Category: Rhode Island

Bluebird Cafe – Narragansett Rhode Island

As of late we’ve been riding around looking for sweet new breakfast spots to haunt and today was no different other than the fact we got a very late start and most places don’t serve breakfast in the afternoon. No matter! Google insisted this place did.

It’s weird, Narragansett isn’t far from my RI base in Newport and yet we hadn’t poked around there until today, specifically to find this little Mardi Gras/Southern themed plaza cafe. By now we’d just slipped in half an hour before closing. Most of the chairs were already on the tables. Still they were friendly and welcoming so we sat down.

The art hanging in this place was wild. A poster hung on the wall with several crayfish pinching towards the sky, reading above something about being boiled alive. The menu was no less eyebrow raising. Today’s special was a crunchy blueberry pancake with granola. I almost went for that but was too intrigued by the butter pecan pancakes. Meanwhile the rest of the menu had a bit of creole and Cajun flair. Even some of the breakfast items showed a spicy side. My companion went with the chicken and waffles which came with a side of beans. He said the chicken was fresh (and not pre-made or frozen as some of these establishments use) and that the beans were really good. I did a mandatory tasting of the beans to make sure and he was right! My pancakes were great too. They came out covered in chopped pecans, made with a fluffy and somewhat creamy batter. A short stack was more than I could eat.

A woman came in after us and made the cut 5 minutes before the kitchen closed. Having been told this she tried to leave but the staff insisted it was fine so she came in, ordered one hell of a BLT and enjoyed the music with us, happily singing along to Queen and smiling. I love Queen but to be honest it was hearing the Muppet’s Phenomina song that made me smile ear to ear. Can’t say I’ve ever heard it played in public!

There was enough on the menu here to want to come back and try something else. I think we found a winner.

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The Find on 6 – Johnston Road Island

So it’s been a tick since I have stopped by this blog. Back in the autumn a deer decided to pick a fight with my car and it’s been in the shop for months and I… have been taking a bit of a involuntary hiatus. But this week I did get out for a much needed little jaunt.

The Find on 6 is a consignment and antique store that features a main shop and one big room off of it which was clearly a greenhouse at some point. It was easy to find and charming. Everything was displayed very well and the prices COULD NOT BE BEAT. Seriously, they were beyond affordable. I found two baby blue couches with two matching chairs, all tufted and in great condition. The couch was FORTY EIGHT DOLLARS (after the 26th, but starting at SIXTY-FIVE which is still insanely affordable!!) The chairs were cheaper! I have never wanted to rescue something so bad in my life. But alas! I do not own a Victorian home with a parlour, or a car big enough to fit a couch. Life is just not fair sometimes. So instead of rescuing this adorable living room set I instead let it live in my fantasies when I’m daydreaming about running my own tropical fish store. The couches will be in front of the big display tanks because I believe firmly in building community and encouraging “the slow life.”

The rest of the shop had a fun mix of weird things – a pile of books from a local author, some delightfully bizarre and unique bric-a-bracs and dish wear, a series of items that defied identification, a mimeograph, lots of roosters, and a series of very nice kitchen knives for cheap. I would have likely bought one of those if I didn’t JUST get a good knife for Christmas. I did buy the book about Rhode Island by a local author. One never knows if such things can’t be further inspiration for travels.

I am making a note to come back here if I ever have a house to see what they have for quirky furniture. This place was awesome.

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H P Lovecraft Film Festival 2025 – Day 2

We weren’t able to make all of Saturdays activities but we showed up in enough time to catch quite a few of them. Luckily for me traffic was waaay better and we got there early enough to catch a bite to eat without having to eat it while jogging like the day before. I also got to see a gondolah and a deaf couple having an increasingly intense argument with sign language on our walk there. Those were firsts for me.

The vendors were still set up with T-shirts and happily chatted with patrons, the ticket seller remembered us from the day before. I mulled over a sweet little button-up shirt with a cthulhu on it but it was $50 and I realize since getting fat (and growing a stupidly pendulous set of boobs) that cute button ups are best left in my youthful days of thin androgyny. Now if I get a button up shirt that’s half a size too small my boobs are peering through make-shift windows between the buttons and buy one too large and suddenly I’m swimming in a trash bag. Annoying. Curvy people like being cute too.

ANYWAY, once we got in I looked around at an audience that was a couple times the size of the previous day although the theater was far from packed. They were however enthusiastic, even if small in number.

