News

Local Drag Queen, Annie B. Frank – The RuPaul of Providence

In an ensemble of white on blue polka dots and ruby curls with an inflatable unicorn, local drag queen Annie B. Frank lit up EGO’s stage one recent Thursday night, lip-synching songs and telling jokes. When Annie B. Frank isn’t decked out in fake lashes, over-lined lips and outrageous wigs (she’s got 20 of them), she […]

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Whole Foods Bans Motif

For a dozen years, Motif has had a robust relationship with Whole Foods Market, occasionally hitting up their experts with health and nutrition questions, and distributing at their Providence locations in exchange for ad space as part of their community outreach initiatives. A few months ago, they severed that arrangement. It happened at the same […]

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Red Flags: Taking Guns from the Mentally Ill

A surprising amount of common ground underlies the positions of opposing stakeholders on proposed legislation that would create an “Extreme Risk Protection Order” (ERPO) (“red flag”) law, but the devil is in the details. A bill proposed in the RI General Assembly (House 7688 and Senate 2492) would allow family members and law enforcement to […]

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An Interview with Cover Artist Zack Deus

Though most people would consider music a performance art, when the right visual artist comes along, you can see how music can transcend boundaries and provoke feelings through other senses than hearing. For this issue we asked graphic/web designer and photographer Zack Deus to capture this idea for the cover of our Motif Music Awards Nominations issue. I spoke […]

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Phillipe & Jorge’s Cool, Cool World: The Good News, the Bad News, the Local News

The Good News  A few articles in the Friday, March 9, New York Times gave Phillipe & Jorge reason to believe that the patriarchal culture in a number of countries may be crumbling. International Women’s Day (March 8) gave rise to feminist groups in Spain urging women to spend no money on that day and and also […]

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InvestiGATE: The Relationship between Public and Charter Schools

There are 299 primary and secondary schools in Rhode Island, a combination of traditional public schools, charter schools, state-operated schools and a handful of other institutions listed on the state’s reporting. This excludes private schools and other types of alternative educational institutions. According to the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE), there are 30 charter […]

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