Where the heck am I? How did I get here? What am I going to do around here, and how do I make new friends?
For people new to Rhode Island, these might be very reasonable questions. New England has a reputation for being a tough area to make new friends in, with so many relationships established and stretching back to childhood. This conundrum led a small group of PVD-newbies to create a Providence Newcomers Club Meetup. I sat down at PVD brewery Buttonwoods with some of the club’s leaders – Kimberly Miotto, Kelly Hoag and Maria Montesano – to find some insight on what Providence looks like through fresh eyes, and what they learned about the city-state from a newcomer’s perspective (full disclosure – the interviewer has been here a while).
Mike Ryan (Motif): How did the group come to exist?
Maria Montesano: I moved here in 2020 and I knew no one in the entire state. I wanted to meet other people. And I kind of thought, you know, there have to be other people who are in a similar position, who recently moved to Rhode Island or Providence. Also, by then we’re just coming out of the pandemic, and there’s a real need to connect socially and make new friends. So I started this group called “New in Town, Providence,” and it took off from there!
MR: What was the first meeting like?
MM: We met at Narragansett Brewery. I think maybe eight people showed up. I was extremely nervous. I was so anxious, I think I scheduled the meetup just to last for like an hour or two, because I didn’t know how it was gonna go. I’d never done anything like that before, and, you know, lots of people came and we all just sort of chatted, and it was a bit awkward at first, but it went well enough that I decided to do it again.
Kimberly Miotto: I came to the first one that was canceled. It was at Narragansett [Brewery]. I think that one was the makeup one, because there was a canceled one, because she had been exposed to COVID. So the first one I came to was at ISCO.
Kelly Hoag: The first one I went to was at Free Play, which was incredibly fun, and it ended up being the perfect environment to meet people, because it’s awkward to walk into a crowd of strangers. I’ve never done anything like a meet up, so I was like, well, if it’s weird, then I’ll just go play pinball. There’s a lot of places to hide in an arcade, but it ended up being really engaging and fun.
MR: Did you play any pinball?
KH: I played a lot of people. And Maria played a lot of air hockey. Oh, my.
MM: God, I got so competitive.
MR: What brought you to Providence?
KM: I was really specific about where I wanted to go. I wanted to stay in the Northeast, I wanted to live within a three-hour radius of New York City. And I wanted to live in a town that was diverse. I wanted to live in a town that had a nightlife and an art scene and culture scene.
MM: And I visited Providence during the spring of 2020, actually during lockdown. Gina [Raimondo] was like, “Stay out of town,” at that time. But I did come and I visited, and I pretty much fell in love with it.
KH: I wasn’t very far. I was in the Boston area, in Watertown, Massachusetts at the time. And I actually moved at the same time as Maria, the fall of 2020. I had visited Providence a few times before the pandemic, and I, growing up, never came here. People didn’t say great things about Providence.
And so I took my mom here for a weekend, and I fell in love with it, and we went to the flea market, and everybody was so friendly. And I’m like, the people are here, you’re great. It’s very diverse. So I loved it.
KM: I came from Michigan, always wanted to leave, and knew that I was leaving. One of my brothers had lived on the East Coast for 20 some years, and said, “Providence – that’s gonna be your city.” So I came up for a pre-visit. It absolutely was. I fell in love with the city for the same reasons – diversity, the culture, the nightlife, the sort of kindness and supportiveness that lives in this community.
MR: There is a reputation in New England for it being harder to make new friends than other parts of the country. Have you experienced that? Or do you think it was more because of the COVID and the timing of your move that left you wanting to create a group?
KH: I haven’t found that at all here. Totally found that in Boston, though, I watched all my friends go off and do other things. And then trying to make friends in that area was so hard. And then moving here, I can’t say that it was easier. I think I got lucky. I lived in the West End, and I remember going into the Seven Stars, picking up my coffee, and seeing a group of women hanging out at the table, just like talking and excited to be together, and I’m like, I don’t have that. That is what made me want to do the meetup.
MR: The group no longer exists right now?
MM: Another member did it for six months, and after that we just sort of let it dissolve.
It now has close to 500 members. Yeah, I think it is shutting down. But a lot of people disregarded the new in town aspect of it, and joined even though they weren’t new in town.
MR: How did you feel about that?
MM: They brought an entirely different attitude.
Speaker 4
I will say that I did not connect as much when it got bigger.
Speaker 4
When it was people who had been here for a long time, there was a weird, like, cafeteria divide.
For me, that was like the common footing for a relationship, at first. I get it, it’s still hard to meet people [even if you’ve lived here for a while]. There was no judgment on that part. But it was like it was just a different dynamic.
