ROCKLAND, Maine The Harbor Management Commission is recommending a plan to the City Council that could solve the conflict between the Maine Lobster Festival and three food trucks that also lease space on the waterfront. The Commission met Tuesday evening at the harbormaster’s office to come up with recommendations. The meeting was held following a conflict that developed again this past summer. The owners of two seasonal food trucks were sharply critical of what they say were heavy-handed tactics by the Maine Lobster Festival. The food truck owners pay the city $3,000 each year to operate from April 1 through Nov. 30 at Buoy Park. The owners of Mac Attack Richard Curtis and Sierra Cook said their food truck was moved to a far end of Harbor Park behind a large bounce house and next to portable toilets after they refused to take lobster off their menu during the five-day festival. They have leased space each year from the city for the past five years. And Omar Hadjaissa, who has operated an Amato’s food truck at Buoy Park for nine years said he had to pay the festival $8 for every lobster roll he sold or a large obstruction would have been placed in front of his truck. Those truck owners attended the Tuesday meeting and reiterated their concerns. Curtis and Cook said limiting the products they normally sell violates Maine law on unfair trade practices. Limiting sales in this way affects both businesses and consumers in the marketplace, they said. Avi Good from the Lobster Festival Board said the contract that the festival has with the city allowed them the right to move vendors during the festival. She also said that it was a reasonable request to prohibit the food trucks from selling lobsters that one week, the same prohibition that is placed on vendors for the festival. She also pointed out the festival attracts thousands of visitors to Rockland and provides more traffic to these food trucks than they would otherwise have. Hadjaissa disagreed and said his business drops during the festival. He said if he is unable to sell lobster during that week, he would lose money. Former Mayor Louise MacLellan Ruf said the food trucks are wonderful ambassadors for the city. She said the festival acts like they run the entire city. She urged the Commission to support a plan that would keep the food trucks in their spaces and allow them to sell lobster. Harbor Commission member Sam Ladley said the problem is overlapping contracts that the city has with the food trucks and the festival. He said it should not be difficult to separate the food trucks from the space used by the festival. After nearly an hour of discussion, that is the recommendation made by the Commission. “Physically separate food truck park out and the other issues go away,” Ladley said. In the long term, changes are planned for Buoy Park that could lead to the trucks being located in a different location. And when festivals contract with the city to use Harbor and Buoy parks, the section used by the food trucks would not be included in that agreement. The recommendation will be forwarded to the City Council which will make the final decisions.
https://www.bangordailynews.com/2025/11/19/midcoast/midcoast-government/deal-to-end-conflict-food-trucks-lobster-festival-rockland/
Tag: recommending
Megyn Kelly: Americans ‘loathe’ Meghan Markle. Oprah hypes her $42 jams
If anyone doubts that Meghan Markle has become one of the most polarizing figures in American pop culture, look no further than the dueling viewpoints presented of her this week by two of the country’s most powerful media personalities, Oprah Winfrey and Megyn Kelly.
There is Winfrey, who gave a shout out to Meghan, her Montecito neighbor and blockbuster 2021 interview subject, in her annual “Oprah’s Favorite Things” holiday gift guide, the Daily Mail reported. In the guide, Winfrey hyped some products Meghan sells under her As Ever home products brand, recommending that her fans shell out $42 for a three-jar gift set of berry spreads and orange marmalade.
“Before my neighbor Meghan started her business, she shared her homemade recipes with us,” Winfrey wrote in her guide, which As Ever shared in an email blast to customers, the Daily Mail said. The media mogul and talk-show host continued: “I love to drizzle [one of the spreads] on an English muffin (at left) or yogurt or ice cream. I also love bringing a jam or preserves as a hostess gift, and with this pretty box set of orange marmalade and raspberry and strawberry spreads, just add a bow and you’re ready to go.”
