Livin' on Providence time

Don't set your watch by Providence clocks.
In recent years, downtown has seen a proliferation of clocks: clocks that make artistic statements, architectural statements . . . just not statements about the time of day.
These prominent clocks were photographed within a 15 minute period one afternoon in March:

At 1:10 p.m., the Shepard clock (shown at right) was 1 hour and 15 minutes early:



At the same time, the Johnson & Wales clock (below) read 2 hours later than the actual time:


















Fifteen minutes after that, the Train Station clock (below) was 5 hours and 35 minutes fast, the farthest off the real time. . . .














while, at the same time, the Waterplace clock was 4 hours and 15 minutes fast.


Note to visitors: In the best of times, Providence is either behind the times or ahead of its time — but in any case, it doesn't run like clockwork.

Warming strikes the Coffee Exchange deck

Yesterday — the first really warm day of spring around here — all the newspapers were full of gloom and doom: "Global Warming Cracks Antarctic Ice Shelf." (Buried way down in the story was the fact that this shelf sticks out from the rest of the ice pack, which is actually growing in size.) The folks reading the report from the sunny deck of the Coffee Exchange on Wickenden Street in Providence appeared to take the news in stride.

Here in sunny Providence, at least, we had a really nice day. (The same date reached 75 degrees in 1922 in Providence, and 10 in 1960.) It's called the weather, and we might as well enjoy it while it lasts.

Next week is expected to be in the 20s around here. I don't know about Antarctica.

OMG! "Sudden cold snap theatens apple crop" headlines ahead. LOL.

Thayer Street revisited

A new generation of Brown University students crops up every four years, so the quarter-mile stretch of Thayer Street that is the campus's commercial heart is an always-evolving mirror of the fickle culture of youth.

I first laid eyes on the street as a high school sophomore, back in the days when Ladd's Music had the White Album, Jone Pasha's was where you went to get your flower-child dresses, Rascal House was where everyone went after last call, and IHOP was where to go for pancakes the morning after.
At that time, the older generation still had Thayer Market for carriage-trade groceries, E.P. Anthony pharmacy, Mills Sisters for dresses, Mark David for men's suits, Ms for hostess gifts, and Clarke's for flowers.

These days, Thayer is all about youth. People who remember it as it used to be are always wringing their hands, saying the street has become too punk or too full of motorcyclists and panhandlers. But there is no denying that it is one of the busiest streets in all of Providence. There is always foot traffic on Thayer, from early morning to the wee hours of the next day.

I took a stroll along Thayer recently, walking north from the corner of Waterman Street up to Cushing Street, just to look at what's there right now. Leaving out services like banks, salons and optometrists, here's what's on Thayer today:

First block: Cold Stone Creamery, Starbucks. Other side: Yang's (Asian gifts and T shirts) and Foreign Affair (Euro clothing).
Second block: Viva Paragon restaurant. Other side: Au Bon Pain cafe, Pie in the Sky (jewelry and gifts), Juniper frozen yogurt, and Tealuxe tea shop.
Third block: Brown Bookstore. Other side: Roba Dolce (gelato), Geoff's (sandwiches).
Fourth block: Spectrum (Indian clothing and gifts), Gordito Burrito (Mexican food), Antonio's Pizza, the Avon Cinema, Andrea's (Greek restaurant). Other side: Kabob & Curry (Indian food), Nice Slice pizza, Rock Star (body piercing), Johnny Rockets ('50s-theme restaurant).
Fifth block: Berk's (shoes), Shanghai (Chinese restaurant), Blaze (fusion restaurant), East Side Pockets (Middle Eastern), Kartabar restaurant/bar, ZuZu's Petals (dresses), Bagel Gourmet, J&J's Candy, Beadworks, Second Time Around (consignments). Other side: City Sports, Spike's (hotdogs), Shark (sushi, coming soon), Details (accessories), Army & Navy Surplus, Shades Plus (sunglasses), Sushi Xpress, Urban Outfitters (clothes and dorm stuff). At the corner of the last block is Blue State Coffee.

That's 24 restaurants and 16 stores, plus a movie theater and services like CVS and Store 24 all in five short blocks of one street. No wonder Thayer so busy it's hard to find a place to park nearby: No other street in Providence is that densely packed with stuff to buy and do.

Because the street is such a reflection of its times, revisiting it can make you feel your age. Of all the places listed here, only the Avon, Andrea's and Spectrum remain from 1968, and Spectrum is in a different building.

