Friends of India Point Park bring you Thursday music, starting tonight and continuing on August 19th and 26th.

Enjoy the hottest DubStep, electronic and hip-hop music featuring performances by DJ Bees Knees (all the way from New Orleans!) and Providence’s own DJ’s Micah Jackson, Lively Experiment, Thirsty Sounds, live music by Extraordinary Rendition Band, Matt Keane and many other special guests!

Bring a blanket, dancing shoes, or pull up in your yacht.

5pm, Thursday, Park Series, India Point Park

My best guess is that when Babe’s became Abe’s, this is what happened to the ‘B’. I like it a lot. BarPlays is located at Abe’s tonight, and next Thursday, June 24th. BarPlays calendar here. (20% off United BBQ deliveries here. Pulled pork, yum.)

Free, 7pm start, Thursday, Abe’s, 302 Wickenden Street

Now that the home extruders are finally off my back, it’s time to take on another totally self-absorbed and entitled sector of the population — children! A flap has erupted over the proposed mural for the East Avenue side of the Vartan Gregorian School in Fox Point.  The PTO decided that the students should be allowed to design the mural. They then hired artist Michael Kolendowicz (BFA Painting, RISD ‘09, and Mammoth Murals of CVS fame) to make it happen, but local residents and business owners are not happy with the proposed images so far. From The Providence Journal today,

They complained that the mural was too large, too bright and too garish for the neighborhood, which already has its fair share of murals . . .

“It was ghetto stuff,” says George Goulart, owner of Aqua-Life Aquarium, a Wickenden Street store adorned by a coral reef-themed mural. “That was not the project that I had donated $500 to. I never imagined they’d propose such a surrealistic, cartoonish thing.”

It would be easy to chide Goulart, given his own vivid display, but that’s exactly why anything nearby should be something ‘other’. Let’s try something a little more sophisticated so that the students can see how cool good art is, and maybe be inspired to go to RISD and learn how it’s done. There’s a reason we do not let children design public art. It’s the same reason we didn’t let them build the school. There not good at it yet.

(I’ll bet Mr. Yurdin will be hearing about this tonight.)

This is a pretty cute video, put together by and in support of the merchants of Wickenden St.

Providence needs another empty ‘luxury’ condo tower like it needs another pothole. The Providence Journal has an article about the competing interests (and it is complicated) regarding the old Shooters site at India Point Park. The Fox Point Neighborhood Association as well as Head of the Bay Gateway, a local advocacy group, are pressing for a public mixed-use site.

Those residents have fought proposals to build a high-rise hotel or condominium development on the site, and envision the old nightclub as a marina complex that could represent a major economic boost to the state, providing a ferry dock for public transit on Narragansett Bay, a restaurant, a dinner hall, a public market and space for festivals and concerts.

But the state (the current owner as a result of the Iway project) has obligations under its agreement with the Federal Highway Administration. Also, the city could play a role by rezoning the area and restricting its residential use. The state has announced that it is planning to put the property up for bid later this month.

The deck of the Wickenden Street overpass is disappearing and it feels much lighter now. (Um, is this guy using a camera or . . . looking through binoculars?) More views after the jump.

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I laundered some materials through GCPVD earlier this week, which Jef has kindly posted in a comprehensible format. The bridge will be built in a couple of years, on the piers on which the old 195 crosses the river. Jef’s posted some official proposals here. And has a second thread on various pedestrian bridge designs from around the universe.

Demolition of the Wickenden Street overpass starts tonight at 6:30pm. RIDOT has indicated that the noisy jackhammer portion of the program will cease at a reasonable time in the evening so nearby residents can go nawny. A profile of artist Brent Bachelder, who began the now famous murals in 1997, appears in the Sunday ProJo. How many hours have I spent contemplating these images waiting for the light to change? Bachelder remains philosophical about the impending demise of his works.

“My friends and I always joked, even years ago, that we’re going to sit there with champagne and make toasts,” then gather pieces of rubble for souvenirs, the way people collected pieces of the Berlin Wall.

“It would be pretty cool to get a piece of rubble that had, like, an eye or something on it,” Bachelder said.

The East Side Creamery on Ives Street has several things going for it; a neon sign, Allie’s donuts fresh daily, a weiner machine. But this vintage fountain cabinet is the showpiece. The item comes from the old Woonsocket Woolworth’s which had purchased it in 1952. When Creamery proprietor, Joe Sousa, set up shop five months ago he just couldn’t resist the gleaming, stainless surfaces with its subtle deco detailing. He is so in love with this piece that he removed one of the heavy porcelain inserts for me to heft. It was substantial, and a testament to the way things used to be crafted even when they didn’t show. Smooth pump action on the syrup dispenser as well.