On this night we got to watch several blocks of shorts and a feature film. They were as follows:

Onan’s Harvest: I would have titled this Something Pagan This Way Comes. Just a lot of creatures, and masks, and weird magic in the woods.

After the Fall: Maybe it’s the state of the world today but this one seemed a metaphor for living under fascism via a be-tenticled sky creature.

Triangle: Which was actually a pyramid but I won’t be pedantic. Nothing like basing an entire short on a locked pyramid shaped box with floaty numbers and an attached warning from the village witch.

Five-Star: I’m really scratching my head on this one as I remember absolutely nothing from it. The blurb of it reads, “A diligent locksmith is on a quest for a five star review.” Soooo…. I’m guessing he failed but whose to say! Not me. *nervous chuckle*

Observer: A classic space horror, watching the last memories of a deceased crew.

A Serpent’s Touch: The only thing I remember about this one was the font was so weird I thought it said A Serpent’s Couch. The blurb reads, “In 16th century England Tennebris and his son mourn the passing of the family matriarch.”

The Second Grimoire: Evil books take hold of the minds of those who keep them.

Feature Film: Daemons. This one was a fun throw back to 70’s acid tripping horror, though it takes place in the modern day and is a little more socially conscious. A real We’re All Mad Here kinda film.

Shorts of Madness was the next block which is always a crowd favorite as it is the humor shorts.

Taylor and the Strange John. Is John a frequenter of prostitutes or a toilet? That was my question. The former. Crude but in a mildly shocking giggle kind of way. It’s nice to see a tip of the hat to the working girls.

Sea Legs: Pirate brothels have never been so tenticle-y.

Fisher of Men: A classic hillbilly show down with the opponent being a swamp monster. Quirky simplistic humor that really worked. This one had me laughing pretty hard.

Dry January: A comedy about being a college age fuck-up and deciding to go sober… which for some reason includes a very up-chucky crab man. 🦀

Burned Cans for Aluminum Children: Fun with Play-D’oh! Stupidly cute/funny.

Gusti the Strong vs The Merman: This one is 100% silly. Does not take itself one iota seriously. But still absolutely hilarious. A real joy to watch.

And that was this year’s wrap-up for me although there were several things going on Sunday that we didn’t make it to.

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H P Lovecraft Film Festival Day One 2025 Providence Rhode Island

Its that time of year again, time to brandish some scary T-shirts and join the other lovable weirdoes at the H P Lovecraft film festival. This year has been BRUTAL. Things are bleak and we are already feeling like we’re living through a horror movie. Still, it was a MUCH needed break to attend this year. Curiously traffic was horrendous getting into Providence so we ended up late, scarfing down some fast food while jogging to the RISD. We made it just on time, though one of our companions had to relinquish the burning hot fries he had failed to eat while jogging. No food in the theater.

It was a small but dedicated crowd this year. On this night we got to see a block of horror shorts followed by a 40th Anniversary viewing of the ever-grusome satirical cult classic Re-Animator followed by a Q & A with the screen writer, which was for me more entertaining than I anticipated.

The shorts were as follows:

The Outsider: A three minute animation making it’s US debute from Canada. This one showed the struggles of a lonely cyclops just trying to find their people with a comical twist ending.

Stargazer: Answers the question what if stars could come to earth as people and seduce socially fucked up astronomers.

Undertone: I think I was mentally somewhere else for the entire 13 minutes of this one. Despite this being yesterday I remember exactly nothing of it. SORRY.

The Music of Erich Zann: A recently restored 1980’s short depicting how music can drive you mad. Cosmically mad. Ahhhhhhh.

Where the Shadows Feast: This one wasn’t just horror but also a film noir with a black male lead and I must say, I am all here for that. He did a great job and the “shadows” were effectively scary/unnerving which is a high compliment coming from me. Generally I just find horror monsters hilarious… which I think is why people keep looking at me with recognition. Oh, the psycho laugher is back. 😬

The Itch: If ever there were a horror concept I’d be intimately aware of it’d be this. I’ve itched off layers of skin on many occasions and have had yeast infections so angry its made me want to fuck a wad of steel wool. I have not however accidentally killed myself itching too hard. This one had a fun rivalry and a couple twists.

Thrift Store Ouija Board: This one was just super juvenile. Teen girls having a super stupid teen girl spat with the aid of a ouija board. Also if you’re wondering the moving triangle piece on a ouija board is called a planchette. You’re welcome.

