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Welcome to Bangor. The streetside sign in central Maine invites visitors into the city, onto the pages of Stephen King’s books and into the imaginations of readers across the world. It’s where King’s hometown of Bangor serves as a blueprint for the chilling fictional town of Derry. Each lurks within the shadows of the other and, in the eyes of some, peers out at times like a clown in a sewer drain. That sewer — the most famous in the city, and perhaps the literary world — sits at the corner of Union and Jackson streets. It’s where King, while passing by on a morning walk, got the inspiration for his classic novel “It” – making it one of the many local landmarks he has used while transforming Bangor to Derry. Doing so has allowed readers that go there through King’s words to familiarize themselves with a place they’ve visited many times yet have never actually been. “If you’ve been to Derry in your imagination -- and you’ve seen Derry, Maine -- when you come to Bangor, you recognize it,” said Monique Bouchard of the Downtown Bangor Partnership. “You recognize places that you’ve read about because they’ve been brought to life so accurately.” The area took on a new life form with the recent release of the HBO original series “Welcome to Derry” – a prequel to “It” that explores 1960s Derry and its dark history. “I’m always fascinated with how somebody has turned another place into my home,” Bouchard said of Bangor being recreated on screen after filming outside the city. “How has someone taken another community and turned it into this place that I know like the back of my hand.” Knowledge of Bangor to an outsider exists only in the back of their mind. So, during a recent four-day stay, locals were asked about the city, King, and the new show that both played a pivotal role in. The Sewer Welcome to Jackson Street. Near the curb that runs along to the side of the house owned by Todd Jacobs is what might be the country’s most visited sewer drain. Depending on the day of the week and the number of local King tours passing through, Jacobs estimates that as many as 150 people a day could stop by. “We actually enjoy it,” Jacobs said. “It’s kind of fun being on a famous street corner.” Some visitors occasionally do some decorating. “Red balloons are constantly tied on it,” he said. “Like at least one a week, sometimes there could be one a day.” That’s what happens when you’re neighbors with Pennywise the Clown. Jacobs, originally from Connecticut, moved to Bangor about 25 years ago and into the house shortly after. A former assistant manager at the local Borders bookstore, he’d occasionally spot King signing copies of his books and returning them to the shelves. Their paths would soon cross again in another form. Jacobs, who grew up reading Kings’ books, learned years after moving into the house that the sewer just feet away from his front door inspired King's plot for “It." “It was kind of a wives’ tail, an urban myth that went around the neighborhood,” he said of the sewer, a circular street grate as opposed to the curb inlet variety depicted by King. “He’s always kind of had a soft spot for where he’s from,” Jacobs said, “and he’s kind of put that into a lot of his writing.” With the new show once again spotlighting the city — and the sewer — Jacobs says, “It’s kind of neat that they’re continuing the lineage.” And he’s not concerned about it leading to an increase in visitors and red balloons outside his house. “We’re not worried, we actually welcome it,” Jacobs said. “It’s good to have people in Bangor for positive reasons.” The Bar Welcome to 2 Feet Brewing. Pull up a stool at this downtown brewery, order a craft beer, and wait for a local to tell a King story. On an unseasonably warm October afternoon, a tale was shared within a half hour of arrival by Dave King, an 80-year-old lifelong resident with no relation to the author. The two Kings were former colleagues as high school teachers at nearby Hampden Academy in the 1970s. “I’d like to think that he’s the famous one, I’m the bright one,” Dave King said, “but I’m afraid that doesn’t work either.” The former history teacher described a young Stephen King, then an English teacher, as an avid reader and writer, a liberal and an overall "great guy." He said the soon-to-be-author was originally living just west of Bangor in Hermon while teaching at the school when a group of kids destroyed his mailbox with a baseball bat. That led Stephen King to change his mailing address to the school. “He had often said, ‘Even if I get published, I’m gonna keep teaching,’” Dave King recalled. “One day, the message arrived in the mail in the office at Hampden Academy that ‘Carrie’ was being published, and he looked up and said, ‘I’m gonna quit teaching.’” He did just that and went on to become a wealthy best-selling author…though he still has a local outstanding debt. Dave and Stephen King were watching the Boston Red Sox face the New York Yankees in a one-game playoff on Oct. 2, 1978. In a New England horror on par with any King novel, Yankees’ light-hitting shortstop Bucky Dent hit a go-ahead three-run home run that would end the Red Sox season. “I bet on the Yankees, [Stephen King] bet on the Red Sox in the baseball game,” Dave King said. “Bucky Dent hit his famous blooper, and I won. But