Here’s one for your Valentine’s Day hangover: Over the last 30 years – on or near Valentine’s Day - someone has been placing hearts all over the city of Portland, Maine. He, she or they struck again yesterday taping hearts on the storefronts of many local businesses. After all this time, the identity of the bandit or bandits is still a mystery.
WMTW in PORTLAND, Maine wrote…
A long-standing Valentine’s Day tradition continued in Portland on Thursday, despite the snow and ice left behind by Wednesday’s winter storm….The “Valentine’s Day Bandit” made his or her way through a wintry mess overnight, leaving behind the crafty, romantic message.After nearly 30 years, no one knows the identity of the Valentine’s Day Bandit.
The idea seems to have taken off as hearts were also placed around a college campus in Vermont. It's one lovely form of vandalism.
A brief history of the Portland Valentine's Dady bandit courtesy of Slingshot Thought.
1976 The first Valentine’s Phantom strikes in Portland, and garners reports in the Evening Express and Maine Sunday Telegram newspapers.
1977 Printing the flyers cost $22 at Colonial Offset Printing on Forest Avenue; a Portland Press Herald effort to discover the Bandit’s identity fails.
1978 Hearts went up a day late, and bore a note: “It’s not only ONE day!”
1979 The weather was 8 degrees and windy, according to notes made by one of the six bandits.
1984 Massive heart banners, roughly 20 feet by 35 feet, hang from the Cumberland County Civic Center and the Portland Museum of Art.
1986 A heart banner is hung on Fort Gorges in the middle of Casco Bay.
1991 Down East magazine imagines that “the phantoms roam the city in a pack, dressed in red or white capes emblazoned with huge hearts.”
2001 A heart flag flies from the roof of Portland’s Central Fire Station; a fire lieutenant denies any knowledge.
2005 A heart banner hangs from the roof of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute on Commercial Street.
2008 - The bandit tapes hearts all through the town on local stores and businesses.
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