Category: News

Gaspee Days is an annual celebration in Warwick and Cranston commemorating one of the first acts of violence by the colonists against the British government leading up to the American Revolution, when in 1772 the tax schooner HMS Gaspee was captured and burned to the waterline by Providence-based merchants and smugglers.

After mostly canceling in 2020 due to the pandemic, Gaspee Days is holding its major events in 2021. The most well-known event, the parade down Narragansett Parkway into Pawtuxet Village, will be held as usual, 10am–1pm, Saturday, June 12, preceded by an ecumenical service at Trinity Church in Cranston, at 8am. The burning of the symbolic replica of the Gaspee will be off Pawtuxet Park at 3pm.

Fireworks at Salter’s Grove in Warwick will be the weekend before the parade at 9pm, Saturday, June 5, with a rain date the following day, Sunday. The traditional 5K footrace will be virtual: download a race bib, run when and where you choose, and you will be sent an official T-shirt after paying a $30 entry fee.

The weekend-long Arts and Crafts Festival, including afternoon musical concerts, will be delayed until fall, September 11-12.

“We usually have a big block party on Memorial Day weekend with our Arts and Crafts Festival and we decided not to do that because we needed so much time to plan it out, and as the regulations weren’t loosening up we couldn’t get vendors to come in, and we didn’t even have volunteers. We had to take our season this year due to COVID and split it in half,” said Erin Flynn, publicity chair for the Gaspee Days Committee. “We made the hard decision that we couldn’t do every event because we didn’t have the budget, we didn’t have the volunteers… The other thing with the arts and crafts was many of the vendors… come from out of state, many of the vendors are retired or older folk – not all of them, but some of them – and they were not interested in coming.”

Although almost all public health restrictions were relaxed in RI as of May 21 for fully vaccinated people, Flynn said precautions had been taken well in advance. “We submitted to the Commerce Department, even though we didn’t have to, and got the response: it’s on, it’s outdoors,” Flynn said. “We’re just going to remind people as best we can that we’re following all state guidelines and asking people to be safe. We got a great note from the Commerce Department that said, ‘Go get ’em,’ you know, ‘It’s okay.’”

Many of the parade spectators are children too young to be vaccinated but will be able to maintain physical distancing, Flynn said. “There are plenty of places on the Parkway where there are plenty of open spaces. It’s very crowded in Pawtuxet Village, but if you come up closer to Spring Green and… Fair Street, not as crowded and families can spread out and it’s under the shade. So there’s plenty of space.”

“We were going to do a smaller [parade] and people threw more money at us, and we’re going to do a regular one,” Flynn said. “The community around here has rallied. We had no money and now we’ve got money, and we are so thankful to everybody for giving what they can. We just really felt the love from our community.”

On June 9, 1772, the revenue schooner HMS Gaspee ran aground chasing the sloop Hannah in Narragansett Bay, and its captain Lt. William Dudingston decided to wait for high tide in hope of refloating it. When a group of merchants and ship owners learned of the grounding from the crew of the Hannah, they quickly saw it as an opportunity to rid themselves of the tax collector and rowed out the next day at dawn, forced the crew to abandon the Gaspee, and set it on fire. Dudingston was shot and wounded in the leg during capture. Dudingston was notoriously incompetent, not only being deliberately led by the Hannah to run his ship aground but antagonizing the RI governor by refusing to show his papers and warrants, and he repeatedly had to be bailed out of difficulty by his superior, the far more competent and diplomatic Adm. John Montagu, based in Halifax.

After the Seven Years’ War ended in 1763 with results substantially favoring the British, the government in London was willing to risk alienating the American colonists by stricter enforcement of tax collections, since there was no longer much danger of their switching alliance to France or Spain. Described by Winston Churchill as the “first world war,” the Seven Years’ War (known in America as the “French and Indian War”) was a global conflict that changed borders worldwide, including giving Britain effective control over Florida and Canada. From the perspective of merchants and smugglers, they would do almost anything to interfere with tax collections and had, prior to the attack on the Gaspee, in 1764 attacked the HMS St John off Newport and similarly in 1768 burned the HMS Liberty to the waterline also off Newport.

