Portland, Maine
April, 1997
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Has anyone seenDAVE
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by John Alphonse
Summer, 1988:
"Butchie, Clarabelle," we hear, nodding up from our morning coffees on a bench in Portland's Old Port. The ruddy pack of mongrels shuffle and stumble atop each other, heeling at the curb. Their Pied Piper looks over the street a hundred times a second deciding a crossing. Glancing down, he spots a golden pile of dog mess at his feet.
"Oh, You Too, not here. Bad dog!"
In one motion he swats a hand at the young dog's muzzle and scoops the dropping into his palm, then into a trash can. He wipes off his hand with a trash piece of paper and then on his pant leg.
Chances are, he's on his way to the law library to prepare his own court defense on some dog-ordinance violation charge.
Dave and friends stop for a dinner of raw fish on Widgery Wharf in
1988.
Eccentric, controversial, and an outspoken critic of local politics, David "The Dogman" Koplow was not the city council's favorite face to see in the crowd at its meetings. And his gangly canine caravan could on occasion be bothersome to lunchers, other dog walkers, and the soles of your feet. But when the sign painter was ushered out of town in 1989-90 by the new big-city police chief nicknamed "Media Mike" Chitwood, it seemed that an era had passed with the event. The harmless drifter had been put out, arrive the machete-wielding street marauders.
Koplow was arrested in September, 1989, for obstructing government administration when he reacted by shoving an officer while police seized his dogs from a garage on Cotton Street. He was later released, and city officials then gave him an ultimatum to leave town or lose his dogs. Reports of his whereabouts in Biddeford and Boston are only rumored.
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A copy of a Koplow campaign poster from circa 1988. |
Dave embodied Portland: eccentric, witty, sometimes a little too radical. His departure sometimes seems an unfair trade-off for the character and sense of community that was lost.
Rumors of Koplow's background abound to this day. He told me once that he'd attended two years at Northeastern University in Boston, then dropped out. He also mentioned a falling-out with his family as the impetus for his subsequent lifestyle.
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A relaxing afternoon at Fort Allen Park on the Eastern Promenade. | |
"I saw him touching up the United Fish sign one day, and he said
he'd painted it originally," remembers Joe Piccone, 33, who worked
on Union Wharf in 1988. Dave also told Piccone two jokes that day, he says,
and Koplow reversed the punch lines, afterward telling him that he had done
so intentionally.
© 1997 reality x publishing co.
All rights reserved.
