The Knowaguy State

Long before the age of texting, tweeting and posting, Rhode Islanders had their own brand of social media called Knowaguy. Knowaguy was where we went whenever we needed something. Need a job? A plumber? Someone to take hazardous waste off your hands? Don’t worry. I knowaguy. You knowaguy? I knowaguy. Of course you knowaguy. This is Rhode Island. We all knowaguy. Often it’s the same guy, but that’s a post for another day.

Our longstanding culture of “knowaguy” may help explain a factoid buried in Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” cover story on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (the piece came out on Jan. 3, but we’re a little behind in our magazine reading). Time reports that the world’s most popular social platform is used more in Rhode Island than in any of the Other 49. As of the New Year, 65 percent of the Ocean State used Facebook. (The lowest rate, at 30 percent, was recorded by New Mexico.)

In one respect, it seems odd that the nation’s second-most densely populated state (behind New Jersey) would be the most avid users of Facebook, a site that allows people to stay in touch over long distances. But the convenience of remote communication, it turns out, may not be Facebook’s most vital function. The greater lure is the sense of being part of a community.

Rhode Island’s pre-existing social culture as a place of jostling elbows – whether at the big tables of shore dining halls or the cramped counters and bars of diners and pubs – lends itself ideally to the Facebook format. Relationships matter here in a way that they don’t everywhere. And everything is personal.

My friend Tom and I were talking about this subject yesterday, after a round of golf and during a couple of pints in Warren. Although Facebook is a global phenomenon, Tom believes that it still works best in closed or tight-knit communities, like college campuses, from which it originated. Rhode Island is its own campus, its own neighborhood. Historically we have a low migration rate. Most people are born here and die here. Even those who leave usually come back. [Consider the unofficial University of Rhode Island fight song: I’m Rhode Island born and Rhode Island bred and when I die I’ll be Rhode Island dead…] Which is why in this fragmented time, when a nation that used to gather around the TV to watch Cronkite now chooses between 700 channels and multiple types of media, it’s still possible in Rhode Island to have a conversation that the whole state can engage in. It’s like that old “Coffee Chat” segment on “Saturday Night Live:”

Rocky Point Park. The Blizzard of ’78. The Station Fire.

Discuss.

[Side note: Rhode Island itself was once a topic of discussion on “Coffee Chat.” It went something like: “Rhode Island…Neither a road, nor an island. Discuss.”]

There may be other factors for Rhody’s high Facebook use. The Ocean State is first in the nation for access to broadband coverage, which certainly helps. Its unemployment rate (over 11 percent at last count with the national average hovering around 9 percent) is still one of the highest in the country, so it’s possible that more people in Rhode Island have more time to log on. But it’s also just as likely that Facebook is the high school yearbook that you never put away in the closet, and the whole state of Rhode Island is the high school class that never graduated. Part of our identity as Rhode Islanders is knowing (and being interested in) what other Rhode Islanders are up to at any given moment, whether friends, neighbors, strangers or Buddy.

Your turn: Why does Rhode Island use Facebook more than any other state?

Skimming Buddy

Last Thursday Half Shell received an advance copy of Buddy Cianci’s memoir, so naturally we spent the weekend reading it. Although written with New York author David Fisher, it’s a Buddy yak and yarn all the way, filled with every Buddy-centric story we’ve come to know and love, from stacking dead bodies like Lincoln Logs during the Blizzard of ’78 to the media circus of Plunder Dome, toupees to cigarettes, mobsters to marinara sauce.

Starting with the title, “Politics and Pasta: How I Prosecuted Mobsters, Rebuilt a Dying City, Dined with Sinatra, Spent Five Years in a Federally Funded Gated Community, and Lived to Tell the Tale,” the memoir is both self-serving and self-deprecating in equal doses, much like the former mayor himself. Love him or loathe him, readers should give Cianci credit for his frank, behind-the-scenes look at public service and private demons, told in a voice that is unmistakably his own, quick-witted and still advertising. (Throughout the book Providence is regularly referred to as “the great city of Providence,” a mantra that the former mayor can’t help himself from repeating.)

While the rest of the country might wonder what all of the fuss is about, there is much for Rhode Islanders to feast upon. Consider Buddy’s description of the Providence he inherited as mayor. After chronicling the city’s former glory, he writes about what it looked like in 1975:

Our downtown was practically deserted; the once grand hotel, the Biltmore, was closing; and, perhaps symbolically, the week I was inaugurated a crane was pulling out the grand piano from the second floor. The situation was so awful that even the American Bible Society, one of the last successful businesses we had, had packed its Bibles and moved out of town. Let me illustrate it this way: On the night of my inauguration the police got an emergency phone call that several monkeys were escaping from our zoo. You know you’re in trouble when your monkeys are trying to get out of town.

