A couple of years ago there was a drive by Friends of Eastern Promenade to move the commercial activities of the boat launch at East End Beach somewhere else. The reason was that commercial activities were no compatible, so said the Friends, with the character of the Eastern Promenade and Munjoy Hill. I don’t know what happened with the Friends’ request.

It is crazy to think that commercial activities are not compatible with non-commercial activities. And it is dishonest to say commercial activities are incompatible when restaurants, coffee shops, boutiques selling all manner of things are allowed, and supporting services, like delivery trucks on the neighborhood’s streets, are allowed.

I (Jim here) am a Liberal person. I’m probably more Liberal/Left Wing/Progressive than a great meny people in Maine, probably in Portland too, a place with a rep, which I believe is not based in reality, for being a kind of Peoples Republic a la Cambridge, Massachusetts. But I own two businesses. And I want people to thrive. Which means people have to be able to make a living, fairly, decently, without screwing anyone.

Removing commercial activities from a city neighborhood (there was another brooha in the West End when a developer wanted to put an office with something like 10 people in a church he’d bought) makes us ignorant to the very commercial activities that keep the places we think we love going:

Directly, in the sense of the commercial activities at the East End Beach boat launch carrying machinery and building materials to the islands in Casco Bay.

And indirectly, in the sense of the West End developer who would put people with good jobs and money to spend in the West End.