Stephen, he’s a Red Sox fan, he refused to recognize that. I’m waiting for my money.” Situated just off Main Street, 2 Feet Brewing was opened nine years ago by Nit-Noi Ricker, who grew up about 12 miles south in Winterport. Stephen King was raised further south in the Portland area, but he opted to use Bangor for what became the most iconic of his fictionalized Maine cities. “He said that Bangor has a little dark understory,” Ricker said. “He’s like, ‘Portland is like disco and Bangor is rock 'n’ roll.’” Set along the Penobscot River, Bangor includes areas renowned for their 19th-century architecture and Greek Revival homes. The area evokes a small-town feel, while offering a vibrant arts and culture scene. There are waterfront concerts, an aquatic center with theme-park-like water slides, and its own "Field of Dreams" with a little-league baseball stadium in the middle of the neighborhood, built courtesy of the Kings. The city faces the challenges of any urban environment, with traces of homelessness, substance abuse and economic instability. But while Derry is notorious for its violence, Bangor is not. “It’s very much community based, people watch out for each other, people care about each other," Ricker said. "I love being here because that’s the feel you get. People come here to visit Maine, they fall in love with how laid back we are, how we have four real seasons, we have the mountains, the rivers, the streams, the lakes. Then they fall in love with the place. And, bonus, Stephen King lived right around the corner.” And sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows King’s name. The beer menu has King-themed options like the Scottish Ale “You’ll float 2” and the IPA “This is it.” King photos and custom Derry t-shirts cover the walls. King’s birthday was even celebrated in September with a carnival organized by Ricker. “A town in southern Maine did a Stephen King day back in May, and I was like, ‘Why isn’t Bangor — i.e. Derry, Maine — doing something to honor our most famous resident?’” she said. It included free carnival games and prizes, a “Pet Sematary” pet parade and a “Derry, Maine Beer Garden” -- drawing appeal from residents and sponsors alike for what is expected to become an annual event. “That’s a clear sign of how much people love him,” Ricker said. Ricker said the new show will add to the area’s intrigue. “They captured the town perfectly,” she said of the first episode, “and I can’t wait to watch it develop.” That means more tourists crossing paths with locals who have a King story to share. "Or maybe 50," Ricker added. The Tour Welcome to SK Tours of Maine. In New York, there's open-top bus tours to admire skyscrapers. In Chicago, there's boat tours to see riverfront architecture. In Los Angeles, there's van tours to gaze at celebrity homes. In Bangor, there's Stephen King tours. And they book up early and often by those near and far. The sprinter bus with a picture of Pennywise on its side has carried passengers from over 40 countries this year alone. “We’ve met some great people, and the one that just sticks in my mind is we had these people from Siberia,” said Stu Tinker, who founded SK Tours nearly 15 years ago. “And I didn’t say this to them, but I didn’t think anyone got out of Siberia.” Tinker was first introduced to King in 1974 when the then unknown writer held a book signing at Betts Bookstore in downtown Bangor for his debut novel “Carrie.” Tinker’s wife Penney saw an article in the paper promoting the event and insisted they attend. “Well, I went down thinking it’s gonna be a 50-cent, 75-cent paperback,” Tinker said. “No, it was a $6 book, and I didn’t want to buy it. It was too much money.” Penney again insisted. They bought the book, met King and had the course of their lives altered. About 15 years later, the couple bought the bookstore, and King became a customer of theirs. They owned the shop for two decades, eventually moving its location and exclusively selling King books. When they sold the bookstore, Tinker was unsure what his next chapter would be. “My wife actually suggested, ‘Why don’t you do a tour?’” he said. “Cause we had always handed out little maps of the area and people would go to what they could find. Anyway, it worked out to do a tour. I bought a Town & Country van, just started out real slow. It got bigger and bigger and bigger.” So big that “The Derry, Maine Tour” chauffeuring visitors to King-inspired locations became a family business, with Tinker’s son, Jamie, and daughter-in-law, Jennifer Millar, taking over. The couple, at peak times, offers two tours a day, in addition to private tours for up to 10 people. The two-and-a-half hour tour transports readers to King’s pages by visiting locations featured in his work, like the standpipe water tower, the Paul Bunyan statue, Lover’s Leap and the Mount Hope cemetery headstones that sparked character names like Georgie and Carrie, as well as points of inspiration, the house he still owns and other locations that bring Derry to life. “I think [King] can take a city block and make you read it and then feel like you know it when you go there,” Jamie Tinker said. “We have a lot of people on the tour when they come here they go, ‘Well, this is exactly how I pictured it cause it’s exactly how he wrote it.’” The tour is also a history lesson in Bangor’s past, both as the