A legendary campaigner, who always believed that there was “no substitute for hitting the streets and shaking the hands of voters,” Buddy was beloved by Providence residents because he never missed a graduation, communion, confirmation, bar mizvah, Little League opener, breakfast, picnic, wedding or parade if he could help it. He recalls one trip to a Portuguese Democratic Club event:

They roasted a pig over an open fire and then proudly explained the old tradition, the guest of honor gets to eat the eye. I looked at this big thing looking right back at me and I thought, Eat the eye? You gotta be nuts. But there were a lot of potential votes watching me. I gotta eat the eye. I took a deep breath and swallowed it. Then I looked at the crowd and said with as much disappointment as I could pretend I felt, “What? I only get one?”

The book is filled with such moments, making it a fun read for the Rhodyfile. From time to time, in the middle of a sentence or a paragraph, he’ll just start pitching Providence with a line like: “…by the way, if you’ve never been to Providence you are missing a wonderful experience; come for WaterFire…” He considers himself the city’s greatest salesman (it’s hard to argue the point) and believes his most important lasting accomplishment was raising the self-esteem of Providence residents.

Amid stories of clashing egos and politics as usual, Buddy articulates the patchwork ideas that became his vision for Providence. They include a commitment to historic preservation (“In Providence history was our future.”); an emerging realization of the importance of celebrating the city’s diversity and ensuring fairness (“To me all people were equal; they were all potential votes.”); the significance of a thriving arts community to restore the city’s vibrancy ("I used artists as the shock troops of neighborhood rehabilitation...We had more artists per capita in Providence than any American city...Artists value space above comfort, and that's what we could offer them."); and a mayor’s most critical responsibility (“The single thing that every northern mayor is judged by is how quickly the streets get plowed after a snowstorm. Snow is apolitical; there is no Democratic or Republican way to clear the streets.”)

Buddy doesn’t ignore his other legacy, the criminal assault charge that forced him out of office the first time and the federal prison stint for being found guilty on the charge of conspiring to violate the RICO act. He explains his version of events, diffusing any painful memories with trademark one liners (“According to a Brown University poll, on the day I was indicted my approval rating actually went up four points.”)

Potential mayors might want to consider his sage advice. The book is a primer for anyone looking to run for office in Rhode Island. (“Don’t get between a voter and their bingo card.”) He even offers tips for marching in a parade. (“For obvious reasons, never, ever march behind a horse...Never march behind a bishop either, because he’ll stop frequently to bless people, and they make the sign of the cross, so they can’t clap for you. And don’t march in front of the parade queen’s float because no one is going to be looking at you.”)

It’s all here. Putting guards armed with shotguns on garbage trucks. Canceling The Who concert at the old Civic Center. Saving the Ocean State Theatre from the wrecking ball. Flirting with casinos. Putting police on horses and replica gas lamps on Federal Hill. Bringing the Providence Bruins to town. Trying to get Frank Sinatra’s mother’s doctor’s kid into Brown. (He couldn’t.) Attracting the X Games and Gravity Games. Becoming a champion of gay rights. Building a public ice skating rink in a derelict part of Downcity. Pardoning the Big Blue Bug. Commissioning the sloop Providence. Welcoming trolleys and gondolas. Launching the nation’s first tax-free arts district. Going on the radio with Imus. And much more. Good Buddy. Bad Buddy. Every Buddy in between.

What is your favorite Buddy story?

Miss America Hopeful Runs on Dunkin'

Miss America pageant contestants are rarely chosen for their oratory. But despite her rather good showing overall during the most recent competition, Deborah Saint-Vil, Miss Rhode Island 2011, made an even greater impression in media limbo than on the judges. And it wasn’t a swimsuit or evening gown that did it. It was a factoid.

Given a chance to introduce herself and represent her home state, Miss Rhode Island declared: “With the most Dunkin Donuts shops per capita in the nation, I’m wired up and fired up tonight! I’m Miss Rhode Island!”

The comment went viral the moment it came out of her mouth. Saint-Vil may not have won – on this snowy President's Day we are reminded that a Rhode Islander has as good a chance of becoming President of the United States as Miss America – but her pronouncement got more play on the blogosphere and Twittersphere than any of the Other 49 sparkly wannabes. It was also featured in a Miss America sum-up on “The Soup,” the E! network’s pop cultural gumbo of favorite TV moments from the past week.

