Me and Kiki shortly before we were almost eaten by a bear in Brownfield a few falls ago. photo/Kiki Garfield
Year 20
The Bollard was born 20 winters ago as an underground publication, by which I mean literally beneath the surface of Earth. There were advantages to starting underground. It’s relatively warm down there this time of year (especially around the furnace), the beers were cheap and the landlord let us smoke.
It was in the subterranean Bramhall Pub beneath Congress Street that co-founding art directors Mich Ouellette and Sean Wilkinson and I met with the techno DJ who designed our first website, Jason Hjort. I recall it being a very constructive meeting as we described what we had in mind and Jason explained how it could work. But I knew there was bound to be a big snag, because eventually he’d ask us what the name of this thing was gonna be.
Jason’s one-man web-design firm was called Brick City Media. The working title of our new magazine: Brick City.
Jason graciously agreed to design the site anyway, but yeah, if we could come up with a different name, that’d be cool. And we needed one anyway. That nifty new online research tool, Google, had revealed that Brick City is Newark, New Jersey’s nickname.
Inspiration struck me in the basement of the apartment house I lived in on Cushman Street, in Portland’s West End. This was before the miracle of flavored vape juice saved me and millions of others from certain death by cancer or emphysema, so I was still smoking American Spirits like a fool. I recalled a word I’d learned from my former Casco Bay Weekly colleague Al Diamon a few years prior: bollard.
Portland has tons of bricks, but it also has lots of bollards — the nautical kind on piers to which big boats secure their ropes, and the granite, cement and metal ones erected around public squares and courthouses to prevent vehicles from smashing into human beings and lawyers. Plus, a bollard is a type of post, so as the name of a print news publication, it’s also a pun, albeit one few readers would recognize and many more would mispronounce (in American English, bollard rhymes with Pollard, as in the truism, “Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices is the greatest rock singer/songwriter of all time”).
So Jason designed thebollard.com with guidance from Mich and Sean, and I recruited a ragtag team of freelancers to edit and publish — mostly ex-CBW refugees like columnist Elizabeth Peavey, gonzo journalist Crash Barry and illustrators Martin Shields, Pat Corrigan and Corey Pandolph. Al’s syndicated weekly political column, Politics & Other Mistakes, was running in the Portland Phoenix at the time, and that Boston-based alt-weekly chain, having helped sink one homegrown competitor (CBW), wasn’t keen to help another upstart, so his contribution back then was limited to a one-off satirical piece about how I was in line to replace Portland Police Chief Mike Chitwood as the city’s top cop.
Fast-forward two decades — using that cinematic trope whereby past covers of this magazine briefly flutter, then tear and fly off in gusts of inexplicable wind — and here we are, still underground, at least figuratively. Truth is, I never aspired to make The Bollard part of mainstream Maine culture, that trite landscape of lighthouses, lobsters, pine trees and pulp horror. We’ve always had glossy monthlies reliably recycling those stories, like Down East, Portland and Maine magazine (whoops — actually, we killed that one; see “Mean Magazine,” April 2018). And like CBW, The Bollard practices alternative journalism that shuns and shocks straight society by definition.
This was obviously not a business decision. It was entirely personal, in that I personally can’t stand to suck up to anyone — especially politicians and the Chamber of Commerce crowd — the way reporters, editors and publishers in the “respectable” press feel they must in order to get stories and ads. Personally, I’m interested in the misfits and outcasts of the world, including the crazies who start small businesses like my own, so that’s who we cover and that’s who supports us in doing so.
Turns out to be a pretty good approach. We’ve survived to reach our 20th year, published books’ worth of important reporting and fascinating stories about Maine (for free), and The Bollard is stronger than ever. After a few miscalculations and missteps — such as our attempt to rebrand as Mainer and operate as a worker cooperative several years ago — I feel like we’ve finally found the most effectively way to present our print and online content to you, and to bolster our advertising support with subscriptions so we can give you even more content. The short answer is Substack, the digital publishing and newsletter platform.
Last spring we launched a Substack page at bollardhead.substack.com (Bollardhead is the comic anti-hero Martin Shields so beautifully illustrated for us in the early years; we’ve been posting past Bollardhead episodes there every “Cartoon Tuesday”). Its format enables us to publish highlights and full listings of the live music and arts events happening each weekday (Friday’s post covers the whole weekend), instead of only printing select “Highlights” in the mag or posting long, unreadable lists of the entire month’s events on thebollard.com, as was our past practice. Our local music reviews are also on Substack now (a new one is posted every Monday), so you can hear the tunes you’re reading about with a simple click or two. And oddball news briefs, gossip, and caffeinated rants can be found there on occasion (also for free).
The subscription system we developed during the Mainer days, subsequently moved to the online platform Patreon, is now part of our Substack page too. You can subscribe for free and get the weekday Bollard Bulletin arts listings via e-mail, or throw us a few bucks ($8 per month or $75 for a year) and also get PDF versions of every issue a few days before they hit the streets, plus a print copy in the mail if you wish. Paid subscribers get extras like complete collections of lengthy works we’ve serialized in the past, such as “Jake Sawyer’s Story” and Kenny Wayne Beek’s homelessness memoir, Transience. Beginning this month, paid supporters also get “Greatest Hits” compilations of the best material we’ve published during each of the past 20 years.
As we begin 2025, you’ll have no doubt noticed that we’re running Al’s political column these days, That’s My Dump! has returned with a vengeance, and Peavey is back in action! Pat Corrigan’s Run Good comic novel will be returning (and wrapping up; sorry, bad mummy pun) this year, and Katy Finch and Bob Bergeron have brought The Pirate Ship comic about homeless Portlanders indoors (where it promptly pooped on the rug).
These past contributors rejoin the best team of writers we’ve yet assembled, including restaurant reviewers Figgy DiBenedetto and Dan Zarin; columnists Phoebe Kolbert, Samuel James, Leo Hylton and “Tackle Box” Billy Kelley; people’s historian Andy O’Brien; and [switching to news-announcer voice] “Tom Major on sports!” The Regulars, our interview series by Jessie Banhazl and Sara Hogan, is probably the most popular feature in our pages these days.
None of this would be possible without our awesome art director, Nathan Galvez, who designs every page and many of the ads. My partner, Kiki Garfield, is also designing ads these days, bringing aboard new clients and taking photos on our reporting trips.
Fun fact: our ad rates have never gone up. Why not? I could cite a host of market factors, starting with The Great Recession, which hit the same year we began printing The Bollard (2007, after two years exclusively online), and then the rise of Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, the fascist-friendly social media platforms that spy on users and secretly sell their data to advertisers large and small.
But if I’m really being honest, it’s that I just don’t care enough about money to ask our clients, most of whom are also personal friends after all these years, for more of it. I love this work and it rewards me in many other ways. I feel good when we publish a story or a review that highlights and uplifts someone laboring beneath the radar. I feel good when we publish the work of talented people whom no respectable publication would deign to deal with. And I’m honored when sources contact me with stories they feel only The Bollard is brave enough to investigate.
I’ll turn 54 this year, so I figure I’ve got at least another 20 years to keep doing this. (Again, thank you flavored vape industry! I sure hope no state lawmakers get the terrible idea to ban this life-saving substance just because some kids like it too…).
Thank you, dear readers, for being the people who ultimately make The Bollard possible. Resurgam!
