The clothes you wear tells the world more about you than you may wish the world to know.
People-spotting the eight tribes visiting Maine. Seeking to get lobster. Or to assuage the existential angst of needing to go home.
When you live in a New England summer town, or increasingly these days, a New England year-round summer town, the summer crowd and tourists start flooding in about now, on Memorial Day weekend.
Suddenly the downtown and beach parking areas are packed with out-of-town license plates. Some residents bemoan having to share their streets and beaches, but, as I have said before, I find it all rather jolly. For one thing, they are happy, on vacation. Where smiles—replacing those every day furrowed brows—accompany those brisk clips when walking down sidewalks.
And—as when a prospective house buyer makes snap decisions almost immediately when driving into a driveway—we are also hit by a shedload of information when observing people in just seconds. This provides endless amounts of entertainment, at least for me. I can’t help myself but try to match the people to their particular regions, with license plates providing a cheat sheet (or reinforcement learning, as the AI people say). This is an admittedly parochial version of the Eurail pastime of trying to identify the nationalities of the people around you.
There are all kinds of clues, from hair colors and styles, to clothing choices, to gait, to overall health focus, to general bearing. Some of this is made easier, as so many these days want to signal. And my hit-rate is not bad. Helped, no doubt, by all those years of sitting in the Stop and Shop or Hannaford’s parking lots in the summer months waiting for my groceries to be brought out, matching up people with their cars and license plates.
And I can glean even more when waiting in line. Whether its in the grocery store, hardware store, a bakery, the post office, or the Farmers’ Market.
There are clear tells of regionalization, recalling the models of Joel Garreau back when he wrote The Nine Nations of North America. For me, regions seen through a wash of people who choose summering (or at least summering’s less-heeled relative weekending) on the Maine coast.
A big giveaway is often attitude. Do they make eye contact? And if they do, is it to smile and say hello, or just to give you the up-down, sizing up their competition. And while I’ll chat with just about anyone, I seldom make the first move. I find people love to talk about themselves and I am often a willing listener. Far better than talking about myself. I find I can ask just one not-too-probing, but genuine, question and off they go. Most people are far more interesting than they might appear, if asked the right questions. Everyone has their story. As with all of life, the only boring people are the dishonest people.
So, embracing the reductionism this format requires, here are some of the tribes I meet.
The Midwest
When I encounter the friendliest and most open visitors, they invariably hail from the Midwest. Open, smiling, gracious. And very chatty. With that “clean clothes and appropriately dressed” vibe. This is where you are most likely to have a genuine conversation. After which they part with a gentle touch to your arm accompanied by a “God Bless”.
Not a whiff of sharp elbowing. (They leave the social climbing, and I will take a stab at my own tribe here, to the Connecticut people, who have been honed by generations of social strata fine-tuning.) And as I left this particular bakery, I spot an impeccably clean four door pick-up truck with Ohio plates parked just outside. Bingo.
Mid-Atlantic
The preppiest bunch, or as I call them “our friends to the south” seem to hail from the mid-Atlantic region—Maryland, Virginia, and the general D.C. area. These license plates are scattered everywhere on Audis, Volvos, Mercedes and BMWs. Some with Annapolis Yacht Club and Washington and Lee stickers.
