A few weeks ago we bitched about  Channel 10’s stupid  story on  escaping from Providence Place.  Fear no more: It looks like the station’s hard work has  paid off.

PROVIDENCE — Providence Place is trying a new gambit to unclog the chronic bottlenecks that plague its parking garage, according to the mall’s general manager.

Soon, people who drive to the mall will be able to pay their parking fees at ATM-like machines and cashier stations spread throughout the mall, alleviating the need for vehicles to queue alongside cashier booths at garage exits.

Brussat’s column today. To quote our friend David Byrne: some good points, some bad points — both in the column, and at Kennedy Plaza. But I think Brussat hits the nail on the head, here:

But a bus station next to a skating rink flanked by two parks and surrounded by civic, residential and commercial buildings add up to a lot more than many American or even European civic squares offer. We mustn’t sniff at what we have. It is not too crowded. It could, of course, be better maintained. Yet perhaps it can still be improved.

Look at us! Right up there on the top of the ballot for Best Blog/Podcast in the Phoenix’s best shit of the year or whatever. So obviously you need to go there now, vote early and often, and tell 75 Or Less they can suck it.

There used to be Options. It was small, it was sorta tedious, and it was mostly press releases about the Community. And by Community I mean the Gays.

But Providence has a really big Community, and it needed more than Options. Over the years, a few gay rags have come and gone, and now there’s get. It’s free, the cover photography is always mystifying, and the editors seem to have trouble filling up all of its pages for each issue.

They don’t number issues for some reason, but I think get’s been around for about two years now. It’s relatively glossy and it comes out on time every month, which means it stands out more than, say, the weekly gay newspaper Divine Providence. And it’s read by 15,000 people, according to the cover of the new issue.

Too bad it exists mainly to cater to the whims of its advertisers.

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Earlier this month, The Journal released an in-depth look into the gangs of Providence by Projo vet Bill Malinowski, who was moved to investigate the city’s street gangs last August, when in that month there were 20 gang related shootings over 31 days. The online report is rich in detail, providing the history and origins of many of Providence’s gangs, including a slightly disturbing map of the West End, with multiple gun and bat icons showing shootings and assaults throughout the neighborhood. It’s disconcerting, personally, for that fact that my apartment apparently sits on the corner of 9mm St. and Louisville Slugger Avenue.

Gangs Of Providence, by W. Zachary Malinowski

Singleton’s a smart guy — and so I have to assume that he recognizes the following, pretty obvious points:

His editorial addresses only income taxes, ignoring that the income tax makes up only a portion of the total package of taxes that people pay — In fact, it only funds about 10% of the total revenues of state and local governments in RI.

On the whole, taxes in Rhode Island are regressive, meaning poorer people pay a greater percentage of their income than do wealthier people. The lowest-earning 20% of the population pays 13% of its income in taxes, while the wealthiest 1% pays only 6% of its income in taxes. (There’s more info up on OSA’s site.)

Fair tax structures are progressive, with people paying a higher percentage as income rises. The stats that Singleton cites simply demonstrate that RI’s income tax, when taken alone, is progressive — and this is the point of those who are advocating for the structural reforms that Singleton decries: A shift towards progressive income taxes, and away from regressive property taxes, would yield a reduction in taxes for most Rhode Islanders, even if the same total amount of money were colleceted.

Dave has a piece today, on the relative uglinesses of the new towers of Capital Center. I’m actually mildly contented by the Waterplace towers at the moment, having viewed them from the Biltmore’s 17th floor today, during the conference on “re-envisioning” Kennedy Plaza. But normally, I like to complain as much as he does:

The headquarters of GTECH Corp. was widely disliked before it was finished in October 2006. Waterplace Luxury Condominiums (the official name of the 17- and 19-story towers across Waterplace Park from GTECH) are close enough to completion for the public to judge them. It will come as no surprise that they, too, are widely disliked.

This much is indisputable. What fascinates and even surprises me — indeed, it baffles me — is that almost everyone I’ve spoken with or overheard dislikes the Waterplace towers more than GTECH.

I stand by my earlier assertions that the Waterplace towers, and the whole damn park, are going to look better after the Blue Cross building goes up (crane on site today) even if it’s not deserving of the tax break it’s getting.

The Providence Newspaper Guild Follies are this Friday — and with Rhode Island politically relevant at the national level, there’s hardcore speculation about who the surprise special guest might be.

Making things even more intense — and making it even more likely that the presidential campaigns will be paying attention: The annual conference of the national Newspaper Guild will be in town this weekend. Meaning that reporters from all over the country will be descending upon Providence. And, in particular, they’re reporters who take their union memberships seriously, and therefore are likely to be especially attuned to politics, and happenings on the Democratic side of the presidential race.

May or may not be too late to get tickets — give the Guild a ring over at (401) 421-9466.

Wake up everybody and go get your Sunday papers. The Providence Journal has a cover story about the excitement and commitment among young voters this primary season. You will recognize names from our own crew here — including Ariel Werner whose green Chuck Taylors merit a photo all their own (a nice one of her face as well).

