Portland Maine’s Valentine’s Day Bandit

There’s a delightful mystery in Portland, Maine. For decades, every morning on Valentine’s Day, the city wakes to red hearts taped everywhere…on windows, storefronts, light-posts, and mailboxes – literally everywhere. One enormous red heart banner is saved for a miraculous reveal. Last year it donned the Portland Museum of Art. Once it was hung across the scaffolding that is now the Ocean Institute on Commercial Street. It remains the best-kept secret in Maine because no one knows who the Valentine’s Day Bandit is. No one knows if it’s a couple or a team or Saint Valentine himself. One year I made a concerted effort to find out who The Bandit was. I asked my most well-connect friends. I found long-term Portland residents and asked them. Nobody knew. I live in outer Portland and that year when I woke up on Valentine’s Day, there was a red heart taped to my front door. I took it as a request – directly from The Bandit – to stop asking and just enjoy the tradition. So this year on February 14th, make your way to Portland, Maine, and enjoy a stroll around downtown and the Old Port. Enjoy the red hearts in honor of Saint Valentine AND Portland’s Valentine’s Day Bandit. PS: That brooch I’m holding? That’s a Portland Valentine mystery for another day…