131 Washington St. 1st Floor, a.k.a old Cogen’s Printing Building a.k.a the Mercantile Building a.k.a the building between Local 121 and the empty lot a.k.a be there or be square Friday (today!) September 26th, 6pm-9pm. Starring all your no-good, trouble-making, talented & skillful, crafty/artsy, thrifty/inspirational, hooligan buddies&pals from Providence to Worcester and beyond!!

Installations, interventions, indiscretions, inventions, high tensions, honorable mentions, pensions, distentions, detentions, recessions, and so on. Put on your good pants. It begins and ends wicked early, so you’ll still have plenty of time to do things you’ll regret.

p.s. mike t made the sexy poster.

Providence is already recognized as an arts and cultural center. The objectives of Creative Providence: A Cultural Plan for the Capital City, are:

• To serve as a catalyst for city and statewide conversations about the evolution and sustainability of the arts.
• To recognize artists, art administrators and cultural institutions as leaders who already shape the current environment.
• To provide emerging arts leaders and experienced professionals with a forum to develop fresh ways of enriching the arts.

Two consulting firms will lead the effort: Craig Dreeszen, a nationally recognized cultural planner, and the staff of New Commons, a Providence-based think tank.

A community forum on how the city’s artistic community evolved will be held on Oct. 7 from 2 until 5 p.m. at the Rhode Island Convention Center. A second forum on how to strengthen the city’s “creative ecosystem” will be held Nov. 18 from 2 until 5 p.m. at the Roger Williams Park Casino.

And the Department of Art, Culture and Tourism will invite a group of local and national leaders to discuss the challenges facing the local arts community on March 3 and 4 at the Rhode Island Convention Center.

The public is invited to share their thoughts on line at a new Web site, www.creativeprov.org. Yeah, I built it!

This Saturday is pretty packed with stuff to do, and I understand how easy it is to get distracted/side-tracked/drunk. But stay focused, friend! Because the AS220’s FIRST Biennial Print Lottery Show comes to a dramatic close Saturday, September 27th, 7pm @ 115 Empire Street. It’s kind of early in your sinful evening, so you’ll still have a chance to get married or whatever at Woolly Fair and since you’re not going to bother going to the RISD Museum Chace Center grand opening anyway, that won’t be a conflict.

So! Come to the Print Lottery closing, buy a ticket for $75 if you can, and take home an awesome surprise print as a gift! From 7-10pm prints will be handed out like candy, CAKE WILL BE SERVED (for real this time) we’ll have free booze too (i THINK), but anyway there will definitely be something to put in your mouth, and from 10pm-1am some BANDS will play. How jealous are you?
Buy your ticket online right this second in realtime!!

This is it!  The Championship, the final bout of the season for the Providence Roller Derby.  Head downtown tonight to see the Old Money Honeys battle it out with the Mob Squad.  DJ’s B.I.Z. and COUNT.  Half-time music the Providence Morons.  After party at Local 121 on Washington Street.

friday/doors 7pm/bout 8pm/$13/Bank of America Skating Center

OH MAN this month is BUMPING, if you missed the free open workshop last saturday you totally missed out, and it’s probably my fault for forgetting to post it…

BUT ANYWAY, THIS Saturday, September 20th @ 6:30 there will be two amazing guest lectures starring Gretchen Wagner, curatorial assistant for the museum of modern art (MOMA!)’s department of prints & illustrated books and printmaker/educator (associate professor in the printmaking dept. at RISD) Mr. Andrew Raftery!

This is part of the AS220 community printshop’s one-year anniversary celebration!! The event is totally free and EVERYBODY IS WELCOME!!!

It’ll take place at AS220’s performance space (115 Empire St. Providence, RI 02903) @ 6:30 on september 20th, 2008 (to be intentionally redundant)!  For a slightly more detailed & coherent official press-release sort of situation, see the printshop website.

ALSO DON’T FORGET to buy your ticket for the print lottery before they run out!!!!!! tickets are $75, all proceeds benefit the printshop, and EVERY TICKET is guaranteed a print! You can buy tickets online here or at the bar at 115 empire st. from 5pm-1am! and to see all the prints you COULD win, stop by 115 empire st. and check out the show that’s up in the performance space from now til sept 27th!!!!!!

hope to see you!! <3<3

The second annual Canstruction Rhode Island competition is on view on the concourse between the Westin Hotel and the mall. (Pictured here is one of last year’s entries ‘In a Stewie over Hunger’.) The show will be up through September 26th. The sculptures will be dismantled and the cans distributed on the 27th. This is to benefit the Rhode Island Community Food Bank. More in ProJo.

Note from the editors: We’re gonna actually be selling actual ads soon. But until we do, I guess you can have freebies, Downcity merchants:

In an effort to lure new college students off campus, and into the larger Providence community, the Downcity merchants are teaming up and offering discounts this Saturday, September 13th.

The deals are good for everyone, so if you’re not a student, don’t fret. This is an opportunity for those of you who frequently walk by the Westminster St. shops admiring the beautiful things, but shuttering at the prices. Clothes to couches, its on sale for Saturday only. Come support the local stores and get a deal while you’re at it.

