Category: Rhode Island

The Athenaeum – Providence RI

So after the John Hayes Library we decided to keep on walking to “The Ath” as the locals call it. It’s another library but with its own unique charm. Apparently, it was in this library where Edgar Allen Poe had his marriage proposal turned down and H P Lovecraft also wrote about it in his many letters to friends. He seemed to have a great affection for it and I could see why.

Upon stepping in there’s a little room to the side you’re guided into and there was a woman at a desk handing out visitor stickers and politely saying that there was a suggested $5 per person donation but that it wasn’t required. I was already endeared to this place so whatever. Spending $5 here was a lot better than the $5 that the parking meter ate (no, I still haven’t forgotten about that.) In return for our most gracious donation, we were handed a little guide and told we could do a self-tour.

This place was kind of adorable. I was digging the whole vibe with the historic figure busts around the ceiling, the Roman statue at the entrance, and in the center of it all the bane of my childhood existence – A card catalogue. Today’s youth will never know the pain of having to search for “key words” manually by hand, flipping through index card after index card only to end up absolutely nowhere because guess what? The key words in your brain will NEVER match the keywords of the insufferable clerk that put this hellfire together. Made me a little nostalgic.

The guide was fun, we walked about looking at different things it was talking about and just generally digging the place. The downstairs had a distinct speak easy feel about it and this place did say it held a lot of cultural events so who knows! We then wandered accidentally into the rare volumes room and were quickly shuffled out by a very intense academic whose energy was let’s just say tightly wound. VERY tightly wound. The door we walked through was supposed to be locked. We held up our hands, swore we didn’t touch anything, and tried to back out in the friendliest way possible. I sighed, spending a day out in this college town was a bit of a mindfuck for me. It was the kind of place I always daydreamed about as a kid when I still had aspirations. I wonder if I had not had a total likely autistic burnout in nineth grade if I would have ended up somewhere like here… being someone like that guy, hidden by academia because the world is really too much, swatting at people getting too close to my drawers full of bones (as I would have studied paleontology not literature.) Life has not been easy or straight forward for me but I like who I am now and I’m actually grateful that I have come this far. I certainly enjoy life more.

And with that epiphany we decided to continue our journey to the Edna Biology Lab.

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Watch Hill Merry Go Round and Lighthouse – Westerly Rhode Island

Last week was just so completely random. I have no idea how I ended up at the bougiest corner of Rhode Island staring down the world’s most terrifying carousel while surrounded by ice cream lapping tourists but I’m not complaining…

Truth be told I desperately needed to be somewhere, anywhere, that was so completely and utterly different from my usual surroundings that I could just mentally check out for a while. You know what I mean. You feel it too. Well, I don’t live anywhere near the ocean so that fit the bill but really we went for the carousel and the lighthouse. The rest was just a cheerful bonus.

When I drove up it was definitely hoppin’. People were everywhere packing nearby beaches and perusing the shops and boutiques. It was like… going back in time… you know to the mid 1990’s, before the economy collapsed and people had vacations like this all the time! Parking was just an ever lovin’ joy to figure out as it was all parallel and pretty much full down the whole block. No worries after a 20-minute show with at least one horrified onlooker I was able to technically get the car within the lines. Technically. Then we walked!

This was the most touristy tourist trap I have ever seen in New England. Kids ran about with reckless abandon being ‘watched’ by their dads who were buying ice cream for the whole gaggle while their wives fucked off and enjoyed some sweet sweet alone time in the boutiques. There was even an antique store! Granted it was all nautical, just vaguely antique, and reminded me more of one of those Old Timey Country Stores with what it was selling. Just add some salt water to that country chic and you can picture it. I took some whimsical photos of random hanging trinkets.

And then we made our way to the carousel at the end. It was…. a thing of tremendous terror. Something that shall haunt my nightmares for years to come. Here they were selling tickets to ride the Merry Go Round $1 for the inner ring of horses, $4 for the outer ring and a chance to grab a gold ring to win a free ride. Now as fucking amazing as I find all that truly obsolete Americana I was a little trepidatious for the poor children on this machine who were whipping around that thing at great speeds, so much so the horses were at full tilt, their wee hooves kicking the air towards the onlookers at the sides. It made my heart skip a few beats. And the horses. Oh my God, the horses. I have no words to describe just how blood curdling creepy they were. They are supposed to be America’s longest continuously running Merry Go Round built in 1867 and “mysteriously abandoned” at Watch Hill in 1883 by a travelling carnival which… makes sense for a bunch of ponies that look like they could suck out your soul. I’m told each one of them still has it’s original eyes which is some sort of stone… but really it makes them all look like they have milky white cataracts and combined with their over all grizzled appearance I wouldn’t be surprised if they were the zombie horses of the apocalypse. They look the part. Every time I found one that just had to be the most unnerving another one would pop up behind it that made me gasp even more. Left me in a real pickle to find a favorite.

