PORTLAND, Maine — The Valentine’s Day Bandit has done it again. For the 47th year in a row, the city’s downtown has been festooned with hundreds of red hearts on the annual lovers’ holiday.
The nearly half-century old tradition began in 1976, when the city was still gritty, grim and definitely not a tourist destination or foodie heaven. No one knows who — or how many people — are responsible for the yearly feat. The bandit and accompanying amorous strike force have remained anonymous from the start.
This year, city dwellers awoke to a familiar string of red, paper hearts taped to storefront windows in bursts of a dozen or more. The crimson symbols of love were hanging from random blocks along Congress Street, in the Old Port and down Commercial Street on the waterfront.
A few hearts also appeared on statues in Longfellow and Monument Square. In Lobsterman’s Square, the familiar statue of Snoody Johnson, kneeling and attending to a crustacean, had a heart plastered on his chest, like an outsized blood-pumping organ. Johnson also had a more immodest heart taped to his backside, perhaps in tribute to his attractive and forever-toned buttocks.
Portland’s lobsterman statue (left) sports a red paper heart, while another adorns a shop window next to a seagull on Tuesday morning. Every year, for nearly half a century, a “Valentine’s Day Bandit” plasters hearts all over the city. Credit: Troy R. Bennett / BDN
Not far away, way up high, a red-hearted banner hung from the tippy top of what will become Maine’s tallest building, when finished. An even bigger, though slightly wrinkled, heart banner hung from the Portland Public Library. As the sun rose over the opposite buildings, the humongous heart caught its rays, dazzling eyes and turning heads.
Far out in Portland Harbor, between the Eastern Prom and Peaks Island, a third banner festooned the side of Fort Gorges. The normally somber, granite fortress, frosted in a fresh coat of overnight snow, resembled a very large Valentine’s Day cake.
Fort Gorges first got the Bandit’s special attention in 1986.
A child (left) sits beneath a red paper heart in a Congress Street restaurant window on Tuesday morning, while red hearts hang from a lingerie store window (top right) and Fort Gorges (bottom right) in Portland Harbor. A “Valentine’s Day Bandit” hangs hearts all over the city on the holiday each year. Credit: Troy R. Bennett / BDN
The joyous red hearts were the talk of all television news crews, photographers, morning dog walkers and joggers out at sunrise. Many people took pictures. Most were smiling.
The Bandit’s mission was accomplished, yet again.