Preceding the Boston Tea Party by a year and a half and the outbreak of war with the Battle of Lexington and Concord by almost three years, the Gaspee affair motivated the colonists to establish “committees of correspondence” that would become the backbone infrastructure for the eventual Revolutionary War. What most alarmed the colonists was the insistence by the British that the men suspected of attacking the Gaspee be sent to London for trial, a dangerous precedent and a threat to the expectations for fair treatment under English law in the colonies, crossing a line that began the process of radicalizing the colonists toward eventual independence. In the end, no one was ever tried anywhere for the attack, due to a combination of lack of evidence and the political machinations of the RI governor who realized the explosive potential of a trial. The threat of trial in Britain was what made the Gaspee historically important in a way that the St John and Liberty were not.

Bill Bartholomew, Rhode Island’s podcaster of record, is set to unleash his other talent on the state on June 11 when he releases his EP Bats. This is Bartholomew’s first solo album since 2016, and the first in a series of albums he plans to release throughout the year.

Bartholomew will step out of the studio and into the open air on June 18 when he plays a release show at Dusk with Zigmond Coffey and Birt & Harley.

For more, billbartholomew.bandcamp.com or follow @billbartholomew

At the beginning of the pandemic, hundreds of articles predicted the death of the movie theater. Now it looks as if rumors of its death were greatly exaggerated. Since the dawn of television, however, pundits have been proclaiming movies dead. Let’s test your knowledge of other things predicted to kill the movie theater.

Movie attendance has been in steep decline for 70 years. But at the height of movie attendance, one classic American movie sold more tickets than any other film ever since. What is the reigning king of the box office?

Gone with the Wind sold more than 201 million tickets, more than any other American movie.

This cinematic innovation, which was designed to bring people back into the movie theaters after TV’s invention threatened to keep people at home, was described by filmmaker Fritz Lang as “only suitable for shooting snakes and funerals.”

Cinemascope.

VHS and BETAMAX fought for the right to bring about the death of the movie theater. Why did VHS win, resigning BETAMAX to the trash heap of history?

Beta originally had a limit of one hour per tape, and they were more expensive to produce than VHS.

The invention of Blu-Ray Discs offered movie theater quality at home, yet people still choose to spend $8 on popcorn and see movies in the theater. Why is it called Blu-Ray?

The name refers to the blue (actually violet) laser that allows images to be stored at a higher density than the red laser used by DVD.

When Netflix began creating streaming content, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences refused to consider any of its films for Best Picture unless they gave it a theatrical run. What was the first Netflix-produced movie to be nominated for best picture?

Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma

Roller disco is coming to Providence! Thursday and Friday nights, the rink at the Bank Newport City Center will be transformed into a massive outdoor Roller Disco. PVDLive is curating Thursday nights and Conscious Club curates the DJs and live performers Friday night, while the mood is set by a spinning disco ball. The Trinity Beer Garden will be serving up beverages and snacks.

After a long pandemic year, strap on your wheels and proclaim to the night, in the immortal words of Gloria Gaynor, “I Will Survive!”

Pieter Martens is exactly the kind of tour guide you might expect for TimeZone, moving with the speed of a Belgian version of Looney Tunes’ Tasmanian Devil, constantly narrating the themes for the various parts of this mini theme park, without ever giving away the tricks to the various games within.

“And this room is set in the ancient Mayan Empire,” he says, ushering our little group of time traveling adventurers into our third or fourth room in as many minutes. “Of course, it’s very good for your leg muscles, because you have to bend down a lot.” Of course. Wait, what? Ancient Mayan squats? There’s no further explanation, but we quickly figure out this is a sort of basketball variant. There are giant stone hoop targets, iron bars and balls you bend down to carefully recover through those bars. There’s also a countdown clock, and enough adrenaline that none of felt the workout until much later.

Imagine if everything at a place like Dave and Buster’s was tied together with one narrative and one scoring system. Then add in some more brainteasers, balancing acts, climbing and artistic ambiance and you’ve got a sense of what TimeZone feels like.

TimeZone launched this month within Lincoln’s R1 Entertainment Center, which also hosts an arcade, axe throwing and go kart racing (not at the same time). TimeZone is a new idea, conceived in Martens’ feverish imagination and executed by local artists, many from The Reliquarium, an artist collective best known for creating high-end stage designs for international music festivals. The Reliquarium happens to be right up the road from TimeZone.