You may ask, “Did you ride the scary pony death machine?” No, no, I did not. The horses on this carousel are very small, clearly just for children unlike today’s carousels with life-size horses (or steam punk monsters if I remember the one I once saw in Brussels, Belgium right…) And I mean if I were a kid I probably would have loved hanging on for dear life as I spun wildly out of control trying to catch a gold ring as I went by. I mean that’s just good old fashioned family fun. Right? RIGHT?

Well anyway, there was a beach right next to the carousel with plenty of people sunning and swimming and having a grand old time. We decided to shun it in favor of walking up a nearby side street to see the lighthouse which I guess is only open for a short time every year – a short time that didn’t include that day. But it was still technically a park so we went to at least poke at it. This was my companion’s first lighthouse so he was impressed. I was amused by the mansions lining the drive it was on (especially the one with the witch weather vane) but the lighthouse itself was intensely meh for me. Maybe I’m just jaded having gone to so many. Either way it did seem to be a nice fishing spot and a few people were here doing exactly that and enjoying this gorgeous summer day.

All and all it was a nice way to spend an hour or two and the carousel made it 100% worth it because it was just soooo weird. Everything else was just a cherry on the terrifying carousel cake.

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Countryside Consignments & Antiques – Hope Rhode Island

After somehow managing to escape alive from cookies shop antiques we decided to move on and see if we couldn’t land something better. And so after a quick consultation with the Google gods we ended up driving to Countryside Consignments. Before we were even there I was yelling at the GPS, “BULLSHIT. There isn’t an antique store .2 miles away, this is a residential neighborhood!” And a nice one at that! But it was true, there in what used to be a house was a swank little antique store filled to the brim with lovely furniture I’ll never be able to afford. All of it finely polished and without a single scratch. You’ll have to take my word for this because still reeling from the trauma that was Cookies I apparently forgot to take any photos of said furniture. Instead only stopping momentarily to dig a giant bucket of fine silverware and yet another creepy Easter bunny.

But anyway… if you happen to be looking for great antique furniture this is the place to go.

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Cookie Shop Antique Store – Exeter Rhode Island

Since we were already antiquing we decided to move on from Jules Antiques and find another little shop nearby. That’s how we ended up at Cookie’s. Now, just to be clear, not all of my adventures end up somewhere magical, sometimes we just end up in these weird little places that smell of electricity and feel like you’ve entered the Twilight Zone.

Cookie’s was like that. It was a ramshackle little place with parking for a handful of cars. When we drove up we immediately noticed a big sign reading, “cookies” over an open barn door. It was dark and it didn’t seem like there was anyone around. We both wondered if this wasn’t some sort of trap and if we weren’t about to bumble into some serial killing mastermind just beyond, you know like whoever drives around the big black van that reads, “free candy.” This place reminded me a lot of central and northern Maine. It was for all intent and purposes a glorious junk shop – the kind any hoarder would be proud. As we walked into the barn we realized there was barely any place to walk. From floor to ceiling there was junk piled high and even hanging. Random. Strange. Often totally useless crap. We still scrambled through what we thought were isles before they too ended abruptly at a total impasse. Towards the window there was a selection of pretty bottles and lamp I was only halfway convinced wasn’t made of human skin.

Walking further we got into the actual shop and it was cramped and had that familiar smell of musk and mildew. There were two other customers, and we couldn’t get by them. Everyone except one guy and the woman running the place seemed vibrantly uncomfortable as we stared down at boxes full of VHS tapes, none of them anything good or memorable. And who the hell is buying VHS tapes?! We stayed long enough to be weirded out by the male customer who was obviously a familiar in this haunt. He seemed off. Maybe he was trying to woo the missus. Who knows.

As we beat it to the car (sans cookies as there wasn’t a baked good within miles) we giggled what an experience that had been. For me it did bring back many memories of the junk shops in Maine as well as a number of hoarders I have had the *ahem* privilege of visiting. And don’t get me wrong junk shops can be surprising. Sometimes you find some crazy things in them for a few cents. It’s always a complete toss up but if I were to ever find a forgotten million dollar painting it’d probably be in a place like this sitting next to a pile of dog chewed rubber duckies.