lumber capital of the world and as the setting of some dark non-fiction. “Stephen borrows tragedy from Bangor and he fits it into Derry,” Millar said. As much as Bangor embraces King, its corners are not a shrine to him. Non-constant readers can visit without recognizing traces of the neighborhood’s most famous resident, the words he’s written, and the world he’s created. “You could drive all around Bangor for three days and not see any references to Stephen King,” Millar said. “My mother was a neighbor of Stephen King’s for years, she’s never opened one of his books. She has no idea what we talk about.” Those seeking Derry will find it, particularly at the SK Tours gift shop, which is complete with a wooded “Pet Sematary” trail, a “Redrum” door, a replica “The Shining” hexagon carpet pattern, a park bench where King regularly sat while writing, and screen-used memorabilia like the 1960 Cadillac used in the movie “Thinner.” The tour’s dedication to the King universe makes repeat customers of visitors like Evie Jacobs from Indiana, who took the tour for the fifth consecutive year. “I tell people I’m coming to Derry when we’re heading to Bangor,” she said, clutching a photo album filled with photos of her trips. “Our goal is to hit every place connected to Stephen King in Maine.” Jamie Tinker says the series “Welcome to Derry” will likely rewrite parts of the tour, and he will be taking copious notes while watching. “I'm impressed at how much detail from the book they've gotten into the series so far,” he said. “Even though we've only seen two episodes, we've already seen things we already talk about on the tour. I'm sure some of the content will be included in future tours as the show develops.” Millar has appreciated the nods to movie scenes, book mentions, and particularly, Bangor references. “Immediately recognizable to some locals,” she said, “but maybe not quite as much to the King fans that don't understand yet just how much of Bangor's geography and history goes into the stories King writes.” That combination helped put Bangor – and Derry – on the map. “It’s done a lot for Bangor…well, Derry,” Stu Tinker said. “He shows Derry as being a very evil town, which Bangor really isn’t. There's been some bad things that have happened, like any town. I don’t think anybody’s ever offended by him basing his stories in Bangor. You go places and people find out you’re from Bangor, they ask, ‘Do you know Stephen King?’ And I think everybody in town is that way.” The Bookstore Welcome to The Briar Patch. Inside the bookstore, located in the heart of downtown, is a shelf with a small, hand-written sign that reads “Bangor’s own Stephen King.” It’s surround by dozens of King’s books, ranging from new releases like “Never Flinch” to local products like “Hearts in Suspension” to classics like “It.” The latter never stays on the shelf for long, with readers who made their bucket-list trip ensuring the book remains one of the store's annual best sellers. “It’s kind of a go-to when you come to Bangor because it takes place right here,” said Gibran Graham, the store's owner since 2017 and a Bangor resident for nearly three decades. “People like to purchase it while they’re here.” An authentic Bangor receipt from Briar Patch – or Gerald Winter and Son, another downtown bookstore that specializes in King first editions and memorabilia — certainly makes a perfect bookmark for constant readers. The Briar Patch’s foundation has even played a crucial role in Bangor history. In 1937, when the store was known as Dakin’s Sporting Goods, fugitive members of “The Brady Gang” attempted to buy guns and ammunition. The store owner reported the suspicious purchase to police, leading the FBI to stake out the store. When the men returned, a shootout ensued on Central Street, leaving Al Brady and Clarence Shaffer dead. A historical marker on the curb — labeling Brady as "Public Enemy No. 1" — commemorates the incident. King, as he does with other tragic events in the area, adapts elements of the incident to Derry, referring to it not as “Brady” but “The Bradley Gang.” “Art mimics life, but life also mimics art,” Graham said. “I think the readers and the fans that live here, we also sort of make the area become more like his books, too. Not in the deadly scary way, but just the vibe. Just by being fans and embracing it.” Many have embraced the town’s latest role in the new show. “It’ll be interesting to see the direction it takes,” Graham said. “I know there’s been a lot of online flack recently about sort of the series demystifying characters like Pennywise, but I think the expansion of the cultural history of Derry and the story in it will be good and entertaining for the fans.” As long as it sounds like Derry. "We all sort of flock to the theaters and the screens to make sure that people are using accurate Maine accents and pronouncing words correctly," he added. "And we’re happy when they do." The Downtown Welcome to Bangor Public Library. Inside is a small plastic container filled with a stack of library cards. The name and stamp at the top of the cards read “Derry Public Library.” They’re issued to Derry-seekers who visit the sprawling library with the iconic copper roof. It stands, thanks in part to the generous renovation contributions of Stephen and Tabitha King, as one of the central landmarks of