IN THE PHOTOS , Tealuxe (in the curved-front brick building) is where Mills Sisters dress shop used to be, and Roba Dolce is in the Tudor-style E.P. Anthony Drugs building at right.

Spring perspective: Prospect Terrace

Spring 2008 arrived this morning at 2:05, but you wouldn't know it by the weather. A light rain is falling with a heavy overcast and a temperature of 42.
But just a couple of evenings ago, you could feel the spring coming from the pretty East Side overlook park called Prospect Terrace, where this couple sat watching the sun set from the best perch in the city: a park bench near the towering statue of Providence founder Roger Williams, watching over the city he started in 1636 at the base of this hill.

Probably even at that time, courting couples came to this spot to look out over the Great Cove of Providence, now covered by all those downtown buildings in the space between the State House (which was built atop a small hill that jutted into the north side of the Cove) and the turreted Industrial Trust tower, which sits on land that was at the southern shore of the Cove.

Just about a block in length, Prospect Terrace is located at the intersection of Cushing and Congdon Streets in a lovely residential area of the East Side. Anyone who has lived in Providence for any length of time feels nostalgic here, remembering long-ago people and long-ago times in the city that Williams named for "God's merciful providence" to him and his followers in their time of distress. (He had been banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for holding "diverse, new, and dangerous opinions" challenging church-run government.)

Prospect Terrace is an easy walk from the Brown University campus and the East Side. From downtown, walk up steep Thomas Street next to the First Baptist Church in America, and turn left at Congdon.

Bad boys: Whatcha gonna do?

Yesterday was a fine day for strolling around Providence, and as Retired Guy and I headed into the free-for-all intersection that separates the mall from downtown, there before us was one of the city's finest, sitting alert but relaxed astride a police edition, V Twin, 103 cubic inch, 1690 cc Harley-Davidson Road King motorcycle, shiny black like his leather jacket, boots and helmet.
Eddie Malloy has been a Providence cop for 20 years, a motorcycle officer for many of them, and he loves his bike. Now, chatting about the absolute craziness of the intersection we were waiting to cross, we all saw a gang of saggy-pants youths cavorting merrily across eight lanes of exiting Interstate traffic. The kids were heading into downtown.
Malloy gave them a perfunctory bleep on his siren, but they ignored it.
"See?" we all said, shaking our heads. "No respect."
"You know, it's just like Martin Luther King said," added Malloy— "It's not the color of a man's skin; it's the content of his character."
He had just two minutes left on his shift.

Then, just like that, he gets a message on his radio that there had been a robbery in the mall — a cell phone stolen by a gang of saggy-pants youths.
"You can't outrun the radio!" says Malloy, revving up the Harley and turning on his siren to officially part the Red Sea of the city's certified-insane intersection.

We had been heading to the Biltmore anyway. Just as we got there, there was Malloy, along with a member of the mounted command, a detective, a park ranger and a couple of other cops. They already had two Saggy Pants in the patrol car and were waiting for a female cop to arrive to pat down a girl who'd been one of the group.
It appeared, Malloy told us, that she had just been hanging around them and wouldn't be charged.

"Look at that," he was telling us and the detective (while behind his back one of the other cops scooped up a pile that the horse had left and pretended to drop it near the Harley) — "Two arrests in two minutes with no paperwork."
Then Malloy got back on his bike and drove off home.

There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them.

See motorcycles like Malloy's at special event nights held at Ocean State Harley Davidson in Warwick.

Getting there from here

Ever since the DOT closed the Gano Street on-ramp to Route 195 East what seems like a hundred years ago (it really was in June 2003), every trip from the East Side to all points east has contained a "Shit!" moment. That's the moment when you remember that you can't get there from here without choosing one of two evils: Either follow the convolutions of the "detour" over the Henderson Bridge and through the traffic-clogged intersections around Broadway and Warren Avenue, or drive out of your way westward all the way down busy Wickenden Street and wait at the traffic signal to turn left and onto the ramp there. Just recently, mind you, that on-ramp was moved, so that you now have to make a longer loop around a derelict section of India Point waterfront, then following a half-mile line of orange traffic cones to finally get on 195 going east.
What gives? Will we ever get back the ease of the Gano Street East on-ramp?
Yes and no, DOT spokesman Charles St. Martin tells me. This summer (!), DOT expects to have in place an on-ramp that will be only slightly less convenient than the original. You'll come down Gano, go under the highway, loop around the Radisson Hotel and continue heading west (opposite from the direction you want to go) to the Wickenden Street on-ramp.
So maybe sometime this summer we'll be saying "Damn!" instead of "Shit!"
I guess you could call that a highway improvement.