While some Rhode Islanders cringed at the reference, most national commentators seemed charmed by it. One blogger noted: “(must be Dunkin Donuts Co. is based out of Rhode Island?)”

Uh, no, actually. That’s one of the odd twists in this tale. Dunkin’ Donuts is a Massachusetts chain. But in Rhode Island, travel distances are measured as much in Dunkin’ Donuts as miles. You can’t jog a 5K anywhere in the state without running into one.

How did this happen? Probably because our two favorite things are: 1) Coffee and 2) Anything fried in dough. The recent news that greater Providence (including the Fall River-New Bedford, Mass. region) remains the doughnut capital of the United States, with 25.3 doughnut shops per 100,000 people, surprised no one hereabouts. (Boston came in a distant second.)

But for those who’ve got their crullers in a twist because Miss Rhode Island bragged about our Dunkin’ mania, consider what she might have said:

“Hello, I’m Miss Rhode Island. Our founder’s skeleton was consumed by an apple tree root!”

“I’m from Rhode Island, one of only two states that never ratified the 18th Amendment declaring Prohibition! Isn’t that right, Miss Connecticut?”

“In these difficult economic times, I’m proud to be from Rhode Island, home to the first discount store in the United States!”

“I’m Miss Rhode Island, home to the world’s largest bug! It’s a big blue termite – 58 feet long and 928 times actual termite size! And it lives rent-free on a roof overlooking a highway in Providence!”

“I’m from Rhode Island, where the weather is always changing, which is why we have a corrosion test site at Point Judith where material samples sit exposed for years and are analyzed to determine the toll taken by ocean air and the sun!”

What should Miss Rhode Island be most proud of?

Valentines and Oysters

On the calendar of holidays in New England, Valentine’s Day fits like a sourball in a Whitman’s Sampler. There’s nothing natural about it. Unlike Halloween (pumpkins and crows), Thanksgiving (Pilgrim hats and turkeys), Christmas (snow on evergreens), New Year’s (First Night), St. Patrick’s Day (Irish pubs), Easter (spring returns!) and Fourth of July (grilling and fireworks), Valentine’s Day has no organic relationship with the region.

Look around. There are mounds of snow and potholed roads everywhere. It’s cold and slippery. Nothing says “Be My Valentine” like a yearning for rock salt and Icy Melt.

Let’s face it. Cold hearts don’t melt in February. The pagan origins of St. Valentine’s Day refer to the time of year when the birds start to mate. But this month I haven’t seen any birds mating. I’ve only seen birds freezing. They’re hungry. They’re miserable. They’re wondering when the snow and ice will clear and the frozen ground will once again offer up wormy breakfasts.

Most of us know the feeling. Valentine’s Day would be better if it were moved to the summer. Possibly August, which has no national holiday. Days and nights of August in Rhode Island have the sensual, languid quality one would like to see in a Valentine’s Day. If I am overemphasizing the passionate and romantic aspect of the occasion – what the Greeks called “Eros” – it’s only because I feel as if I’m drowning in a media flood of florists and wineries, candy makers and chocolatiers, barbershop quartets and restaurants advertising candlelight dinners, all of them banking on Valentine’s Day as a lover’s holiday.

Maybe there’s a reason why every year Valentine’s Day is considered the holiday most overrated and least anticipated by a majority of Americans. At least locally, Providence just isn’t as sexy as Miami or New Orleans in February. Perhaps we would be better off downplaying “Eros,” and emphasizing the various other aspects of love – “Storge” (familial), “Philia” (friendship) and “Agape” (selfless love for others). I mention this even knowing that reducing love to four chambers of the heart is inherently problematic. Google “kinds of love” and you’ll see links numbering them at 4, 5, 3, 9, 7 and 8 varieties on the first page scroll.

Adding to Rhode Islanders’ Valentine’s Day angst this year is the news that wild oysters are “functionally extinct,” meaning that the world’s most popular aphrodisiac is going the way of the Dodo. For those of us who would prefer a platter of Moonstones, Watch Hills, Rome Points and Ninigret Cups to a chocolate box of nuts, fruits, nougats, caramels and creams, the worry that wild oyster extinction will endanger love on the half shell is almost paralyzing. (It’s an irrational worry; but aren’t they all?)

