine with some stops along the way. Bangor is located on the Penobscot river, a little over 50 miles west of Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. Long ago a thriving lumber town, Bangor then became a hub for the paper industry. Today it’s a city of over 35,000 and the third largest city in Maine. Many of the historical mansions are still present in it’s neighborhoods, one of which is where author Stephen King lives. We only had one afternoon to visit and explore the second-hand shopping scene. It was definitely not enough time to visit all the places we wanted to see.
Shop #1
Searsport Flea Market
Route 1, Searsport, ME
207-460-1113
Hours: Memorial Day – Labor Day – mornings
Restrooms: ??
Leaving from Rockland, heading north on Route 1 we made our first stop in Searsport, ME a tiny town on the coast with several antique malls, 2 flea markets and a great junk barn to pick through. The end of the season is typically after labor day but some flea market vendors stay open for Columbus Day weekend in October. The Searsport Flea Market has a few outbuildings with permanent vendors and several vendors underneath a long tent area near route 1, so you can’t miss it. The end of the season is also a great time to find some good deals as vendors want to sell inventory before winter. You can haggle hard when the weather is bad like the day we were there. We came away with another cool camera and vintage bike rack. We’ll be heading back up next summer when the flea market is in full swing.
Shop #2
Antique Marketplace & Cafe
65 Main Street
Bangor, ME
207.941.2111
Map
Hours: Fri. – Sat. 9-5, Sun. 12-5
*Restrooms available
Once we made it into Bangor we headed to Main St, where I was told by some local folks to check out the Antique Market Place & Cafe. Since the cafe was bustling with customers and we don’t get to eat Indian food in our town, we decided to head across the street to the Taste of India. This was a nice quiet little place with good food, friendly service and fair prices. Once we were fed and re-energized we headed into the antique Market. This is a large group shop (over 100 dealers) on two floors of what looks like an old department store. There are high ceilings, with good lighting which gives the place an open feeling and allows easy movement around all the great stuff folks have on display. We ended up buying a few Elvis albums for $1.00 a piece, to play on the turntables we have for sale in our group shop. If you go, be sure to check out the Cafe, the menu looked really good, very reasonably priced and from the number of local folks eating there it must be tasty.
Shop #3
Bangor Goodwill Store
805 Stillwater Avenue
Bangor, ME 04401
207-947-7984
Map
Hours: Mon. – Sat. 9am – 9pm, Sun. 9am – 8pm
*Restrooms available
Part of our Tour de Thrift project includes visiting all 18 Goodwill stores in Maine! So this trip we’ll be able to scratch off two more from the list. After living in a small town It’s a little confusing to find yourself in weekend mall traffic, but we managed to find the Bangor Goodwill which is located on the road that wraps around the Mall. The store was buzzing with shoppers, kids and teens. It was noisy, but kind of fun to see so many people having a good time. I finally realized most of the crowd was shopping for Halloween costumes! We skipped the costumes and headed for housewares where we scored an awesome Quartite Creative Corp. 1960’s lamp. We seem to be on a role with the lamps lately, but they’ve got such great vintage character we can’t pass them up.
Shop #4
Brewer Goodwill Store
610 Wilson St
Brewer, ME 04412
207-989-1511
Map
Hours: Mon.-Sat. 8am-8pm, Sun. 10am-7pm
*Restrooms available
Although the Brewer Goodwill store is small and a bit old I liked it immediately!
The fun vintage golf clubs in a plaid bag out front were very tempting. Inside the store was full of inventory and not crowded at all. We poked around for quite some time. I was thrilled to find a cast iron Dansk “spider” candle holder that was designed by Jens Quistgaard the famous Danish designer and architect who was the chief designer for Dansk for 3o plus years. I love the clean modern lines of mid century Scandinavian designs. Now the challenge will be to locate skinny little candles.
Shop #5
Schoolhouse Antique Mall
530 South Main Street
Brewer, ME
(207) 989-9777
Map
Hours: Mon. 10am- 5pm, Tue. closed, Wed. 10am-6pm, Thur. 10pm-5pm, Fri. 10am-5pm, Sat. 10am-4pm
On our way home we decided to take a different road south. We headed out of Brewer on Route 15 (South Main Street) and a few miles south of town we saw a big yellow school house with antique garden furniture and a vintage bicycle outside. This place looked like fun so we headed inside to check it out. The 11,000 sq. foot school house is 4 floors of vendors displaying a wide variety of goods. This place was great and the folks there super friendly. If you stop in make sure to allow plenty of time to shop all four floors!
Favorite Find:
This was a fun trip and we realize that the Bangor area has a lot to offer and we’ll be heading back there again. There are several other thrift and vintage stores that we need to visit. If you have any recommendations for other places we should check out in the Bangor area please let us know and we’ll be sure to add it to our list.