East Side Creamery, 170 Ives Street

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Lisa Perez’s current exhibit, still even now, at the 5 Traverse Gallery is a meditative study in being and nothingness. The exhibit consists of small sculptural installations made of paper and wood. Her designs are poetic. They simplify the physical world without belittling it. Her best pieces are simultaneously microscopic and macroscopic. Organic grids and delicate squares cast shadows onto the gallery walls. These shadows define the physicality of each piece and in doing so aestheticize them. Yes, defined and aestheticized by shadows, which is to say defined and aestheticized by death and/or nothingness. Death is indeed the mother of all beauty, and thus the exhibit poses Heidegger’s famous question (paraphrased by Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In the Aeroplane over the Sea”): Why is there something rather than nothing? How strange it is.

Perez responds to the question with an elegant boldness. Her perspective is multifarious, but she does not reduce the physical world to chicken-shit relativism. Her answer is this — there is neither nothing nor something (triple negative?). There is everything and it happens all at once, from every angle, from every standpoint. (More after jump.)

5 Traverse Gallery, exhibit runs through November 22, 5 Traverse Street

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This Thursday evening, the Fox Point Community Garden - which we started 4(!) years ago now - will hold its annual fundraiser and potluck and auction and concert and hoe-down. It’s at the Portuguese Social Club, 32 Sheldon St, from 6-9. Bring some food and/or a small (or generous) donation.

Some of the auction items are after the jump: more »

Only a few hours left today, and then tomorrow is the final day of the excellent exhibitions at 5 Traverse Gallery. Artist David Barnes (this work is oil on aluminum) takes images familiar to us from the world news and renders them unfamiliar and gloomy with livid, acidy tones.  In the next room is Cypheromantic, an installation by Michael Bizon who used found objects from the Olneyville area, including a wall of sound (picture after the jump) he constructed using speakers from an abandoned school. Talk about the shock of the familiar. (The show was reviewed here when it opened.)

Come meet David Barnes on Sunday between 2pm and 4pm.

Sunday last day of show, noon to 6pm, 5 Traverse Street more »

Per an incredibly enthusiastic email from Friends of India Point Park:

Dear Friends of India Point Park, come join in fun community events in and around the Park this weekend!

• SATURDAY MORNING, May 9: Cape Verdean Parade!

Carnival, capoeira, & drummers! All are welcome, in celebration of the 75th anniversary of the St. Antonio Association, RI’s first Cape Verdean beneficient organization.

Assemble at 10am. Parade starts behind Vartan Gregarian School, East & Wickenden Streets & will proceed to the War Memorial on South Main St.

EXHIBIT: Remembering the Old Days: Cape Verdean Community in Fox Point, Brown student exhibition opens 1pm, Saturday, at John Nicholas Brown Center, 357 Benefit St.. Free & open to the public Monday-Friday, 1-4pm

• SATURDAY AFTERNOON, May 9: Community Boating Center Open House!

Food, fun & free sailing! All are welcome! CBC invites sailors and non-sailors to help kick off the 2009 season. $5 suggested donation to benefit CBC youth sailing.

1-4pm, Community Boating Center, India Point Park, 109 India Street

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Thanks to the ProJo for sending a real food writer — Gail Ciampa, not Michael Janusonis — over to United BBQ on Ives Street and reminding me that it is right there… within walking distance… maybe even in the snow.  Everything sounds real good — from the pulled pork (Matthew, that’s pork butt)  to the homemade desserts. You could eat pretty cheap there and it’s BYOB. Some vegetarian items are available and their waste oils are recycled by Newport Bio-Diesel for home heating fuel. (Will it make your house smell like butt?)

United BBQ, 146 Ives Street, 11am to 11pm, 751-9000, no highchairs (awesome!)

The board of the library will be meeting at noon today to discuss the fact that they have less than two weeks to decide how they’re going to keep themselves afloat.  By contract, they only have until the 31st to approve a plan for a “sustainable system.”

Since the economy is collapsing around us, it might not be that surprising that lots of people are rediscovering public libraries as a free means of entertainment, but if the PPL gets their way many city residents will be out of luck.  The sustainability plan includes closing four neighborhood libraries (in Smith Hill, Olneyville, Fox Point and Wanskuck) as well as keeping Washington Park from ever reopening, even though the city just renovated it and people in the neighborhood regularly protest about it.  So if you’re one of the many, many transportation-deprived kids or elderly people in those neighborhoods, you might be out of luck come the next fiscal year.

The board meetings are open to the public and take place on the third floor of the central library (on Empire Street).  Hopefully some people will show up to let the library know that closing branches is lame and that they could, I don’t know, maybe try fundraising at some point.

Stacey and Louis invite everyone over to The Knight Gallery in Fox Point for a holiday party. You might even be able to get some gift shopping done.

6pm to whenever, Friday, Knight Gallery, 170 Ives Street, 654.4747