Providence, like Savannah, was relatively uneventful in the way that there really wasn’t anything to take pictures of. Also, I cut my stay short from the scheduled two nights there so that I could pop in an extra day between Toronto and Chicago coming up. Therefore, this is gonna be a short and rather boring post, and I apologize.
I arrived in Providence in the early evening, and met my old roommate Ramon, a crazy Dominican who is well on his way to become King of Providence, and the entire world soon thereafter. I got there just in time to catch a 7pm screening of Public Enemies, which was pretty badass, but fell short of greatness. Also, someone needs to teach Michael Mann how to shoot in digital and make it look good. Superman Returns looked great (though it was a shit movie), Apocalypto looked great too, Benjamin Button looked incredible, hell, even fucking Crank 2 looked amazing… all of them shot in digital video. But there were too many times in Public Enemies, usually in the nighttime shootouts, where it just felt like dudes in costumes running around with toy guns and recording it all on a handicam. There were bits and pieces in Mann’s Collateral and Miami Vice where the cheap video look popped up, but never as flagrantly as in this movie. Still, the solid pacing and structure of the film keeps it up above the fray. I digress… besides watching the film, we didn’t do much that night. Had some food at Kartabar, an old hangout run by a giant Lebanese dude who is almost cartoonish in his gangsterish appearance, then passed out at Ramon’s pad.
The next day Ramon had to go to work (as all my hosts have had to do), so I took the opportunity to do three key things.
One, I did a pretty hefty amount of laundry at the old coin-op where I used to do it in college.
Two, I wrote a lot of stuff for the blog.
Three, I drove around EVERYWHERE in Providence. It may not mean much to you all, so I won’t bore you with details, but it was incredible to revisit all the different spots I used to frequent nearly 10 years ago. Thayer street, my old apartment above ACME Video, Taste of India, the RISD beach, downtown Providence, you name it. A lot has changed throughout the years, some places almost unrecognizable, but it still drew up a huge amount of memories. College was fucking fun times, for real.
Those 3 things basically consumed my entire day, and since I had cut my stay short, I had to take off in the late afternoon. I went back and had an incredible steak dinner with Ramon and his girlfriend, said my goodbyes, and took off for the next stop, to meet up with yet another Friend from The Internet, Angry Alan, in Albany, NY.