Tonight is the 20th annual lowering of a sardine from the roof of an art museum in Eastport, Maine’s easternmost city. (Lubec is the easternmost town.) A lot of people don’t know this, but the now-famous sardine lowering tradition was invented by me and first built in the sculptural form by my sweet wife, Sweetgrass and manifested as an annual event by my “bro,” the conceptual artist known as “Bang-Bangs” during a five-year stint of living and working on the watery U.S.-Canadian border.
Now, for the first time, I will publicly acknowledge that, during the early aughts, with the help of a cheap wig and some antique safety glasses, I had a secret life as “Bang-Bangs,” the star of a dozen short films documenting his misadventures on a small island-city on the border with Canada.
As you can see in the five-minute documentary ABOVE, the whole sordid New Year’s Eve affair was due to a work argument between the museum director and the museum janitor over the demolition of an interior bank vault (don’t ask), Sweetgrass and Bang-Bangs were only involved for the first two years of the event. And thanks to our archival footage, we can show how the world’s largest sardine grew to an enormous size, before being shrunk to the current minnow-size.
A brief history: In 2005, Eastport civic leaders asked if the art museum (where I labored as janitor and exhibit constructor) would consider lowering an illuminated ball, a la Times Square, from the museum roof at midnight on New Year’s. I thought the idea was foolish and derivative. I counter-offered with a giant sardine — in honor of the city’s history as the one-time fish canning capital of the world. Also, due to our proximity to the Canadian border, I suggested we lower a giant (cardboard) illuminated Maple Leaf at midnight Atlantic time.
And everybody loved the idea.
(Except the museum director, I would posit, because due to the success of the event, it became a tradition and, understandably, a pain in the ass for him to pull off every year since 2005. The event doesn’t make money for the museum. And due to the hit-or-miss January weather on a island in Passamaquoddy Bay, the annual planning is fraught with stress if a storm is forecasted.)
Anyways, the first year fish was a six footer.
The following year, Sweetgrass built a 24-foot sardine, using 1x3 strapping as giant fishbones and silver fabric woven into a chicken wire armature to simulate the scales of a giant herring. Gotta say, she certainly outdid her original creation. Boston Globe must have thought so too, since Sally was the subject of a front page photo.
However, despite a wondrous and well attended sardine lowering, the bossman never spoke to me again.
The following year, he commissioned another artist to build a new fish. The museum claims this version is eight-feet long, but that’s probably an exaggeration. Below is the notably smaller current fish with its creator.
In retrospect, I find it amusing that the sardine shindig is still a thing. And equally funny is how Eastport and the smaller sardine were part of Anderson Cooper’s “New Year’s Live” broadcast in 2012 when co-host Kathy Griffin dropped to her knees, in front of Cooper’s crotch, in a sexually suggestive manner… much to the disgust of Eastport’s civic leaders who demanded — and did NOT receive — an apology from Griffin.
The real legacy of the event, though, is giving the young folk on that sleepy little island something to do in the middle of the winter. I know many teenagers love the excuse to stay out late with their pals, cruising and getting into trouble in what is otherwise, a very anti-teen community run by a bunch of old biddies, fuddy-duddies and rich folk from away, who retire to the island city in hope of finding their downeast version of Mayberry.
Sadly, Bang-Bangs’ Youtube channel (which started in 2005, the first year of the company’s existence) was hijacked by some scammer several years ago. However, thanks to the Crash Report’s multi-media capabilities, I'm thinking of adding a Cinema section next to the Podcast and re-screening Bang-Bang’s cinematographic catalogue.
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