MOUNT DESERT ISLANDER
Bob Shields stands with an E-bike inside his shop, Southwest Cycle, on Main Street. E-bikes, fat tires and gravel tires are some of the latest trends in bicycles, of which Shields has seen many over the last four decades. ISLANDER PHOTO BY SARAH HINCKLEY
SOUTHWEST HARBOR Since he was 19 years old, bicycle shops have been an integral part of Bob Shields’ life, especially the one he has run on Main Street for the last 40 years.
“I first started in a bike shop in ‘74,” he said from inside Southwest Cycle on Tuesday afternoon. “I was working in a shop when I heard Nixon resign. I was working in a shop when they took hostages in Tehran. I was working in a shop when Reagan was shot.”
Surry to buy beach parking
SURRY Public beach access is vital.
That was clear from a gymnasium full of residents who turned out for a special town meeting at the Surry school Monday to vote on whether the town should buy a parcel of land to secure public parking for the beloved Carrying Place Beach off Newbury Neck Road.
Some 200-plus residents voted unanimously in favor of purchasing the 11-acre parcel from the Mishara family for $215,000. The Mishara family has owned the property since 1979, according to Betsy Armstrong, chairwoman of the Board of Selectmen.
Armstrong said the public would be able to use the parking lot on the property again this week.
Surry voters asked to approve purchase of town beach access
by Jeffrey B. Roth
For more than 40 years, residents and visitors to Surry’s town beach have parked vehicles on a small lot at the end of the Newbury Neck Road.
“The wide open space with magnificent views of Acadia’s peaks and wide Union River Bay is frequented year-round by townsfolk and locals,” Betsy Armstrong, Surry select board chair, wrote in an Another View column to The Packet (see page 4). “All this may soon be available only in your memory….The Town has claimed it for parking but does not have legitimate rights to the space. The long-time owner has been unaware the lot had been commandeered and is looking to sell the property.”