Wednesday, May 276 - 10pmMyrtle, East Providence Join us for the 4th annual Motif Spoken Awards! We are excited to be returning to Myrtle to celebrate RI’s spoken word community. Want to see your favorite Rhode Island...
By Lillian MK Photography By Olivia Lunger By Izzy Cooke ...
The Music Awards went off without a hitch this year, and over the course of the evening more than 400 local music lovers dropped by to dance, listen, and cheer on fellow musicians. We'll have...
It’s often said (well, I definitely say this), that some of the deepest conversations and connected moments can happen while one is sitting in a car. This is certainly true for the duo, band, sisterhood...
Image: Olivia Lunger. Local Civil War re-enactor Bill Sherman was having trouble recruiting young people into the hobby, so he hit on a novel idea that is perfectly suited to Gen Z. He immediately telephoned his...
The Continental Congress, befooled. April Fool’s Day originated among the French a few years into the Revolutionary War. Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin had been pleading with them for any sort of assistance. The brand...
If you have been a craft beer lover over this past decade, you may remember when the first Rhode Island Brewery Passport was released. It was changed to an app in 2020. Six years later,...
No Kings 3, Mar 28, 2026 No Kings – nokings.org – is a non-violent protest movement responding to the monarchy-like concentration of power in the hands of the president, to the exclusion of Congress and the...
After attending Chalumeau’s release party for their album BLUE at The Met in Pawtucket last August, I wrote that if you ever got the chance to see them perform live, you should jump on it....
On February 28, after 20 years of being a community staple for first dates, Super Tuesday regulars, and movie fanatics alike, CWTheaters (previously called CinemaWorld) was forced to shut its doors for good. The decline...
Last year, I had a blast and a half working on a fun commercial shoot. I landed the gig because the fella producing, Josh Kirk, asked around to find an actor to portray the client’s...
Photo: Jenn Lombari. @jennlombariphotography ssa lin has been making a local splash like a rockin’ rainstorm after a record-setting blizzard, since releasing her first single, “tallboys,” at the end of 2025. The feedback has been good,...
Here are some hot new local tracks to finish melting the ice. The Hopeless Romantics – “Quiet Kind” The third and final single from The Hopeless Romantics’ upcoming debut album, “Quiet Kind” is also a reworked...
Okee dokee folks… PLEASE stop using AI. The more it knows, the more it grows. We are feeding a beast that will someday destroy us. AI is not your friend, though it may pretend to...
Graphic by Olivia Lunger. ...
Hey idiot, why are you and your friends getting high indoors? Don't you know? We have a planet, a whole, big planet filled with trees, rivers, and critters. The outside world doesn't have to start...
Medical marijuana was legalized in Rhode Island in January 2006, and by May 2022 even recreational sales became legal through state-licensed dispensaries and authorized retailers. Yet it still isn’t safe for medical users to come out of the closet....
Cover artist Elliott Italiano of Jamestown is a self-made glass artist. As a young adult, Italiano's interests centered on fashion, inspiring thoughts of pursuing a degree in luxury marketing and design. He relates to his past...
MAD Magazine cover, Feb 2016: Donald Trump and Alfred E. Neuman We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one. We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion. In the process...
Cover artist Mina Miki of Providence calls her baby blanket her longest friend. “His name is Blankie, but now he looks less like a blanket and more like a piece of tangled silk,” she says....
McKee’s Budget Includes Rollbacks for State’s Renewable Energy Programs PROVIDENCE — Five years after lawmakers passed the state’s first firm climate mandates, the historic Act on Climate law is in danger of getting rolled back by...
The closure of the westbound section of the Washington Bridge that occurred in December of 2023 has inspired major grievances within the greater Providence metropolitan area. Traffic within the city limits has become unbearable, especially...
Graphic by Eric Barao When the US Congress allowed the Affordable Care Act subsidies to expire on Dec. 31, 2025, they created a health insurance crisis that could have inspired a plot line for “American Horror...
On January 30, 2026, an estimated 5,000 Rhode Islanders – including students and numerous local businesses – participated in a historic, nationwide strike in an effort to get the tyranny of Immigration and Customs Enforcement...
