Consider the Lobster
CONSIDER THE LOBSTER
The enormous, pungent, and extremely well-marketed Maine
Lobster Festival is held every late July in the state’s midcoast region, meaning the western side of Penobscot Bay, the nerve stem of
Maine’s lobster industry. What’s called the midcoast runs from Owl’s
Head and Thomaston in the south to Belfast in the north. (Actually, it might extend all the way up to Bucksport, but we were never able to get farther north than Belfast on Route 1, whose summer traffic is, as you can imagine, unimaginable.) The region’s two main communities are Camden, with its very old money and yachty harbor and five-star restaurants and phenomenal B&Bs, and Rockland, a serious old fishing town that hosts the festival every summer in historic
Harbor Park, right along the water.1
Tourism and lobster are the midcoast region’s two main industries, and they’re both warm-weather enterprises, and the Maine
Lobster Festival represents less an intersection of the industries than a deliberate collision, joyful and lucrative and loud. The
1 There’s a comprehensive native apothegm: “Camden by the sea, Rockland by the smell.”
DAV I D F O S T E R WALLACE
236
assigned subject of this Gourmet article is the 56th Annual MLF,
30 July–3 August 2003, whose official theme this year was “Lighthouses,
Laughter, and Lobster.” Total paid attendance was over
100,000, due partly to a national CNN spot in June during which a senior editor of Food &Wine magazine hailed the MLF as one of the best food-themed galas in the world. 2003 festival highlights: concerts by Lee Ann Womack and Orleans, annual Maine Sea Goddess beauty pageant, Saturday’s big parade, Sunday’s William G. Atwood
Memorial Crate Race, annual Amateur Cooking Competition, carnival rides and midway attractions and food booths, and the MLF’s
Main Eating Tent, where something over 25,000 pounds of freshcaught
Maine lobster is consumed after preparation in the World’s
Largest Lobster Cooker near
The enormous, pungent, and extremely well-marketed Maine
Lobster Festival is held every late July in the state’s midcoast region, meaning the western side of Penobscot Bay, the nerve stem of
Maine’s lobster industry. What’s called the midcoast runs from Owl’s
Head and Thomaston in the south to Belfast in the north. (Actually, it might extend all the way up to Bucksport, but we were never able to get farther north than Belfast on Route 1, whose summer traffic is, as you can imagine, unimaginable.) The region’s two main communities are Camden, with its very old money and yachty harbor and five-star restaurants and phenomenal B&Bs, and Rockland, a serious old fishing town that hosts the festival every summer in historic
Harbor Park, right along the water.1
Tourism and lobster are the midcoast region’s two main industries, and they’re both warm-weather enterprises, and the Maine
Lobster Festival represents less an intersection of the industries than a deliberate collision, joyful and lucrative and loud. The
1 There’s a comprehensive native apothegm: “Camden by the sea, Rockland by the smell.”
DAV I D F O S T E R WALLACE
236
assigned subject of this Gourmet article is the 56th Annual MLF,
30 July–3 August 2003, whose official theme this year was “Lighthouses,
Laughter, and Lobster.” Total paid attendance was over
100,000, due partly to a national CNN spot in June during which a senior editor of Food &Wine magazine hailed the MLF as one of the best food-themed galas in the world. 2003 festival highlights: concerts by Lee Ann Womack and Orleans, annual Maine Sea Goddess beauty pageant, Saturday’s big parade, Sunday’s William G. Atwood
Memorial Crate Race, annual Amateur Cooking Competition, carnival rides and midway attractions and food booths, and the MLF’s
Main Eating Tent, where something over 25,000 pounds of freshcaught
Maine lobster is consumed after preparation in the World’s
Largest Lobster Cooker near