I intended but forgot to write about this in past years, but this year I’m remembering!
The Fools’ Rules Regatta is a Rhode Island tradition and a total blast. You can read about it on their delightfully quaint site there, but in short: every year, on some weekend in mid August, there’s a boat race in Jamestown where teams bring tools and materials to a small beach, have two hours to build a small sailboat, and then race them. And this year, we won!
The Providence Phoenix was a Providence alternative newspaper that’s now defunct. It was in what I’d call the “alternative lite” category, definitely having some stuff you wouldn’t see in a more “official” newspaper like the Providence Journal, but also non-offensive enough to be in most businesses around town. To be honest, I think it was a pretty good representation of Providence as a whole.
I wouldn’t say I ever intentionally really read it, but on more than a few occasions I would be waiting somewhere or getting a quick slice of pizza alone (shoutout to Fellini’s for keeping my arteries clogged), and just pick up a copy (it was free) to see what was going on around town.