Jamie Tinker estimates that in a given year for SK Tours, which offers Stephen King-themed tours around the Bangor region, the business hosts between 3,500 and 4,000 people in the months of mid-March through early December.
Eleven years ago, when his father, Stu Tinker, started the business, that number was around 200. Today, Jamie Tinker says 90 percent of SK Tours’ guests — a company he runs with his wife, Jennifer Millar — are from out of state, and have hailed from all 50 states and from countries as far away as Australia, Brazil and South Africa.
“People are coming here because of their love of the Kings. And we make sure that every person leaves with an appreciation for what they have done for our community,” Tinker said. “It is a really amazing group of fans that have built this business through word of mouth. If King fans really like something, they’ll tell others.”
Last year, it became clear it was time for SK Tours to move out of Millar and Tinker’s house and into permanent headquarters, where they would have space to expand. In June 2022, they bought the building at 872 Hammond St., and have spent the past year renovating it to include a spacious new parking lot and a gift shop featuring an array of King memorabilia, SK Tours t-shirts, locally made gifts and, of course, books.
“Before, we were picking people up in our driveway, or in parking lots around the city,” Millar said. “Now, we have one place to start and end tours. We can have a little space between work and home. And it gives people time to chat and share in their enthusiasm.”
SK Tours’ expansion is a testament to Maine visitors’ love of King, and Millar said she’s always amazed that more people don’t try to leverage the city’s connection to the author as a means to boost tourism, given his millions of fans worldwide. It is a boon to the city, though it’s hard to quantify just what sort of economic impact the King connection has.
“It kind of blows my mind that people haven’t figured out how to kind of take advantage of it a little bit more,” she said. “If only because I think people are always so delighted to hear about how much they have done for the community and how enmeshed in it they are.”
The Tinker family has been in the King business for more than 30 years, starting in 1991, when Stu Tinker bought longtime Bangor shop Bett’s Bookstore and began featuring King books prominently. He closed that store in 2009 and in 2012 started SK Tours, initially as a one-man business with Tinker showing folks around in a small red van.
By the time Jamie Tinker took it over in 2019, the business had expanded to two small buses, as well as an SUV for private tours, alongside the original red van, now affectionately nicknamed “Stu.” Tinker and Millar lead all tours, with Stu stepping in to do private tours during the peak of the season.
Tours take guests throughout the Bangor area, stopping at major King landmarks such as Stephen and Tabitha’s iconic red mansion on West Broadway; the University of Maine campus, where both Kings went to school; Bangor International Airport, the setting for “The Langoliers”; and the Standpipe and the Paul Bunyan statue, both of which are prominently featured in “It.” There are also more obscure stops, like the specific storm drain at the corner of Union and Jackson streets that inspired the famous scene between Pennywise and Georgie, also in “It.”
Among the Bangor and King-themed gifts at the new SK Tours HQ is jewelry made out of the copper from the old Bangor Public Library dome, created by Bangor jeweler Roxanne Munksgaard.
Munksgaard, who until February of this year was a co-owner of Maine Jewelry & Art on Harlow Street, takes the copper from the dome and creates jewelry out of it. Profits from the sales of the jewelry benefit the library, which has long been a favorite cause of the Kings. So far, Munksgaard says sales have raised more than $36,000 for the library.
“With the closure of the shop on Harlow, we are so glad to have a new brick and mortar shop to sell the copper jewelry at,” she said. “And to have it at a place associated with the Kings, who have given so much to our library, is really, really special.”
Tinker said SK Tours’ average customers are a couple, in which one person is a diehard King fan and the other isn’t, but goes on the tour to make their partner happy. They usually have gone to Acadia National Park or another coastal location before or after the tour and make a whole vacation out of it, spending one or several days in Bangor.
The business also gets September and October tourists that are on the “spooky” circuit in New England. Guests will do ghost tours and other Halloween-themed activities in Boston and in Salem, Massachusetts, before heading north to Maine, where Bangor’s decades-long connection to the master of horror has cemented its reputation as a spooky destination.
And yet, SK Tours and Gerald Winters & Son, a small bookseller specializing in rare King editions, are the only King-themed businesses in town. There’s no dedicated King-themed shop or King-inspired museum, or a King convention or other marquee event to draw big crowds.
But Tinker thinks it’s harder than it seems to do such a thing. He thinks King fans can quickly sniff out phoniness and won’t want to patronize something that seems like a cash grab. And the Kings themselves value both their privacy and their authenticity, and don’t give their blessing to just anyone when it comes to businesses related to King stories.
“I know what King fans are like. You’d better be ready to answer the most obscure, hard questions about his books. They will keep you on your toes,” he said. “I think there’s a sense that you just can’t be a phony. It can’t be a cash grab. People will sense that you’re not a real fan and you’re just trying to cash in, and they won’t support you. I think the King community definitely can sense when you’re faking it.”