At least in Rhode Island, valentines and oysters are members of the same species. But don’t take my word for it. New York City’s Aquagrill considers Rhody oysters to be the best on the market. Here’s what the owner had to say about Moonstones in an article on “26 Oysters You Should Know This Valentine’s Day” for The Feast:

I’ve had these since I opened. Some of my favorite oysters. It’s almost like a meal, a perfectly balanced oyster. Sweet, salty, bitterness, but everything comes together in your mouth. Rhode Island is one of my favorite states for oysters.

The proof is in the shucking. He also carries Watch Hills, Rome Points, Ninigret Cups and Potter’s Moons, which he describes as his “second favorite oyster.”

The other benefit of combining oysters with Valentine’s Day is that, if you find the right kind, you won’t have to spring for pearls.

What is your Valentine’s Day ritual?

True Crime: Confessions of a Dangerous Blog

Journalism may be in the business of throwaway lines but there are whole novels in police beat. Consider the following Tales from the Naked Suburbs pulled from the police logs by my colleagues and fellow scribes at Independent Newspapers, as reported in last Thursday’s editions. First, from the North Kingstown police log in The North East Independent:

TRESPASSING
REPORTED
John Flowers of 88 Terre Mar Drive, North Kingstown, was issued a no-trespass order at the Wickford Sunoco after he argued with the clerk about paying for $16 worth of gas he had pumped. Flowers eventually paid for the gas and when questioned by police, he said he “owned all of Rhode Island” and didn’t have to pay for any gas because he already owned it.

And this instant classic – to use a horrible oxymoron – from the Narragansett police log in The South County Independent:

MEOW
A 42-year-old Narragansett woman walked into the Narragansett police station on Jan. 25 at around 10:10 p.m., saying she was concerned at her boyfriend’s level of intoxication. The complainant said he came home from skiing intoxicated. Once in the vehicle together, the man started spitting and began to meow, at which point the woman went to police. After a short period of time, the man apologized to police, and the couple went home together.

If only there were an Elmore Leonard or two to chronicle the characters that live so vividly in the police reports as transcribed in Rhode Island’s local dailies and weeklies. Maybe it was just something in the air last week, but we don’t think so. Week after week, we report locals behaving badly and bizarrely, just as they do in every town and city in America.

The bigger question is what snaps in the brain in these moments? In that split second, why does the life of an expectorating, growling tomcat seem preferable to the mundane reality of human relationships and workdays after an alcohol-infused ski trip? What triggers us to spontaneously declare ourselves King of Rhode Island after filling a quarter-tank of gas with unleaded?

Perhaps it’s just a need to blow off steam. Maybe a little insanity is necessary every once in a while in a world gone mad, when there is so much strife and anger and unfairness around us that even the relentless distractions of noise and neon can’t mask the daily frustration. Just as fairy tales and horror movies and bad dreams can be therapeutic ways to address our collective fears, perhaps the patterns of behavior uncovered in police beat show us how people keep society from driving off the cliff. The tires are flat, the doors are dented, the muffler’s broken and we stall out every now and then, but at the end of the day, we’re still moving forward, headlights be damned.

Maybe that explains Rhody Gas King and Spitting Cat Man.

What is your favorite police beat anecdote?

Married to the Mob

A couple of weeks ago the news went old school with word that more than 100 people were arrested in a sweep that targeted seven mob families in New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island. The round-up was impressive in its scope, playing like an episode of “Crime Story,” and reminding us of the days when the Rhody motto was – to use the expression long made popular by Providence Phoenix columnists Phillipe and Jorge – “Mobsters and Lobsters.”

Rhode Island’s notorious independent streak rears up at a time like this. Although proudly New England, the state has an unhealthy affinity for the Mid-Atlantic, as evidenced by its mobster history, disproportionate number of Yankees fans, and connections to TV shows ranging from “Jersey Shore” to “The Sopranos.” Local viewers of the latter used to look for episodes based on Rhody mob lore. In season 4’s “The Weight,” one subplot involved Uncle Junior telling Tony to put a hit on Johnny, according to the Wikipedia summary, “using the skills of a notorious crew of an elderly hit man from Rhode Island, Lou “DiMaggio” Galina – nicknamed for his use of a baseball bat as a murder weapon.” The incident is pulled directly from a Rhody mob moment, when, as the story goes, “Bobo” Marrapese bashed in the head of a teenager with a baseball bat after getting cut off in Pawtucket on a ramp leading to I-95.