Our small band was traveling through space. There’s a video that explains all this (and there are humans around if you need them, although not everyone gets their own whirling dervish of a guide / inventor). So we’re traveling through space, right, and our ship hits a time anomaly — one that probably escaped from some classic Trek episode. That space-iceberg collision throws different rooms in the ship into different eras and parts of the universe, leaving us to solve various challenges presented by these different times. There are also Easter eggs along the way that add up to a solution that will rescue our starship from permanent time dysphoria and save us from having to interact with our younger, dumber selves.

One room involved speed math, which prompted my teammates to immediately pull out their cell phones and launch calculator apps. “That’s OK, yes. It’s not against the rules,” our guide told us, although he clearly preferred the challenge of doing his own math in his head.

Another room let us shoot cannons (armed with tennis balls) at pirates. One involved assessing dinosaurs based on color, size and deadliness, while a third involved code breaking. Yet another required us to master the art of the group selfie. Each room has a display outside to let you know if another team is in there, and to inform players of the speed, strength, balance and intelligence needed to escape from that particular time vortex.

“I appreciated the diversity of the interactive experience,” said local educator and artist Jade Sisti, part of our improvised team. “Each room presented different types of challenges. Choosing your group well seems like a crucial element — this takes the best aspects of escape rooms and lets each person play to their strengths. Nobody’s at a permanent disadvantage — everyone can work together, which made it really unique. It’s well rounded, so everybody’s useful in different ways at different times, whether it’s physical or mental or draws on experience. Like, I would do really well on the balance challenges next time, as long as I remember not to wear heels. A lot of my friends would not.”

“It seems pretty ideal for a quick date, too,” added fellow first-time player Genevieve Flowers, who quickly became known for doing math in her head and staying on balance beams across seas of molten lava. ”Like speed dating, but better because you can get a sneak peak into every aspect of a potential date — teamwork, strength, agility, brains…”

Motif had early previews of the facility when it was in progress over COVID summer. It’s fascinating to see some of the complicated mechanics come to life — and to see how much has changed and evolved as the development team worked on bringing the trapped space vessel to life. That includes materials that lend themselves to easy sanitization, and simplifications to game play. 

One of the rooms that was among the last to come together was originally going to be a climbing challenge set inside the carcass of a giant space dragon. Now it’s a different kind of climbing game aimed at saving a struggling colony of bees. I ask Martens what happened to the desiccated dragon concept. “It didn’t work,” he says simply. Onward and upward! Saving the bees seems like it does work, although none of us can make it on the first try. That would be too easy.

The entire game, or sport, or activity — it’s a bit hard to define this thing — is in some ways a giant beta test for Martens and his game designers. They’re carefully tracking what visitors of all ages like and don’t like, constantly tweaking the difficulty of the challenges. “Some people have told us this opening is too small,” he says, angling his 6-foot-plus frame through an Arabian-style window in one room. “Maybe, but only one person from a team needs to go in there, so it works for now.” You can almost see him sizing up where the chainsaw might be applied to that problem in the near future.

“I would love to build up to having team competitions and a league play element,” says Martens, absentmindedly shuffling a series of RFID necklaces, the keys to the kingdom. Er, starship. “And then soon, when we have made enough mistakes to know what works, I hope we can roll out TimeZones all over the country, each customized to its city and the interests of the people there. Here, we have a couple of Lovecraft-themed rooms that will probably only ever be in Rhode Island. We have 25 rooms here. But we have games for at least 50 rooms, someday. And we are always having new ideas.”

Names may have been changed to protect the secret identities of certain time travelers. Thank you, future selves. You can schedule your own trip through time at r1kart.com/motif. TimeZone, an Axe Bar and R1 Indoor Karting are located at 1000 Higginson Ave, Lincoln RI.

It’s half past six on a cool May night and everyone in the small crowd gathered in front of the State House has bowed their head in silence. They’re marking one year since the murder of George Floyd and taking stock of what has happened since.

More than 365 days later, Derek Chauvin — who knelt on Geoge Floyd’s neck for nine minutes and killed him, on video no less — was convicted of two counts of murder and one count of manslaughter. The activists in front of the State House, however, including progressive legislators like Representative David Morales and Senator Tiara Mack, aren’t satisfied with the little progress on the issues they’ve spent years advocating for in Rhode Island. As the Warren Zevon song goes, “That shit that used to work, it won’t work now.”