Okee dokee folks… “Art is fucking political. Always has been, always will be.” I looked for a source to attribute this to but there doesn’t seem to be a definitive person who said it. Doesn’t...
Gregory Alan Isakov and band, with support from the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra at PPAC on Thursday, January 29, 2026. Photo by Gregory Alan Isakov’s tour photographer, Kenzi Everitt, @kenzieveritt. As the house lights dimmed on...
From left to right: Brendan, Charles, Peter, Wil, John, Daniel, Patrick Kinnane, and Jeffrey Azize. I am a hopeful romantic and a huge fan of romcoms. The films often have a woman in the lead navigating...
I’ve never known much about growing flowers. The few gardens I’ve started in my life ended all too unceremoniously, in death. And I’ve never known much about 3-D printing, either. In fact, probably attributed to...
Snow accumulation at TF Green Airport reached 37.9 inches, shattering the all-time record of 28.6 inches set during the legendary Blizzard of 1978. 07:01 pm EST - 2/23/2026TF Green AP, RI37.903:10 pm EST - 2/23/20261 SE...
Photo: Jackie Davis as Robyn and Kortney Adams as Sharon, by Mark Turek. Not since Oscar and Felix – or Laverne and Shirley – have we cackled so hard at the antics of mismatched roommates bumbling...
Cibber-Vanbrugh’s The Provok’d Husband, a comedy about an extravagant wife, was a huge success in Newport. And Nicholas Rowe’s brooding The Tragedy of Jane Shore, inspired by the life of the mistress of Edward IV, drew standing-room only crowds. That was in the late-1760s, when these plays were among the first theatrical stagings in RI despite anti-theater laws […]
We asked Motif’s resident video production supervisor to recommend some locally grown vids that made his year: 1. Dawn the Duck You may think you have a robust social life, but just know that there’s a duck living larger than you. Sporting a gold medallion fit (and sometimes a tiny leopard fur coat or a […]
By Steven R. Porter Rhode Island is known nationwide for its vibrant arts community. But the state’s published authors, despite their talent and success, are too often an afterthought. The year 2025 saw an absolute cornucopia of great fiction and non-fiction releases offering an abundance of nourishment for the mind and soul that all deserve […]
Doesn’t the Warwick Mall seem like an unlikely location for a photographic recreation of The Sistine Chapel? It strikes me as similar to hearing that Buddy Cianci was dating Sophia Loren; totally improbable. And yet there it is, right inside a side entrance, next to Target. An empty corner store has been repurposed to display […]
By Maureen O’Gorman Rhode Island is well-known for two things: its vibrant arts and culture scene centered in Providence, and the unwillingness of its residents to drive over 20 minutes to go somewhere. The newly-opened Westerly Museum of American Impressionism (WMAI) hopes to challenge both of those ideas. Several years in the making, the WMAI […]
The holidays, over the years, have changed. This may be true for you as well. As a toddler most of us have followed family traditions. My late sister and I would wait for my father to get home from his shift at the fire department to open up gifts and snack on homemade Italian cookies. […]
For the first time ever, I was officially tasked with reviewing a restaurant — which doesn’t mean it was my first time pretending. I often act like a reviewer (I critique everything in life, exhaustingly so, according to my friends and family). I think I’ve wanted to be a food critic ever since I first […]
Okee dokee folks… If you listen to music enough you can always find lines in a song or whole songs that relate to the world around you. Lately I have been elder-Ubering my parents more, and though I usually don’t listen to the radio, I do while I am waiting for them. The other day […]
“It went pretty well,” said Bobby Forand about the “Give or Take” food drive he coordinated on Thanksgiving weekend at the News Cafe on Broad Street in Pawtucket. “People stayed, and there’s a lot of food.” Forand, the drummer of The McGunks, which was one of three punk groups that played at the iconic bar […]
It’s that time of year where every asshat wants to spew their “Best of whatever year” list like someone out in the ether really gives a flying fart. These lists can be dumb, but I have discovered new music from them too. So I decided to join the fray! Here are my top biscuits, shows […]