Speaker 2
I just think there’s something very bonding about being in the same developmental stage and having the same shared experience
KH: I had done another meetup previous to this one, that was a knitting group, and they were great. Everybody was great. They were all native Rhode Islanders, I was the only expat. They had been a group for a long time, and they reconnected after COVID. So that was my first try, thinking, “Maybe I’ll connect from a hobby.” But they were already a tight knit group, and I realized, “This is not the group. We’re not gonna go to Seven Stars together.”
MR: You did form some of those bonds through this meetup, though.
Unknown Speaker
Definitely did.
MR: What were some of the most memorable or fun things that you did as a group?
KH: I think Free Play was a really fun night. Anything that was activity-based took pressure off awkward conversations. We did have a group at Revival before it became Buttonwoods. RIP Revival. I have now lived here long enough to know a business that has passed on!
MR: And you know that’s a Rhode Island tradition.
KH: I do know that. We give directions based on where things used to be.
We also had a really cool meetup at the Waterfire Arts Center. I think those were my highlights. Oh, Moniker [Brewing] was a great one too.
S3: Gallery Night. Moniker was a really good one. We had a guy that I’m still in touch with. He was just about fresh off the airplane moving here from the UK. Do you remember?
Oh wow. David.
Yeah. He moved here and within 36 hours was at his first meetup. It was so impressive.
There’s an axe bar – that advertises in Motif!
Yeah. Yeah.
It’s pretty fun.
It’s very therapeutic. It lasts about 20 minutes and then most of my experience was after 20 minutes of throwing axes. You’ve thrown enough axes. You’re ready for whatever’s next. But those 20 minutes are fun.
MR: What would you recommend for newbies who are now where you were three years ago? What should they try to engage with Providence?
I think they do an amazing job here in Providence of just engaging and telling you about the area and being excited themselves because they want to see things succeed. It doesn’t have to be a bartender. It could be a barista. It could be an art gallery. It could be any of those things.
I would say take a class. I took a pottery class at a local studio. That was really cool. There’s the Artists’ Exchange in Cranston. The Steel Yard.
Right across the street
One of the nice things about Providence is that it’s so compact. You can take classes in your very immediate neighborhood.
MR: Those are great general guidelines. But what’s specific to Providence or Rhode Island? Are we better at any of these things that are not? I don’t want to make it sound competitive. But are there are there strengths in the local area?
The Arts
And I’m a little biased. But as somebody who’s very deeply embedded in the arts, I think the arts is a huge seller. I think Providence is just a very artsy city. It truly is.
PechaKucha Providence. I feel like it’s giving Japan a run for its money. Yeah. We’ve been to some really good ones.
And so many other openings and events. I would say that if I’m bored, it’s my fault.
Speaker 1
One thing I’ve never done that I would love to do are some of the neighborhood tours.
Speaker 2
There’s a Crime and Cuisine tour on Federal Hill.
Speaker 3
I heard about that. Yeah. Crime and cuisine. That would be a blast. What is that?
Speaker 1
It’s like the Buddy Cianci tour of Federal Hill.
Speaker 2
He’s one of the characters. The last time I took it, you got a bottle of his marinara sauce at the end.
Speaker 3
Nice.
Speaker 2
That was spoilers. Sorry. But there’s plenty of crime history to go through on Federal Hill and plenty of restaurants.
Speaker 1
And the ghost tour. I want to do the ghost tour.
I would love to do that. I’d love to learn more about the history of the East side. I just think there’s a lot of really interesting history, as someone who comes from the West coast. Things are much cooler here. Even the old mill buildings have really interesting histories.
MR: Was the group just a COVID phenomenon? Not just, I mean, was it singular to that?
I would hope it’s not a COVID phenomenon. Sometimes you just get a magical combination of the right people.
I feel like people’s lives are so busy now. We came out of COVID and hit the ground running, and we’re so busy, we haven’t stopped for breath again yet.
People don’t connect anymore with people that are different than themselves. And so there’s really a need to gather around group activities and be more inclusive in our communities. I think it’s so important – now more than ever – for people to create community. And it’s also really hard to create community. So I hope that people continue to find ways to do that.
I bought a community. I bought a place that had an established community and I’m never lonely there. A place that had a very well established community where people help each other. And when I moved in, the first person I met was my immediate next door neighbor. And she was like, it’s “Three’s Company” here. You’re going to get knocks on your door sometimes. I was a little anxious about that, but it actually is amazing.
MR: Are there any other thoughts that you wanted to share about the group or what it taught you about Providence?
It felt like we were all, all of us people who are new were kind of like tourists in our town. I never did that in my old hometown. You know, for example I never did a duck tour in Boston.
At the end of the day, you need to do that work to figure out who your people are and what your community is. I got lucky. We got lucky finding people who became that for us. We’re all very different people, and we are also bonded together.