Even the DiMaggio reference is an in-joke. Once at The Mews in Wakefield, I talked with a guy at the bar who said that, in his youth, he drove back and forth from Providence to Boston running numbers for the mob. He said that the only difference between the bars were the pictures inside. In Boston, it was the Virgin Mary, John F. Kennedy and Ted Williams. In Providence, it was the Virgin Mary, Frank Sinatra and Joe DiMaggio.

The mob arrest made headlines around the world and was of particular interest to the newspapers of England, which can’t ever seem to get enough of the underbelly of America. As far back as 1993, the English newspaper The Independent (no relation) published a lengthy piece on Rhode Island as the “US Mob state,” in which reporter Patrick Cockburn opens as if he’s warming up an audience in the Catskills:

A joke, much resented by Rhode Islanders, is that things got so bad in their state during the recent recession that the mafia had to lay of two of its judges.

The only thing the reporter got wrong is the “much resented by Rhode Islanders” clause. Most Rhode Islanders love mob jokes. Chances are if you ever hear a mob joke, a Rhode Islander made it up in the first place.

It’s politically incorrect to harp on it now, but growing up in this state, hearing stories, rumors and gossip about the mob was a given. Even as elementary school kids, we watched “Godfathers” I and II and compared Hollywood scenes with local details of murder, racketeering and extortion we heard secondhand during recess between games of Muckle The Kid With The Ball.

As much as the state has changed, its Rogues Island reputation lives on. The first European settlers may have moved to Rhode Island to pursue religious freedom, but it wasn’t long before the rascals and radicals took root. We were a haven for pirates, an industry so lucrative that the state decided to make it legal by calling it privateering. During Prohibition, rumrunning was rampant in Rhode Island. (It’s rumored that Tara Mulroy’s Joyce Family Pub, still hanging on the edge of the earth in Matunuck, was one of many Rhody watering holes involved in the trade.) And Providence, of course, was home to the New England mob for generations. Even now, if Half Shell ever goes under, I could start my own mob blog, using the Internet’s Mob Name Generator. (Depending on whether I use the informal or formal version of my first name, I am either Doug “The Jeweler” Norris or Douglas “The Vampire” Norris, either of which would be appropriate in a state with its own Jewelry District and vampire legends.)

What is your favorite Rhode Island crime story?

Weather smack

With more snow forecast for tomorrow and Wednesday, 2011 is blurring into a blizzard of blizzards. In a couple of weeks, some Pennsylvania rodent will tell the rest of America whether this winter will be a long one or not, but here in New England we don’t need a publicity-seeking groundhog to predict the weather. We’ve got our own clues in nature to investigate, albeit few of them involving toothy mammals, whether the burrowing variety or those attractive Weather Channel personalities bragging about their Doppler radar.

How do you know winter is going to be long, cold and snowy? The hornet’s paper nest will be higher than usual, while the squirrel’s nest will be lower. The wooly worm will wear a jet-black coat, rather than its standard brown-striped russet. Squirrels will have bushier tails. Walnuts and hickory nuts will have thicker hulls. August will have a lot of foggy mornings. Onions will have extra layers. You’ll have to dig deeper to get at your carrots. The north side of any neighborhood trees will be enlarged with extra bark and moss will grow thicker on all of the trees. The bushes will grow more blackberries and the pines will drop more cones than usual. And perhaps you’ll hear the late-night call of the hoot owl throughout autumn, foretelling the next season's severity.

Some weather lore has been turned into proverbs:

The aching of a broken bone predicts rain.

True enough. When it comes to forecasting precipitation, my two surgically reconstructed knees and surgically repaired right elbow are more accurate than Al Roker, Stephanie Abrams and Heather Tesch combined.

One proverb I’d never heard before, but discovered recently on a Web site devoted to American Folklore, has resonance because of the “thunder snow” Rhode Island received during its most recent blizzard, when the sight of lightning and the rumble of thunder in a flurry of early morning snow seemed almost apocalyptic:

If you see lightning in January, you will see snow in April.

Worrisome, because we’ve already had the January lightning, and the thought of April snow on a day when snow piles are stacked like skyscrapers and the temperature may not climb above a single digit is just winter misery overkill.

Based on living through the last decade of winters on a West Barrington Cove, I also know this: When the ducks cluster near the shore, freely mingling with the gulls, geese and swans, and there’s no low tide to provide an easy buffet, a storm’s coming. It’s an observation that I’ve cobbled together in my own weather proverb:

When birds of a different feather flock by the shore together, seal the windows, grab a coat – and get ready for stormy weather.

This week's question: What is your favorite weather lore?