And then that brought us to Re-Animator which I’ve seen but apparently repressed 90% of it. The only thing I remembered was the actors. They looked familiar. Sorta. But anyway, it was gorey, gross, and fucked up in that special kind of way that you only see when a group of writers gather around and egg eachother on to write the most depraved thing ever. I respect it for that. I respect it more for adding humor over the top of that. It is however very much a movie of its time with the only woman present a bit of an annoying bobble-headed blonde. There was an attempted rape scene enacted by a decapitated head so that was… just ewe. Honestly, I felt this was more ewe than all the other ewes. And there was a lot of other ewes.

Afterwards the screenwriter Dennis Paoli took questions and talked a little about it. He explained it was a very short run film that only played in a handful of theaters because it was unrated (GEE, I WONDER WHY) and that it gained popularity when it came out on VHS. Now its a cult classic and I’m happy it was never remade. I can deal with 70’s gore but hyper realistic current gore would be too much for me personally. He also accidentally brought the mood of the entire room down by pointing out all the themes in the movie that made it so terrifying – male researchers who don’t know when to stop, the promise of great wealth to potentially evil creations, a broken health care system, humanity’s fear of death, and even the horror of college loans are probably all worse today than 40 years ago. Weren’t we all here to momentarily escape the bleakness of current American living?

Luckily he cheered us all right back up by wandering way off the beaten path and telling us how his theater play version of Peter Pan was banned for nudity. Peter Pan was re-imagined as a hippie, Tinkerbell was his boyfriend, the Indians were replaced with black folk, the pirates were Chicago police, flying was just tripping on acid and the flying scene was both male and female actors dancing naked to In A Gadda Da Vida. “And we didn’t even change the dialogue at all from the origional. It just worked.” And now I want to time travel to see this. I already had a soft spot of fucked up retellings of Peter Pan since I saw an absolutely god awful independant film called Neverland: Never Grow Up, Never Grow Old where Tinkerbell was a user/seller of fairy dust, Neverland was an abandoned amusement park, and Hook was a Pan-obsessed leather bound pedophile. This makes me nostalgic for the independant film era of the 2000s before corporations bought them all out and turned them back to shit. To be fair this entire film festival makes me want to start making my own little films. Probably animation as I don’t have the people skills to successfully convince a handful of “actors” to run through a park acting crazy or whatever I’d need to accomplish such a task. My creative mind is still aching to play, even as the rest of me is crushed by currant circumstance. Tell you what though, if ever globalized healthcare and universal basic income become a thing here in the US I promise I’ll make y’all a little film.

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Saint Columba Cemetery – Middletown Rhode Island

On this particular outing we weren’t expecting to find much worthy of photography as this cemetery seems to have a rule about only using flat headstones and nothing else making it look more or less like a mowed field.

However there was a lichen covered bridge that made for a delightful photographer’s distraction as well as some sort of witchy resource? Something about water that goes under a cemetery… I’m not a witch so I just blinked at this information.

Another even better distraction was across the parking lot where a church hid all the interesting headstones! The churchyard was small but unique. On this day it was being set up for what I’m guessing was a wedding. An overworked groundskeeper jokingly asked if I was in need of a few buckets of grass. Not today!

We resumed checking out the stones. The first one I saw that stood out was a full bronze woman lying down with a small horse at her feet. Nearby were slate stones with family crests, dragons, and castles. It was very weird! Like we just stumbled into a European cemetery. And then there wad a creepy snarled tree that also distracted me for a few minutes before we made our way back to the car.

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Natural History Museum, Providence Rhode Island

And I’m back with another great CHEAP museum! Only $2 for admission! Unless you wanted to splurge and buy a planetarium ticket of course. We would have but it’s only open certain days and times which didn’t happen to be when we showed up.

Today’s destination had been chosen not just because it was free but because it was the home of a very unfortunate lioness and her cubs which… I’m honestly not certain they weren’t horrifically deformed prairie dogs. Such is the guesswork that goes into bad taxidermy.

But before we even got to the museum we first had to find it near the Roger William’s Zoo which… consider this the afterlife for random zoo animals and wildlife. The parking lot wasn’t very big and only had one tiny entrance that if you missed it you’d literally have to loop around the entire goddamn block to get back to it. Ask me how I figured that out!