What’s been missing all these years? Oh, right:

“Synchronized skaters are precisely what Providence needs”

Hot off the presses, with thanks to Tipster Mom, who watches the 11 o’clock news like whoa: PVD mayor David Cicilline has been asked not to attend HRC’s weekend event here, after firefighters threatened to picket the event over the long running contract dispute with the city.

As you may recall, dear reader, this isn’t the first time the issue has come up: last year, Cicilline stepped down as Clinton’s State Co-Chair after the firefighters threatened to raise hell. At the time, the mayor also said he wouldn’t attend a fundraiser in the Ocean State, also to avoid a picket. Seems like the issue has now come to a head, as Dan Barbarisi reports:

Hillary Clinton has told Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline, her former state campaign chair, that he is barred from attending her Rhode Island appearance Sunday afternoon, for fear that his presence would cause disruptive protests by the Providence firefighters union.

Cicilline said he will stay away on Sunday, but this may cause him to question his support for the New York senator, who he has stumped for locally and in New Hampshire during that state’s primary.

“It’s obviously something for me to think about very carefully, because I am very disappointed in the decision of the Clinton campaign. I’m not prepared to say more than that today. I obviously have tremendous respect for Senator Clinton, but I’m very disappointed in the decision of her campaign today,” Cicilline said.

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The Democratic primary has divided many marital beds, including that of former Senator Claiborne Pell and his wife Nuala. The Projo reports:

Former U.S. Sen. Claiborne Pell, who was first elected to that post in 1960, is someone so well-liked by Rhode Island voters that he never lost an election, even defeating the late John H. Chafee, a former Rhode Island governor, U.S. Secretary of the Navy and later senator, in a 1972 race. Pell retired from the Senate in 1996. Pell, 89, has been suffering from Parkinson’s disease for years and no longer speaks in public.

But his wife, Nuala Pell, is a spry 84 and often attends political events, most recently Wednesday’s speech at the Providence Biltmore by Michelle Obama. Mrs. Pell is a member of Rhode Island Women for Obama and is voting for the Illinois senator. Mrs. Pell said yesterday that her husband has voted by shut-in ballot for Clinton. “He can’t get to the polls,” she said. “But he worked with [former President] Bill Clinton and he really likes Hillary Clinton.”

Mrs. Pell said she is a bit more focused on the future and believes Obama would make a good president for the 21st century.

Bill O’Reilly grab your notepad, because it looks like you’ve got more fodder for “ Ivy League Debauchery.” Harrison Zolnierczyk, a Brown University freshman hockey team member, is facing charges of distributing child pornography. Zolnierczyk, who came to Brown via Toronto, will appear in the Port Alberni Provincial Court in Canada on March 13. Talia Buford reports in the Projo:

Zolnierczyk and his former teammate, Bradley Harding, were charged with four counts on July 9, 2007 of surreptitiously making a recording in a situation where a reasonable expectation of privacy is expected, knowingly distributing that recording, possessing child pornography and distributing child pornography. Harding pleaded guilty to the charges and is awaiting sentencing, said Cpl. Rob Foster, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Foster would not confirm any details of the incident yesterday, but did say that Zolnierczyk was facing charges resulting from an incident in the fall of 2006. The Canadian news wire, Canwest News Service, reported that Zolnierczyk and Harding made a sex tape with a teenage girl and posted it on on the Web site YouTube.

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Not wishing to inflame the passions or offend the sensibilities of its delicate viewers, the censors at Channel 10 News have taken a page from the John Ashcroft playbook. In a story on the recent rash of copper thefts, they reference the theft of an antique, nymph-and-satyr statue (seen here) from the yard of the Edgewood Manor B & B. In the first minute of the accompanying video there are two shots of the statue in question, and they have pixilated out the nymph’s naked breast. Wouldn’t want to pander to all the copper-nipple fetishists out there (you know who you are).

Tonight at the Hourglass Cafe in Brown’s Faunce Hall, Deer Tick and Tom Thumb play live and over the air on BSR’s Liveblock (88.1 FM) The show is at Liveblock’s usual airtime of 8pm, and it’s free.

I was seduced by the new booming-announcer-dude-voiced commercials on Channel 10, telling me how happy I should be with their reporters for passing along information THAT. COULD. SAVE. MY. LIFE.

The crisis at hand? The mall might fall apart — with you, or even me, in it. Channel 10, in an act of their typical benevolence, has spent two months devising an escape plan. Their key finding? Don’t do this:

Bassett did what many shoppers did when the alarm went off that day. He rushed to his car in the mall’s garage to get out of the mall and that was a big mistake.

“It took us 40 minutes to get out in the parking garage,” he said.

But our own crack staff of engineers and architects has done an even more rigorous analysis. Our findings: If you do get stuck in the mall garage as such, you should exit your vehicle, and walk out.

Now, we know the prospect of being on foot on the mean streets of Capital Center is legitimately scary to many a suburbanite mall-goer, but we’re strong believers in the broken windows approach. Francis Street is much safer, now that they’ve cleaned up the Masonic Temple — especially the graffito that said “NERD” in puffy blue letters.