1. Archipelago
City: Rockland, ME
Category: Shopping
Telephone: (207) 596-0701
Address: 386 Main St.
Description: What an appropriate name for the gift store of the Island Institute. The shop looks more like a gallery and brims with arts and crafts from the Maine islands (more than 100 artisans). Check out the granite vases from Island Granite Works ($25).
2. Black Parrot
City: Rockland, ME
Category: Shopping
Telephone: (207) 594-9161
Address: 328 Main St.
Description: This staple on Main is primarily known for its tasteful women’s clothes, but it also carries an assortment of accessories and housewares and even products for the home and office. If you want a high-end duster or a nice hand cream or a whippa (Maine-speak for “great”) journal, you’ll find it here. The shoes are funky and unique, and there is always a lot of neat knitwear.
3. Four Twelve
City: Rockland, ME
Category: Shopping
Telephone: (207) 596-2412
Address: 412 Main St.
Description: Rockland’s resident fashion designer Beth Bowley—we’re talking Parsons School of Design attending, former Perry Ellis-staffing, Elle and InStyle featuring type stuff—opened this women’s clothing boutique in 2007. The shop is stocked with fashion-forward dresses, bags, and jewelry the likes of which you wouldn’t expect to find in a fishing town.
4. Grasshopper Shop
City: Rockland, ME
Category: Shopping
Telephone: (207) 596-6156
Address: 400 Main St.
Description: One store in a small chain, the Grasshopper Shop has nice enough women’s clothes to keep the ladies from having to drive to Portland for their blouses, skirts, and shoes. It also carries jewelry and accessories, some unique toys, several lines of housewares, and a really good selection of cards. Check the other shops in Searsport, Ellsworth, and Bangor, too. Open all year.
5. Planet Toys
City: Rockland, ME
Category: Shopping
Telephone: (207) 596-5976
Address: 318 Main St.
Description: As much an experience as a store, Planet Toys is an offshoot of the Planet World Marketplace, a gift store in Camden (which has great toys itself). It’s the kind of overwhelming toy store you expect to find in cities, not small Maine communities. It sells everything under the sun, from plastic Playmobil sets to homemade wooden whirligigs. The store has a great kids’ books section, hosts all sorts of special events, and can amuse even the oldest kids.
City: Rockland, ME
Category: Shopping
Address: 328 Main St.
7. Harbor Square Gallery
City: Rockland, ME
Category: Shopping
Telephone: (207) 594-8700
Address: 374 Main St.
Description: A neat former bank with three floors of fine art, Harbor Square represents a raft of artists. Inside you’ll find everything from the colorful paintings of Sharon Larkin to the jewelry of goldsmith Thomas O’Donovan, and you may be mortified, like so many others have been, to see paintings and sculpture displayed right on the street. Fine art as sidewalk sale. “Won’t it be stolen?” “What if it rains?” Good questions; you’ll have to find out the answers when you visit.
8. The Strand Theatre
City: Rockland, ME
Category: Shopping
Telephone: (207) 594-0070
Address: 345 Main St.
Description: Film fans have been enjoying movies at the Strand since 1923, and it’s only gotten more fun. The beautifully restored cinema screens an art movie a week on those nights when it doesn’t have a concert or a lecture or a stage performance. Local theaters don’t come much finer.