It was surprisingly bustling. We were met by a clerk who told us if we wanted there were several treasure hunts we could enjoy, which were usually for kids but came in three levels of challenge. We’re big kids at heart so we each took one sheet with our questions, a clip board, and a tiny pencil. I haven’t written in pencil in decades. And between the fact it was a pencil and barely big enough to hold my hand writing came off as quite serial killer-esque. No matter I had the hardest treasure hunt and I was going to complete it!

The treasure hunt paper told us which room worth of displays each question’s answer could be found it so it was mostly easy peasy pudding and pie.

First off we had the dinosaurs because… well they deserve to always be the first thing you see as they’re awesome. There was the obligatory T-rex skull (complete with janky teeth!) Some dinosaur egg shells and for reasons I’ll never understand a marble statue of a beautiful woman and her baby.

The wildlife room was next and filled to the brim with taxidermy coming from all skill levels! The perfect ones were lovely but I was most endeared to the ones who looked like they were melting and malformed including one morbidly obese squirrel I’m positive got that way eating cosmic brownies. He just had that look. This room was just local wildlife but other parts of the museum had everything from a polar bear, to a koala that looked like a crumpled bit of fuzzy newspaper, to the aforementioned lioness who was the coup d’etat of bad taxidermy, Jesus Christ was that something.

But my favorite bit of taxidermy was the kakapo, otherwise known as the world’s chonkiest parrot. So fat it can’t even fly. I laughed and then sadly sighed because this parrot was the same kind that was featured on that Stephan Fry nature documentary that went from a sweet segment about a nearly extinct parrot to some poor bastard getting savagely humped for 15 minutes while Fry and crew just laughed. It’s here if you need a chuckle today. My sigh was because I’d recently had an out with the friend who would have known why this particular specimen was so funny.

But anyway, parrots with no grasp of consent aside, this museum also had a section for all things outer space, a room of curious bark textiles, more taxidermy, and a geology room with a map of Rhode Island and what it’d look like if all the ice caps melted. RIP Providence, Newport, and most of the rest of the state. May you sleep sound with the fishies. Amen.

This was a happy fun little museum if you happen to be in the area or are coming back from the zoo and are wondering what those animals look like stuffed.

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Second Chance Trading – Warwick Rhode Island

Having just come from “the least suspicious fish store” in New England my companion decided to bring me to the most suspicious record store just to bring a sense of balance to the day.

When I drove up to this place I wasn’t even sure it was a store. Another guy loitered outside with question marks floating over his head. A sign on the door said call to ring the owner and give him a couple minutes to get to the door. I’ve been to places like that before. It’s always sooo awkward… The guy loitering seemed infinitely relieved we’d also shown up to poke at things. Makes it less awkward you see. Comradery!

As we walked in I was met at first with a wall of nostalgic toys and board games. This place was exactly what I expected from the sign outside… clearly someone’s personal collection that got a bit out of hand and now occupied a weird little basement store.

My companion was immediately distracted by a Dungeons and Dragons board game. Had this satanic panic beloved past time not started as a board game? I guess not. The box was inspected with befuddlement as if it was some sort of blasphemy coffin.

As we inched farther into this crammed space we saw oodles of weird vinyls, a pile of random cast iron cookware, a light smattering of minstrel references (which I am deeply hoping was there to make white customers uncomfortable, you know doubling down on the awkward) as well as a series of bizarre knickknacks, a giant bowl and ball made of welded keys, and more weird records. I don’t know if this place takes part in Record Store Day but it should! It’s goddamn perfect for it. It had everything from a limited edition of Wicked to the California Raisins, to Pacman’s completely unwarranted musical debut next to the soundtrack to a B-rated zombie movie no one’s ever heard of. This place was dangerous. I could come home with half this entire collection. Mixed with the peculiar there was also well known albums cheap albeit deeply loved beforehand. I had to stop myself when I spotted Janis Joplin’s Pearl album. Siiiiiiigh, not today, though God forbid I come back on a day I have some spare spending change!

So would I suggest this place? Sure, but I’d deffinately also advise to bring a good gaggle of friends, fellow weirdoes who’d like this sort of thing. If you’re reading this you know the type.