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Jules Antiques & General Store – Richmond Rhode Island

We’ve been really getting into the antiquing lately, mostly because it’s like a little treasure hunt. We go to strange new locations and we never know what we are going to find. On this particular day this spirit was especially strong. We started in Richmond at the Jules Antiques and General Store, picked at random by the fact the photos made it look large enough to be worth combing through. We weren’t disappointed!

This was the perfect place to go on a hot summer’s day. The parking lot was vast for such a place which is always a good sign, and the building was no shrinking violet either. Several other people had already had the great idea to come here today and right after getting out of the car I was already enamored by the decrepit stagecoach rotting off to the side.

Inside it was a well-organized place with lots of different nooks and crannies and I am guessing different venders. We were greeted almost immediately by the strange cartoonish head of a moose on the wall. It wasn’t long before I had toppled into the strange and morbid when I found a Lizzie Borden themed paper doll book. I guess it’s good fun for the locals… to add to our macabre little jump rope rhymes about poor Lizzie. But it didn’t stop there. This place was absolutely swarming with terrifying Easter bunnies hidden in every little crevice, their soulless eyes staring into the void. We even found a Halloween skeleton dressed up as Uncle Sam! Fun for all the holidays (especially if you only want to shop for decorations once.) There was also the usual assortment haunted dolls and evil Donald Duck statues. A more endearing find was a rooster shaped glug glug jug! If I lived in the sort of place it wouldn’t be immediately broken I probably would have taken that sucker home with me. I also didn’t end up bringing home any of the dolls. I’m looking for just the right one. Preferably one that giggles at three in the morning as it’s rearranging the living room furniture.

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Walkabout Trail – Geo Washington State Park – Chepachet RI

It’s time to really get back into hiking – amidst a slew of technical difficulties because that’s actually the best time to go. This week we decided it to was time to poke around Chepachet again, not to the antique stores that are our usual haunts but to a simple hiking trail nearby.

First of all it is still the Spring so we went during the off season and there was only one other car there. When we drove in it brought us by several little turn offs that I am not sure were for parking or not before leading us to a gate asking to pay for camping fees. We weren’t camping so we stopped in anyway and asked if we could still hike for free and yes, you can, as long as the car is parked somewhere before the camp check in. So I parked next to the only other car I could find and we headed in. The camp register had a map of the trails and they were somewhat nearby. We had to walk to the lake first which looks like it might be a swimming hole in the summer (and a very pretty one!)

This looks like the kind of place that’ll be absolutely busting at the seams with excitable children in the summer. Between the camp sites and swimming hole there are also a few cabins smattered about and three trails at this particular trail head that were respectably 2, 6, and 8 mile loops. They were well marked and looked heavily travelled. There was however no indicator if these were flat trails or uphill. Their level of difficulty would be a complete surprise.

Since this was one of our first outings and we’d already had a fairly busy morning we decided to go for the two-mile loop. It’s best not to die when you’re first getting back out there. And it was just the right length and difficulty for us on this particular day. It was a pretty mild trail. There was a little bit of an incline through most of it but it wasn’t too bad. There was no need for scrabbling but being spring there were a few soggy patches, one which almost took a shoe as a sacrifice.

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Time Zones Escape Rooms – Lincoln RI

I didn’t really expect to be going to the Time Zone on this particular day but while in Rome (or rather Lincoln RI…) It’s one of those places this country mouse finds bizarre and slightly intimidating. Why? Well, I’m just not used to indoor go-kart tracks, all the blinky lights and loud noises of an arcade, or really anything else in this sort of venue. Smidge overstimulating. That being said I managed. My only real regret is buying the fish and chips at the cafeteria. Don’t do that. I thought fish would be easier on my already pissed off stomach but alas… What they served me was some sort of batter fried fish jerky that went down with a crunch.

The escape rooms were fun though. They reminded me a lot of the Boda Borg that I went to several years ago. Instead of one theme that brought you through one experience it was a set of twenty-five rooms, each with totally different mini puzzles and quests that only took a few minutes each if that. I really enjoyed the physical ones that asked participants to throw balls, or pucks, or line up metal rods and pass each other a ball with them. I’m not athletic at all but these simple tasks I had a much better chance of actually figuring out than anything involving math or abstract thinking. I’m godawful at those…

ANYWAY – it was a fun way to spend an hour or two. I only managed to take photos of the arcade from above as I ate lunch and nothing of the actual escape rooms as I relinquished my belongings to the locker before going in.

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Rhode Island Antique Mall – Pawtucket RI

I know I have written about the Rhode Island Antique Mall before, several times in fact, but I continue to blog about it because there’s always something new to find here no matter how often we go or with whom. It’s always a fun little adventure!

