Shark jumping

Has the Providence underground art scene jumped the shark? Last year's media blitz on "The Apartment at Providence Place Mall," in which a group of artists "micro-developed" abandoned, neglected mall storage space into a furnished flat, brought CBS and Fox News to town and generated headlines worldwide. It was the latest salvo in a barrage of underground art strikes bringing attention to the capital. Providence first gained international buzz in the late 1980s when former RISD student Shepard Fairey created stickers that said "Obey" and "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" and stuck them on lampposts and Dumpsters throughout the city. Ten years ago, more people in Helsinki and Stockholm knew about the street art/pulp comic/noise punk scene happening on the West Side of Providence than people living on the East Side. (The Fort Thunder era of the mid-1990s was recorded for Rhode Islanders in the acclaimed RISD exhibition of street posters and giant installations, "Wunderground Providence: 1995 to the Present.")

Now television executives have floated the idea of re-staging the "Apartment at the Mall" project for a reality TV show in Manhattan. And all of those Andre the Giant faces that sprang up on stop signs and bulletin board kiosks can be purchased at Urban Outfitters. (There's even a store on the formerly sticker-plastered Thayer Street in the heart of the Brown University community.) Proving once again the adage that all successful subversion eventually mutates into commodity.

Buddyspotting

Only in Rhode Island could an ex-con become a celebrity invitee at the state's biggest social gala - in our case, the Bristol Fourth of July Parade. It has been a wild year of freedom for former Providence Mayor-turned felon-turned mayor again-turned felon again-turned talk radio host Buddy Cianci. His own release from federal prison last spring came on the heels of an acclaimed documentary on his life, by Cherry Arnold, released a month earlier. His story is the subject of an in-progress film version of ProJo reporter Mike Stanton's "The Prince of Providence." And he was the best interview featured in David Bettencourt's documentary on the rise and demise of Rocky Point Park, "You Must Be This Tall." Now he's going to be a star attraction on the red, white and blue median at this year's Bristol Parade. (Also coming along for the ride: The Red Sox' 2007 World Series trophy.)

The invite shouldn't come as a surprise, since the parade route was lined with homemade signs pleading "FREE BUDDY" every year during his incarceration. As much as Blog on the Half Shell would like to be a Buddy-free Zone, we have a rule to never turn down a good (reasonably clean) story, especially a good Buddy story. Share one if you've got it.

Balance of State

This state has only five counties. They include Bristol, Kent, Newport, Providence and Washington. (South County isn't a county, even though it's called one, but is instead a region of historical and cultural distinction encompassing most of Washington County.) To promote the state, however, officials split the five counties into seven tourism regions, one of which lumps East Greenwich, West Greenwich and Coventry into South County. So the region is marketed to the world as something that doesn't pass the snuff test at Gilbert Stuart Birthplace and Museum for anyone living in South County (or the other three towns, for that matter).

Even stranger, Global Insight, a national economic analysis firm hired in 2006 to assess tourism in Rhode Island, decided that seven tourism regions still weren't quite enough. So they made eight. Now we have Providence, Warwick and the West Bay, East Bay, Block Island, Blackstone Valley, Newport County, South County and an eighth piece that could have only been named by a bureaucrat: "Balance of State." Lucky enough to live in Rhody limbo as the puzzle pieces that don't fit are Cranston, Foster, Johnston, North Providence, Scituate and West Warwick.

Collectively, "Balance of State" seems to be a region known for cold strip pizza, apple orchards, the reservoir that provides water to most of us and strip malls. Coming soon to Green Airport: "I (Heart) Balance of State, Rhode Island" T-shirts?