New photos: Providence

The week long nor'easter is history! Saturday was sunny and warm, and that means new photos. This time, I've added new photos of Providence from the State House, to Kennedy Plaza, to Benefit St.

I've put the pictures up on Flickr, so head on over and get an eyeful.

Earth Day

My 1996 Crown Victoria has entered Iowahawk's prestigious Earth Day Contest. The photo I submitted is from Narragansett, but I guess I should have specified that I live in Providence? Explaining Rhode Island's geographic subtleties get tricky once you're west of the mighty Mississippi anyway, but I'm certainly glad to see my car up there. Al Gore had better watch his fat ass, because those juicy carbon credits are mine.

No way for Imus Way

Does anyone outside the Huffington Post actually give a damn about the Don Imus controversy? Well, the Providence chapter of the NAACP does. Sort of. They've asked the city of Providence to rename "Imus Way" to "Jackie Robinson Way".

Back in 1996, mayor Vincent "Buddy" Cianci, a regular guest on the Don Imus show, renamed a tiny, almost vestigial, stretch of Aborn Street between the Dunkin' Donuts Center (then named the Providence Civic Center) and the Holiday Inn "Imus Way" as a gesture of, well, something, to the skeletal talk show host. A sign designating the strip as "Imus Way" was apparently erected as well. By the time the state took ownership of the Civic Center in 2005, the sign was already gone. What's more, Buddy's ceremonial renaming was apparently just that: ceremonial. "Imus Way" is not an address that is actually registered with the city or state, and it doesn't appear on any maps (Google maps takes a stab at it, but fails).

So, with apologies to the NAACP and all involved, I propose an idea: let's keep moronic disc jockeys and identity politics out of city government as much as humanly possible. Neither Jackie Robinson nor Don Imus have anything to do with Providence, and frankly, the city can find better uses for taxpayer money than ceremonially renaming anything to suit interest groups, whether they're dessicated talk show hosts or identity politics lobbying groups.

Does that sounds good to anyone besides me?

Get ready

Get ready, folks. Former Providence mayor Vincent "Buddy" Cianci will be coming out of jail this summer, and you can bet he'll be returning to the Ocean State. Lock up your daughters, lock up your wives, and lock up your no-bid contracts! While I doubt he'll be returning to City Hall, I will certainly keep my eyes peeled on Federal Hill, camera in hand, for Buddy prowling around the restaurants and bars. I wonder if he'd pose for a picture with yours truly if I told him I'd bought a couple of jars of his signature pasta sauce?

New photos: Warren

The weather was as bad as the lighting this weekend, but lo and behold, I have pictures of yet another lovely Rhode Island town! This weekend, I had a chance to take some shots of the town of Warren in the heart of America's smallest real county*. I have created a set for the town right here on Flickr for browsing.

* "New York County", aka, Manhattan, is slightly smaller geographically than Bristol County, RI, but let's face it - a city does not make a county, much less one neighborhood of a much larger city.

New photos: Roger Williams Park

Spring has arrived, and do you know what that means? Why, new photos of Rhode Island, of course. I've added pictures of Roger Williams Park in Providence to my collection of Providence photos on Flickr, viewable right here.

I hope to go back sometime around May, by which time the grass will have turned from dingy early spring brown to a luscious green.