Fries, pizza, arcade games: Summer shines on businesses in Old Orchard Beach

It’s still the breakfast hour on Old Orchard Beach as earthy aromas waft from Pier French Fries, a takeout stand on the coastal city’s main drag.After loading heaps of foil-covered fries — and stacks of boxed pizzas — into a delivery van, Allan Buotte is joined by his wife, Tiffany Buotte, who owns the fry stand. “She and I are here around 8 a.m. and we just start cooking the fries as we’re getting ready for the day,” Allan says as he offers this reporter a rag to wipe off a bit of red splatter from the ketchup dispenser. (Having previously lived in Belgium where frites were invented, I take that as a badge of honor.) “People can straggle by, grab something. They smell them.” Around the corner at JJ’s Eatery, diners are loading up on eggs and pancakes on a patio decorated with plastic palm fronds stapled to wooden posts. 1970s-era tunes by the likes of Elton John, Air Supply and Stevie Wonder compete with the rattle and whistle of the Amtrak Downeaster train pulling into the nearby station. All day long, visitors in bathing attire head toward the beach, umbrellas and coolers in hand. Such is daily life from late May through early October in this 9,500-population York County town. Located on the state’s southern coast, Old Orchard Beach is an understated vacation destination for young families. Many hail from across New England and Canada, with bilingual signs a common sight. A world apart from Portland’s foodie shrines or Bar Harbor’s chic boutiques, Old Orchard Beach is a place of simple pleasures like carnival rides, arcade games, bargain-priced souvenirs and cheap eats from pizza to cotton candy. Owing in part to sunny weather, this summer has been “really good” for business, says Tiffany Buotte. “We got a lot of the Canadians back this year that we didn’t have last year.” Across the street behind the Snoopy-decorated windows at the Dunes, owner Terrie Sarette says it’s been a good season for her gift shop despite a slow start. Still, she says that foot traffic is a fraction of what it was when she moved here from Massachusetts 26 years ago to buy what was then a country store. “Years ago, you would step out of any store, and there were so many people on the sidewalk, you might have to wait a second,” she recalls. “Now there’s always open spaces on the street.” “Not sure if that’s because families have discovered other places or find travel too expensive,” says Sarette, who sells all manner of souvenirs, including mini tchotchkes in bowls near the register priced at $3.99. “When you sell hundreds of them a day, they add up,” she says. Big Band greats to grabber games On this sun-drenched day in late August, there are lots of takers for arcade games on the wooden pier, which juts out about 500 feet into the Atlantic Ocean. That’s less than a third of the size of the original structure that opened to the public in 1889. By the Big Band era it became quite the destination, with thousands flocking to the Pier Casino Ballroom for concerts by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman. Decades after the casino ballroom was razed in 1970, the only audible sounds today are the high-pitched mechanical melodies in a hall of floor-to-ceiling grabber games with prizes from sparkly rubber duckies and neon-hued stuffed gorillas to Nintendo video games and other high-end gadgets. At 50 cents a pop to play for the small prizes, it’s easy to blow a few bucks — or more— in a matter of minutes. Everyone has a different strategy for outsmarting the machines, including one woman who tells her companion to “look at the ones where most of the stuff is missing.” Arlene Hardin of Pawtucket, R.I., who’s been coming here since childhood, says she’s astounded by the increase in games this year, which her husband thinks may have been 3D-printed. “When we came here, we were like, ‘Whoa, what the heck?” she says as her eight-year-old nephew Jameson Morris tries his luck at one of the machines. Campground oasis Half a mile up the road, Paradise Park is quiet and bucolic. Spread across 45 wooded acres, the family-owned resort is home to 245 campsites, from RV sites to cabins and tent sites clustered around a pond that supplied the town with ice in the pre-refrigeration era. While Paradise Park dates to 1960, the Halle family has owned and operated it for the past 28 years, partner and manager Mike Halle says during a zip around the grounds in his golf cart. He says business this summer is better than last year, thanks in part to dry conditions. “Unfortunately, we’re in a drought, which is really good for camping,” he says. Prices range from around $100 a night in spring or fall to $300 a night for a two-bedroom cabin in summer. Halle says the resort aims to keep its rates family-friendly: “In a lot of cases, we’re probably one of the lower-cost options, especially in our rental accommodations.” While summer is typically busy with families, more retirees tend to visit in the fall. After Indigenous Peoples’ Day weekend, when the season winds down, the team turns its attention to projects ranging from tree work to roof maintenance. Looking beyond summer tourism, Halle dreams of the town becoming a year-round destination, with a conference center for events. “We have the hotels, we have the motels,” he says, “and it would bring year-round workers to the area.” Winter grabber games, anyone?