“Justice is Black people not dying at the hands of police,” said Harrison Tuttle, executive director of the Black Lives Matter RI PAC, which organized the event at the State House. The PAC was created during last summer’s explosive protests and is staffed by young, POC activists from the metro area. Its mission is to tirelessly support and elect young, POC and progressive candidates for local office. Tuttle continued, “Justice looks like ending state-sanctioned violence, ending systemic problems that cause inequalities in housing and education and most importantly, policing. And we must look to reinvest in those areas that need it the most, instead of pouring more funds into policing and less funds into necessary services.”

“Due to the [police] academy’s inability to produce law enforcement that can protect and serve all people despite color, race and ethnicity,” said Joyce Wise, a former BLM RI executive director, “we can no longer trust the academy to produce law enforcement officers that will protect and serve all of us.” Activists are calling for the repeal of the Law Enforcement Bill of Rights (LEOBoR). LEOBoR has been controversial with community organizers for years in Rhode Island, and efforts to repeal or reform the additional rights it grants law enforcement has become a perennial effort in the state legislature.

LEOBoR provides an extra layer of legal protections and rights to the state’s law enforcement officers. If, for example, a police chief wants to discipline an officer for more than two days, it automatically prompts a three-member panel. The officer being disciplined has the right to choose one active duty or retired officer to serve on the three-member panel. Nothing sounds more Rhode Island than an alignment of interest, right?

A relic of the 20th century, LEOBoR was passed into law in 1976; Rhode Island is one of 15 states that still have laws like this on the books. It’s become a major roadblock to police accountability in the state, with the peer panels having virtually no incentive to uphold any disciplinary action. Police chiefs and other leaders also are prohibited from speaking about any disciplinary action officers may or may not receive. As followers of any juicy local political scandal are aware, this is something not granted to any other public servants in the state.

Legislation has been introduced for a full repeal of LEOBoR. The Rhode Island Association of Police Chiefs, while open to reforming it, are not considering a full repeal. Newly minted Governor Dan McKee, in an April press conference, opined that police officers need to be held accountable, saying, “I do believe it needs reform to make sure that there is accountability.” Lieutenant Governor Sabina Matos agreed with calls for reforming the law, a marked difference from her earlier calls for a full repeal.

But it’s more than just a single set of bad laws, activists say. Racism is the inherent vice in the Rhode Island system. “This past year and more has been marked by more Black deaths at the hand of state violence, systemic violence, of Black, brown and low-income communities,” said Senator Mack. 

It’s a common, frustrated refrain from activists, that violence comes from more than just law enforcement. Rhode Island has only just now passed a pathway to a $15 minimum wage (to be phased in gradually over five years), meaning the people in greatest need of a wage hike will have to wait even longer. The pandemic disproportionally impacted the state’s working poor and, contrary to what local, vocal boosters say, the rising tide of recovery has not lifted all boats. 

While affordable housing bonds were passed earlier this year, the state government has no dedicated funding stream for building affordable housing. Rent and house prices have skyrocketed during the pandemic, and many struggling working families were housing-cost-burdened before. Cannabis legalization is on the way, but expungement for cannabis-related criminal offenses during its prohibition is not.

“Indifference is not gonna pave a path to justice,” said Dr. Luis Daniel Munoz to the crowd on that May evening. “The fact is, indifference is pretty pervasive in all of the institutions, whether it’s policing or the building right behind us.” 

Munoz is a gubernatorial candidate for the 2022 election, and progressives, fresh off a number of victories in the last election, are looking ahead. Electioneering, once the realm of pencilneck policy wonks and the kind of nerds who really like applying statistics to sports, is a keystone of BLM RI PAC and antiracist organizers. Tuttle points out that eight seats on Providence City Council are up for election next year.

Not much happened in the last year, but who knows what’s possible in the next?

This is the third cover that local illustrator Zoe Anderson created for Motif, and we can’t wait for her vision of someone opening the door onto a vibrant summer after a long time in isolation to become a reality. We asked Zoe to put herself into the scene. Where would she go first? “I would want to see if there were any nature trails in the background past the pond,” she said. “I’m excited to get out into the forest now that the weather is warmer.”

To see more of Zoe’s art, follow her @zoescatmind.

Last year was a bust for that key New England tradition, the summer carnival. Most were canceled outright. Others turned to the “drive-in” format to recoup fiscal losses. Carnival and fair operations represent a billion-dollar industry nationwide, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in state and local revenue and employing hundreds of thousands of people. The economic knock-on effects provided to local vendors, hotels, restaurants and the like are incalculable.