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Something Fishy – Warwick Rhode Island

“This is the least suspicious fish shop you’ve ever brought me to.” My companion noted, rather astutely. Indeed it was in a proper plaza with a real parking lot and didn’t even have the faintest whisper of the serial killer’s basement vibes that these places tend to have. But then again, as the woman at the desk explained, it wasn’t really a store in a classic sense either. It was an event space first and foremost with gorgeous display fish tanks scattered throughout and a back room filled with… well fish stuff. Coral frags, quarantined fish, live rock, all the things a fish tank installation company would need to create another spectacular tank in a client’s home. And that’s really what Something Fishy is.

They must be successful at it too because I’ve seen their trucks driving down the highway numerous times fanning my curiosity. And if their client tanks are half as decent as the ones in their event space they’re probably worth the investment. They were stunning. Sadly the sun was up at just the wrong time and there was a glare that made taking photos really difficult. No matter, I allowed myself to delight over their coral shelves and get lost watching the fish who were robust, healthy, and showing no signs of distress. These were some swank fishies!

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The Veiled Crow – Warwick Rhode Island

Once again I’ve fallen behind writing up my adventures! But alas tonight I shall regale you with witchy tales from last week’s hapless wanderin’.

The day had started as it usually does, fussing over where we could possibly go. Since I bid farewell to FaceBook I haven’t had any algorithms helping me find new hidden gems and honestly going back to cold calling Google has been a bit rough. But on this day my companion wanted to go to a witchy store so he found one and we went!

The place was small, painstakingly neat and organized, and had a selection of shiny and perhaps magical rocks, some spell bottles, a few pieces of home made jewelry, and a row of adorable tiny spell cauldrons which I was tempted to get and put them in a little nest next to my regular size cauldron to make it look like it had babies. This is why I shouldn’t be allowed a house… it’ll get weird. There will be questions.

No matter this shop was adorable and had a pretty decent spice rack and a few tarot decks as well as the funniest no shoplifting sign id ever seen, home made just like the rest of the things here. In the back there was a lovely gathering space with art for sale on all the walls. Very neat!

I don’t know what events they may host there but I bet they’d be interesting for sure! And the staff seemed very pleasant as well. All and all it was a sweet little independant shop and I’d suggest it to anyone in the area looking to cast a good spell or two.

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Purgatory Chasm & Love Lock Bridge – Newport Rhode Island

Sometimes you just got to get out of the house, get some fresh air, and poke at something with a stick. Maybe a dead bird. Just kidding, this adventure didn’t involve any dead birds.

This was another adventure in nostalgia where my companion tried to remember somewhere from twenty plus years ago enjoyed in the haze of mispent youth. I’m more than happy to oblige because I was a VERY well behaved youth who was monitored and controlled more than a felon with an ankle bracelet and it’s nice to see what freedom must have been like back in the day.

This time around I was treated to Purgatory Chasm, not the more well known one in Massachusetts but the one no one’s heard of in Newport Rhode Island. It’s so obscure the parking lot is tiny and only good for a half an hour of parking. There was however a handicapped space… in case you wanted to take your wheelchair bound buddies to a heavily rooted hill and an oceanside cliff for no particular or heavily insured reason.

Purgatory Chasm itself is only a hop, skip, and clumsy trip away from the parking lot and it reminded me a lot of Thunder Hole up in Maine, just smaller and somewhat less thundery. It still made a pretty good whooshing locomotive sound when the waves came in. I can totally imagine my nervy Puritian ancestors pointing to the noise growling from the rocks and declaring it must be the devil. Curiously although Heaven was always above for these people Hell always seemed to be here on earth – you can tell because they named half the land here Purgatory something-or-other.

Beyond the chasm there was also a lovely little love lock bridge my companion wasn’t even aware of. Clearly others had as it was FULL of locks, some of which had hearts and names carved into them, most of which were rusted to high hell because unlike other more famous love lock bridges this one was likely constantly sprayed with saltwater.

A few weedy little trails led to a handful of observation points that gave a pretty view of the beach off to one side, a weird sea monster looking set of rocks in the water and lots of ocean. There was also a tiny tree stump that had a heart shaped center ring that made me believe it may have been a Giving Tree – loving its people even while they were cutting it down. The scenery was beautiful but also clearly a lover’s nest reminding me just a bit of the beach the main characters of Wristcutters: A Love Story woke up on. If you’ve seen that movie you’re probably screaming just a little bit, if you haven’t you should totally watch it. It’s way more wholesome than the title infers, I swear! It’s dark comedy at its finest.

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