downtown Bangor. “I think people, when they come, they’re surprised at the size of the library considering that we only have a population of about 30,000 people,” said Shavaun Rigler, director of development and public relations at Bangor Public Library. “It’s a very active community that likes to get out and do things for each other and just to celebrate the arts or other community events.” The area, with Bangor International Airport a short ride from the downtown strip, is also something of a state hub for those traveling to destinations like Acadia and Bar Harbor. “Coming to Bangor, you are exposed to so much and you can get to so many different places while you’re here,” said Matt Bishop of the Bangor Historical Society. “Acadia, North Woods, Western Mountains, Portland and southern Maine, it’s a gateway to so many other places. It has one of the oldest continuously operating symphony orchestras, amazing venues for concerts, a cultural scene, and a food scene on the uptick.” The downtown staples, like Bagel Central and Penobscot Theater Company and Paddy Murphy’s and Kenduskeag Stream, are well known. New ventures, like Sawyer’s Hawaiian Shave Ice, have recently established themselves, bringing new flavor to the area. Julianne Sawyer, returned to her native Bangor and opened the shop with her husband after the couple briefly moved to Maui. Their storefront, which opened in May, is just over a mile from the city’s famed 31-foot Paul Bunyan statue. The proximity is notable, given that Sawyer said her grandfather, Chuck Cronin, was the model for the statue before it was erected in 1959. Cronin was a graphic designer who drew logos for local companies that are still used to this day. He also did commercial work for television and radio on the side. “I think he fit the proportions that they were looking for,” Sawyer said. “He was over six-feet tall and had the build of Paul Bunyan, and so they needed a model, and they were like, ‘Chuck Cronin, would you stand in?’” The construction of the statue was depicted in the second episode of "Welcome to Derry." "It was really cool to see that," Sawyer said. "I was keeping an eye out for any scenes where they were constructing it to spot a model in the background." Now the model's granddaughter is also standing tall in Bangor as a small-business owner. “Bangor is a very working-class town,” she said. “The people of Bangor are just very nice people who are very community oriented. So, that’s one of the reasons we like living here.” Like the statue, the downtown area, and the library in particular, are key settings in the novel “It” and recent movies that are now making a return to the screen. “I love this alter ego,” Bouchard said. “I can’t help but think that Bangor loves to dress up as Derry from time to time and have people come and treat her as a whole different city." Like those visitors who come for their souvenir library cards. “They’re curious if the library matches up to the libraries in Derry,” Rigler said. The House Welcome to the King house. The red Victorian mansion on West Broadway is like Graceland for horror fans. King purchased the house in 1980 and wrote some of his classics within its walls. While the family no longer resides there, the home serves as the author's personal archive maintained by the Stephen and Tabitha King Foundation. Fans travel great distances to stand in front of the gargoyle-topped wrought-iron fence that lines the property. After making the trip to King's sidewalk from Brazil, Bruno Soler dropped to one knee to ask his longtime girlfriend, Adriana Blasquez, for her hand in marriage. “I took the opportunity because she’s such a huge fan of him,” Soler said. “And I thought it would be the perfect opportunity in front of his house to pop the question.” Blasquez said the proposal location showed how much her husband-to-be knows about her. “To get proposed by King’s gate was just the perfect place and time,” she said. “If people find it weird, we say that Stephen always looked for the outcasts, so he surely will look upon us.” It was a dream come true for Blasquez in more ways than one because it brought her to Derry. “It allowed me to step into this world that has existed in my mind for so long,” she said. “And it’s exactly as I expected.” Blasquez praised the production of the show’s early episodes that depicted Bangor six decades prior to their visit. “They managed to capture that strange calm that the city possesses,” she said. Those who haven’t yet explored Derry beyond their screens and imaginations are left to envision what Bangor is truly like. “I would say very kind of quaint and cute, but almost like the type of place that you can imagine a secret brewing,” said Maddy Feehan of New York while dressed as Pennywise at New York Comic Con in October. “There’s something kind of spooky in the air.” Those who have felt that air, or perhaps seen a red balloon floating through it, understand why Bangor is Derry and Derry is Bangor. “If you know Derry, you know Bangor,” said Louie Sullivan of New Jersey, a King fan at Comic Con who has made the trip to Bangor. “If you are looking for Derry, it’s there, it’s what you would expect to see and what you want to see. All the sites and experiences you would expect, short of being traumatized by an interdimensional clown, they’re all there.” Welcome to Derry.
