The thing that strikes most people when they first walk into the Sea Bags retail/production facility on Portland’s Custom House Wharf is the palpable energy and constant activity.   Sea Bags isn’t some cute, trendy shop with bags hanging on sparsely-decorated walls, soothing music and posters of nautical scenes.  It’s gritty, cluttered and although there are some bags on display, the largest area is reserved for work.   As you watch, you can see seamstresses sewing bags and pre-production folks doing cutting work.  The items on the walls are nautical in nature, yes; but they’re likely to have come from the dark recesses of an old fishing shack along the pier, perhaps lightly dusted, and stuck wherever whimsy dictated they might fit.

Walking upstairs, through the shipping department (hallway) you see the conference area with windows that once belonged to the landmark Porthole Restaurant, located just across the street.  You can tell this because no one bothered to strip the vinyl letters spelling out the restaurant’s name from the windows.

It’s clear that, under the charred beams of this building, scarred by long-ago fires, is a very different sort of business, indeed.   Once that perhaps only could be run by Mainers, in a town like Portland, on a real, working waterfront.

Hannah and Beth were fantastic during our shoot, allowing me to photograph them in the upstairs sail storage area.   I took a few extra photos to show the environment—one I could easily spend a day in, shooting in a more documentary mode.   Read more about what makes Sea Bags different in this week’s Inspire Portland.