Late shoppers hit downtown Bangor

BANGOR – Nearly every time the door swung open at Rebecca’s in downtown Bangor on Monday afternoon, a man walked in empty-handed.

About 10 minutes later, often with a satisfied smile on his face, the man exited the store, pushing open the glass door with one hand and carrying a bag filled with wrapped Christmas presents in the other.

“I’m the typical male, shopping for my wife; she’s the last on my list,” Frederick “Chico” Ward, 56, of Winterport said from the Rebecca’s checkout counter. “One of the reasons I come here is because they wrap.”

While the streets of downtown Bangor were deceivingly quiet Monday afternoon, many of its stores reported strong Christmas Eve sales.

The owners of The Grasshopper Shop said Christmas Eve was their busiest day, based on the number of sales per hour. On a normal day the shop’s clientele is 95 percent women, but with one shopping day remaining before Christmas, 65 percent of the patrons Monday were men, said Rick Schweikert, who owns the store with his wife, Laurie. The Grasshopper Shop is one of many stores downtown that offer free gift wrapping. About 80 percent of the store’s clientele took advantage of the free service this year, and men used it 99 percent of the time, said Laurie Schweikert.

Just down the street at Epic Sports, owner Brad Ryder described his customers as “careful shoppers.”

“The days when someone buys a giant pile of stuff and hopes that it works [are] long gone,” Ryder said. People are buying more carefully, factoring in the price of gas, food and oil, he said.

The weekend before Christmas is usually the biggest sales period for Ryder’s store, and the early cold weather and snowfall has given a boost to sales of ski, snowshoe and other cold-weather gear.

Chip Webb, 48, of Hampden admitted to joining in on the last-minute rush when he breezed into Rebecca’s to pick up paintings of Bangor scenes for his wife and mother-in-law. Webb and his father-in-law perused the store’s painting collection Saturday, and after a quick frame swap, he returned around 3 p.m. Monday to pick up the gifts.

After making the “stereotypical” trip to the jewelry store, Ward stopped at Rebecca’s to buy his wife the annual Christmas ornament. Ward said his wife asks for jewelry every year, and he was not surprised to find men far outnumbering women at the G.M. Pollack & Sons Jewelers just up the street.

The jewelry store’s sales associates were not shocked, either.

“I have the regulars who come in here every year the day before [Christmas],” said Nicole Primo, a sales associate at G.M. Pollack. “We have had all guys today, and all of them are just starting their shopping.”

Elsewhere, shoppers made their last rounds at the Bangor Mall and the Maine Mall in South Portland before the expected post-Christmas frenzy of exchanging gifts commences.

“We [had] a line already at customer service for gift cards” at 7 a.m., said the Maine Mall’s Ellen Fleshner. The mall was expected to close at 6 p.m., an hour later than the Bangor Mall’s closing time. Santa Clauses held court for the final day this season in both locations before calling it quits.

Fleshner said mall stores that were surveyed on weekends leading up to Christmas indicated sales were strong. While national retailers counted heavily on the final days before Christmas to make their holiday goals, Maine merchants seemed more at ease with their sales totals.

On Christmas Eve, churches across the state planned late-afternoon and evening services leading up to traditional midnight Masses at churches including the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Lewiston, St. Augustine’s in Augusta and the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Portland, where Bishop Richard Malone of the Catholic Diocese of Portland was to preside.

Maine avoided the pre-holiday snowstorm that snarled traffic and delayed flights in the Midwest. While some flights were canceled Sunday at the Portland jetport, only a few delays were reported Monday. There were no delays at the Bangor airport Monday.

Maine’s weather forecast for Christmas Day called for sunny skies with high temperatures ranging from the mid-20s in northern Maine to the low 40s in southern areas.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.