Perhaps, as Winfrey said, the wife of Prince Harry tried out recipes for her fruit spreads in her own Montecito kitchen, and then shared samples with her celebrity friends. But the Daily Mail revealed this past summer that the fruit spreads and marmalade, now sold under the As Ever label, are produced in a factory in Illinois, some 2,000 miles away from Montecito.
The Mail on Sunday also reported that the California fruit for the spreads and marmalade is not locally sourced in a fashionable, high-end foodie way. Instead, the fruit comes from an unknown supplier.
It’s likely that Kelly would have something to say about Winfrey plugging the $42 gift set for Meghan, who has become a chief antagonist of the British royal family. That’s because the conservative commentator, through her YouTube channel and growing media empire, has become one of Meghan’s most outspoken critics.
This week, Kelly offered a scathing takedown of Meghan in an interview with the Daily Mail as she launches her SiriusXM channel. Kelly zeroed in on Meghan’s insistence on being referred to as the Duchess of Sussex, even though she spent fewer than two years as a working member of the British royal family.
After she and Harry fled the U.K. in 2020 to seek their fortune in the United States, the biracial former “Suits” actor used her 2021 interview with Winfrey to suggest that members of the royal family said racist things about the color of her son Archie’s skin.
“[Meghan] is dining out over here on the British Royal titles, it’s so absurd, the family she called racist, the people she called racist,” Kelly said.
Kelly then asserted that many Americans “loathe” Meghan, including liberals who might tend to sympathize with the Los Angeles native who has been known to support progressive political views.
“I’ll tell you something that happens to me,” Kelly said. “I’ll go out to dinner at a restaurant, I’ll have leftists come up to me and say, ‘I disagree with you on literally everything except Meghan Markle and I will download your show and watch your social media for that alone,’ which just shows me she’s one of the few things that has brought us all together in our loathing for this person.”
Kelly also is among a growing chorus of commentators and royal observers who predict that Prince William will strip Harry and Meghan of their royal titles once he becomes king, in the same way his father, King Charles, just took away the royal titles of his younger brother, the former Prince Andrew, due to recent revelations about his ongoing friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Andrew also gave up his title as the Duke of York amid the Epstein scandal and is now known as plain Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.
Kelly told the Daily Mail: “King William, in whatever years it takes after he ascends, I think he’s going to take away Harry and Meghan’s royal titles, and that should happen ASAP.”
Meghan is set to return to acting, at least for one movie, “Close Personal Friends.” In the Amazon MGM Studios production, she will also play herself, Page Six reported.
It will be interesting to see how she is credited in the film, given that she also has been accused of using her royal titles to promote her commercial endeavors—something the late Queen Elizabeth II expressly opposed, the Daily Beast reported in April.
When Meghan and Harry stepped away from royal life, they promised the queen they would stop using their HRH titles—royal honorifics that stand for Her Royal Highness and His Royal Highness, respectively.
However, in April, cosmetic entrepreneur Jamie Karin Lima gave a shout-out to Meghan on her podcast and publicly revealed that she had received a gift basket from Meghan, which was signed, “With the Compliments of HRH The Duchess of Sussex.”
Back in April, the Daily Beast’s royal correspondent Tom Sykes predicted that William wouldn’t put up with Meghan trying to capitalize on her royal titles when she no longer has anything to do with royal life and is not likely to want to spend time in the U.K.
“Charles might be happy to put up with this, but William won’t,” a former courtier told Sykes. “He loathes and despises Harry and Meghan with every bone in his body. He believes they have betrayed everything the family stands for and the idea that they are using their royal status as a calling card will enrage him.”
Kelly echoed those views in her interview with the Daily Mail. If the couple don’t want to live in the UK, she said, “Why would [Meghan] want to be their princess? Why does she get any joy out of being the Duchess of Sussex for such a people?”
“So these two are all about themselves,” Kelly said. “They definitely have lost support here in the United States. No one cares about them, and no one is rooting for them. You saw them get booed at the World Series game the other day. That’s real.”
https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/11/06/megyn-kelly-on-meghan-markle/