This time around we were a group of four just poking at random things on both floors. As usual there was a delightful assortment of what I can only kindly call “folk art” of strange badly formed animals. And of course what antique store isn’t complete with at least a couple paintings that look like they could be totally haunted? It was light on the soul-sucking dolls on this particular day but what it lacked in that department it made up for in vintage Victorian porn which was everywhere. There was even a weirdly homoerotic postcard of presidents Lincoln and Washington in a seemingly forced embrace. Was this… the beginning of slash fanfiction?? We may never know. What I do know is that the speculum on display in our last visit seems to have been sold, luckily not with the Cat O’ Nine Tails that was next to it. That would have concerned me that there may be a serial killer in the area if they both sold to the same person.

At one point myself and one other in the party decided to play Racially Insensitive Bingo and we browsed to see the most offensive antiques we could find, marking off our imaginary cards with each ethnicity. It wasn’t long before we found something godawful for everyone… a wine corkscrew in the form of a faceless black figure (which got double points for also being sexually offensive,) some cigar-based paraphernalia with the familiar Indian chief, lots of literally yellow slant-eyed Chinamen, and for added flavor a few Gypsy fortune tellers. I don’t know why anyone in this day and age would want to touch any of these things with a ten-foot pole but OK…

All and all it was another great trip and I still highly recommend this place if you like wandering through isles of creepy old things. And the turn over is shockingly high making each trip a new experience!

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St Anne’s Cemetery Cranston Rhode Island

It’s spring and its finally time to start up Catching Marbles again! And what better way to do that than to take a sweet little amble through a garden cemetery? And let me tell you this one was a douzy!

I’d never heard of St Anne’s but it’s a Catholic (mostly Italian) cemetery hidden away in Lincoln Rhode Island. There are a lot of normal head stones here but there’s probably even more that are severely monied. I’m talking vault styled mausoleums complete with stained glass windows, family plots that look like their own mini gardens, stones that are enormous and ornately carved with religious imagery, and even one where the Virgin Mary was kept safe behind a milky aquarium-like shield. Clearly many of the people here were wealthy beyond measure. And Italian. And Catholic. And perhaps had a lot to repent for. Make of that what you will. I’m not making any potentially lethal enemies today!

St Anne’s was shocking not just in how much wealth was on display here but just how many people were buried on these hallowed grounds. What initially looked like an ordinary mid-size cemetery from the gates just sprawled and stretched out for acres and acres. We only explored a small fraction of it. Enough to get a lifetime’s worth of Virgin Marys, starved Jesuses, and sooo many creepy angels. I’d love to return here during a different time of day when the lighting is kinder and see if I can get any more dramatic cemetery photographs. All and all even though my camera fought with me the whole time this was an awesome trip I would highly suggest to any other taphophiles and I would be more than content to return here myself someday.

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Aardvark Antiques – Newport Rhode Island

I can’t tell you how many times I have driven by Aardvark Antiques, saw the big lions out front, and made a note to go there without ever making it. It’s one of those things – you know, a thing in town you just keep putting off because it’s so close.

Finally, the intrigue got the better of us and we decided we’d take a little poke at it. Nothing could have prepared us for what was beyond the big wrought iron gates. There in a small yard was a fascinating array of outdoor statuary. Some concrete, for those of us who aren’t dropping a trail of gold coins like a goblin, and others were bronze for those of us who really are. A life size bronze stallion galloped in place with a sort of intense realism. He demanded a $22,000 price tag. But if stallions weren’t your thing there were also an assortment of Grecco-Roman styled statues, a few dragons, a herd of African Safari animals, some creepy children, and two giant dancing frogs for anyone who was both rich and quirky.

Inside was even more interesting. This place was packed from floor to ceiling with just about anything to delight any eccentrics in the area. On the wall a giant moose head glowered down at us. The ceiling formed a canopy of random hanging things – everything from bicycles, to chandeliers, to a life-sized angel being lowered down from the heavens. It was almost like if the Catholic Church had a junkyard of antiquities. Moving on we came to a whole room full of stained-glass windows clearly from churches. Some were just ornate and colorful while others displayed whole religious scenes.

The furniture in this place all looked like it’d been freshly imported from some castle on Game of Thrones. Crazy heavy carved wooden chairs, tables, and writing desks played among smaller items that ranged in all categories. There was even a cabinet full of what looked like medieval Jesus paintings. And a lot of Asian pieces as well. It felt like getting lost in a bit of a time warp. Should I ever find myself a wealthy eccentric I’m coming back and just pointing at things to load into the truck! This was well worth the visit!

Haunted mirror selfie!
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