This is all part of this broader ‘Downtown Student Experience‘ thinggy that’s going on all day:

Get to know the heart of the city you’ll call home for the next few years! On Saturday, September 13th, The Providence Foundation and Downtown Improvement District welcome local college students back to Providence for the Downtown Student Experience, in partnership with CW28 and WBRU.

Providence Roller Derby presents…

“Mai Tais and Thigh Highs” at the Downtown Roller Rink

Tonight’s card — Old Money Honeys vs. Sakonnet River Roller Rats with halftime show by the Chasers. Tickets available at BrownPaperTicket. $11.50 in advance/$13 at the door/under 10 is free. (After-party at Snookers with Mustang Cobra performing. Free admission with event wristband.)

doors 7pm/bout starts at 8pm/after-party at Snookers, 145 Clifford Street

If you love Movies on the Block and you love James Bond, Tazza and the Downtown Neighborhood Alliance is the place to be next Thursday Night for fun and free snacks for the movie!

Ignition at 7:44PM sharp. There might be some afternoon storminess today, but tonight looks good. Whenever there might be a question of weather, check the WaterFire website for updates. So go get your fried dough fix. And when you realize that the paper peace crane you have been handed is a cynical appropriation of this symbol by a corporation with huge image problems, please dispose of it properly. (Of course Fidelity has buffered itself from any direct interaction with the public by enlisting kids from the Institute of the Study & Practice of Nonviolence to distribute the cranes. Nice touch.)

I had been meaning to spotlight the swell plantings dotting the downtown area but the ProJo beat me to it yesterday. The simple and sophisticated designs are by Gates, Leighton & Associates with the all-important maintenance being performed by the Downtown Improvement District. Big ups for getting the hanging baskets right; they are enormous which means that not only is the scale right for their surroundings, but the plants have a good root-run and can flourish. And the choice of plant material was kept simple, and repeated from basket to basket which is much more pleasing to the eye. As to the petunias that adorn the ‘lawyer crossing’, they are just mental.

This is sure to mean a tourism bonanza!

In recent years, Providence has not only seen a new convention center and a revitalized waterfront, but historic corridors have also been restored to their Revolutionary-era glory, giving the Rhode Island capital an architectural sense of place. But these cultural trappings, more commonly associated with overcrowded metropolises, have not caused this city of 200,000, near the banks of Narragansett Bay, to lose its small-town flavor. Drivers still request their initials on license plates, sandwich shops let regulars run a tab and Mayor David N. Cicilline greets residents by name and lists his home number in the phone book.

For the record, the Times ended their Friday and Saturday nights at the Black Rep and Local 121, which sounds pretty true-to-life. And did you know that the original State House, “where, in 1776, Rhode Islanders declared independence two months before the rest of the country,” used to be on Benefit Street?

Espresso at Caffe Dolce Vita, brunch at Nick’s on Broadway, and dinner, oh so predictably, at Al Forno. Sounds like a typical weekend!

The 5:18 update on the WaterFire website says they’re going for it. It looks like the weather has cleared up just for the event. So get down there. That fried dough isn’t going to eat itself. Starting time 8:02PM.

Hello! the August printshop classes are now available for viewing and sign up at the online shop! go check it out: AS220 shop.

ALSO, friends! the AS220 community printshop is AIR CONDITIONED (don’t be jealous!!! just sign up for class.) For more info visit the printshop website.

more »

How do you blow a .49 on a breathalyzer? Does that mean that half of your blood is alcohol?

For the answers to these questions and more, we turn to 34 year old North Providence resident and former Brown University presidential chef Stanley Kobierowski, who recently crashed into an electronic message board on I-95 near the mall in what turns out to be the drunkest attempt to drive, or do anything except die, in the history of Rhode Island.

In fact, according to variousw booze-ologists unearthed by the ProJo, this dude should not have been concious:

“For the average individual, there is a very severe risk of death when you start to approach a reading of .4,” said James Harasymiw, director of Alcohol Detection Services in Big Bend, Wis….

“He is in a very small class of people because most people — even heavy drinkers — would be unconscious or approaching death to get up to .5. The danger with this guy is that with that kind of tolerance, you may appear to be fine one moment and unconscious the next.”

Harasymiw calculated… that the man would have had to have had roughly 24 drinks — defined as a 12-ounce glass of beer or a shot and a half of whiskey — over six hours.

For those of you keeping score, that translates out into a whiskey shot every ten minutes for six hours straight. more »

Fans of mediocre, overpriced coffee rejoiced today when they learned that Starbucks will not close any of its Rhode Island locations.

From the ProJo Biz Blog:

Fans of Starbucks coffee can rest easy as the Seattle, Wash., chain skipped over Rhode Island in a recently announced store-closure plan.

Starbucks this week named the 600 stores it will close around the country and no Rhode Island locations appeared on the list. Starbucks loyalists in Massachusetts are not so lucky, as the company will close seven stores in the Bay State.

So, if your feeling the craving for a Mint Chocolatey Chip Frappuccino with Whipped Chocolate Creme and scone that was baked last week, frozen, and shipped to thaw onsite, rest assured that you can stop by any one of the five Providence Starbucks locations within a one mile radius of each other.