This year the industry is hoping for a renaissance. Sharon Popovich of Reithoffer Shows, a Florida-based travelling carnival company in operation for over a century, said the pandemic shot a hole through many of the smaller traveling carnivals, leaving a demand for mobile attractions for the summer county fair circuit. The culprit is not the virus, but the aftershocks the pandemic left on national and local economies. 

“Some of the smaller companies didn’t make it,” she said. “It’s unfortunate because many people missed their fair last year. They have pent-up desire to attend this year. We are getting the people, but we just don’t have the labor force to give them the big event that they really want.”

The northeastern carnival circuit follows the same schedule as other summer attractions, relying on steady business from Memorial Day to Labor Day to keep afloat. Popovich said the upcoming season could be bleak for the region. Reithoffer usually travels as far north as Brockton for their annual fair — hitting over 40 events around the country in a normal year — however that event has been cancelled. 

The website carnivalwarehouse.com, an online clearinghouse for all things carnival, shows only one event scheduled in Rhode Island, the Washington County Fair, scheduled for August.

Washington County Fair committee co-chair Roxanne Nelson said the group is excited to bring back the annual tradition. Last year’s event was held virtually, which curtailed the charitable fundraising that participating organizations rely upon. The fair will be welcoming Johnston-based Rockwell Amusements, Rhode Island’s only carnival company. 

“Many of the food booths do their annual fundraising at the fair, which definitely caused a hardship [in 2020] for their organization,” she said. “Whenever you cancel an in-person event there is always a fear that when you are able to reopen, the patrons won’t remember your event or won’t make plans to attend.”

As states continue to relax COVID restrictions, there is no reason 2021 shouldn’t be a banner year, said Chieko. Early reports suggest a blockbuster run.

“Every carnival is doing phenomenal business. There is a lot of pent-up demand,” he said. “COVID was obviously devastating for our industry. For the most part nobody operated last year. But the carnival folks are very resilient.”

Because most are privately held companies, Chieko said hard data on the total impact from the economic shutdown is tough to establish. He estimates about 90% of 2020 sales were lost.

Popovich acknowledges the carnival life is not for the faint of heart. Employees are on the road for extended stretches of time. The hours are long, and the wages are comparable to the average service industry job that one could work from the comfort of their hometown. The company does provide housing for their employees in the form of small trailers. 

 Reithoffer often takes on local day labor to supplement staffing. 

“Right now we’ll hire anybody,” said Popovich. “It’s been tough. It’s taking us longer to get [to locations] and set up than it used to.”

Like musicians on the road, traveling carnivals rely on a dedicated circuit to move along, generating revenue in one place that in turn allows them to move on to the next. If too many festivals are cancelled, the financial calculus of putting up the capital to travel to a particular region stops making sense.

“We’re coming out of Florida. Is it feasible for us to go north when we only have one event? That’s not going to pay for our expenses,” said Popovich. “So now we are having to cancel events. You have to have the routes. We already lost one year. And this year is not looking good.”

Chieko said the carnivals shall endure. They are part of the country’s DNA.

“It’s traditional Americana,” he said. “What’s more fun than going outside to a carnival with three generations of your family to enjoy the day?”

Perhaps Rhode Island officials should begin mailing invitations to these moveable feasts.

Rhode Island’s first brewpub is welcoming change with new ownership and new beer. For the first time in 28 years, Union Station Brewery is canning and distributing two of their in-house-made beers. With a little help from Buttonwoods Craft Brewery, double IPA The King is Dead and New England IPA Cranston Thug Life are canned, and the two hazy commodities will hit the streets in weeks to come through local distributor Craft Collective. Until then, you can grab a 4-pack right at the brewery. 

Fan favorite Cranston Thug Life is a nod to part owner Mike Delehanty’s son, Jack, who earned the nickname at age 11 after drinking his cup of frozen lemonade from a paper bag.

Delehanty has remained optimistic throughout the COVID crisis, despite assuming ownership just months before the pandemic hit. He met challenge after challenge while creating delicious beer on what he describes as “the oldest equipment in the state.”

“While the pandemic certainly slowed down getting to where I wanted to, I’ve been really happy with the beer our brewer Dave Kenney has made. Each beer seems to be better than the last,” says Delehanty.