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Fitness

Athletic Underwear Made Locally

Optimal fitness performance requires optimal fitness gear, and undergarments aren't excluded. How often do you wish you had underwear that can stand up to your race-day expectations?

Local fitness apparel company Believe I Am has developed the “I Am Strong” Running Bikini. Visually appealing, leak resistant and made from moisture-wicking fabric by Providence-founded Dear Kate, the form-fitting pink and black bikini set will remind you of your inner strength as you pass that mile marker.

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Music

Indie Pop Comes to PVD

Forget the usual Tuesday routine and do something memorable tonight: two indie pop bands are playing a double bill at Lupo's. You've probably heard Fitz and The Tantrums's "Out of My League" on WBRU recently, and you've heard "Safe and Sound," the breakout hit by Capital Cities, well, everywhere this summer. The night’s ear-ringing insanity is only the second concert of the duo’s cross-country Bright Futures Tour.

And the evening’s eclectic love affair includes another: acclaimed mashup artist DJ Ear Worm, who created a new track, “Kangaroo League,” specifically for the tour. The track creates a terrifyingly delicious threesome of Fitz and The Tantrums’ “Out Of My League” and Capital Cities’ “Safe and Sound” and “Kangaroo Court.” It’s bound to be unbelievable.

Doors open at 6:30pm and the show starts around 7:30pm. Tickets are $25 at the door. Get on it now if you want to get in. 79 Washington Street, Providence. 401-331-5876. Purchase tickets online.   More

Food

Food News for Fall

The corner of Hope and Wickenden is now home to Willy’s Local Foods, a grocery store focused on providing – you guessed it – local foods to local communities. Previously, Fox Point residents had to venture to Whole Foods for anything organic, but Willy’s homegrown goods offer an accessible alternative.

Over in the Renaissance Providence, Public Kitchen & Bar has now been open for a little more than a month, wowing customers with their American cuisine. While it’s a hotel restaurant, especially with its proximity to the State House, Public says it’s appropriate for “hipsters and Senators alike.”

Finally, October’s seasonal pumpkin flavor lingers on with the release of Newport Storm’s Rhode Island Pumpkin (RIP). Replacing the draft versions of their Oktoberfest Marzen Lager and Winter Porter, RIP is based on the same recipe as their Cyclone Gloria beer. RIP is available only as a draft and will be sold throughout Rhode Island until December 30.

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Opinions

Shutting Down the Government

One of the commonly held definitions of the phrase “public servant” is widely shared and easily understood: a person who has been elected, or appointed, to a governmental or representative office, whose responsibility it is to advance the cause of the better welfare of the general public, i.e., the public servant’s fellow citizens.

Regretfully, however, polls now show that many Americans have come to believe that the notion of “government of, by and for the people” is no longer anything more than a quaint and outdated sophistry from times long since passed that is no longer relevant in our modern political life. Nowhere else is this phenomenon seen as clearly as it is in the current attitudes of a vast majority of Americans toward the United States Congress. Polling shows, on a consistent basis, the belief of most citizens that Congress exists, in its modern incarnation, not for public service but rather for self service. Sadly, during these stressful times of government shutdown, Americans, in vast numbers, say they feel government no longer exists for the purpose of the defense and welfare of those who have installed it but rather that many in government are interested only in the defense and welfare of the fortunes they have accumulated during their years of “public service.”

Perhaps as we elect tomorrow’s officeholders, we should require of them a sort of Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm. When members of Congress involve themselves in the subterfuge and opaqueness we have witnessed over the recent term, is it any wonder that approval ratings of the Congress are historically low? What does this do to America’s image and reputation, home and abroad? What does this say to young Americans who are desperately attempting to gain a foothold in their lives, and to build their future? Is there a good future in a country that appears, at times, to be devoid of rational leadership?

Where is …   More

Theater

Singing Zombies Come to Cranston

An innocent teen falls for a boy from the wrong side of town. These star-crossed lovers try to be together against the odds — cue drugs, gore and drama. We’ve all heard it before. But this time the boy is a zombie and the girl is the daughter of a famous scientist. Now we’re talking.

Head to Theater 82 this month for an original zombie musical, Menace of the Morgue. Written and directed by Cranston’s John McKenna and presented by the Marley Bridges Theater Company in collaboration with the Artists’ Exchange, Menace of the Morgue is a zombie love story paying homage to 1960’s psychedelic horror films.

Sounds a little too intense for the kids? The theater will also be performing a shorter, family-friendly version, Doctor Menace’s Family Variety Hour of Zombies. You’d have to be (un)dead not to go!

Theater 82. 82 Rolfe Square, Cranston. October 4-26. Friday & Saturday at 8pm. Tickets are $15 in advance, $18 at the door. Visit their website to purchase tickets.

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Community News

Local Treasure Hunters Debut on The Travel Channel

A pair of local treasure hunters is on the trail of American legends in the new Travel Channel show DigFellas, which premiered this fall.

Bill Ladd, of Warwick, and Howard Hewitt, of East Providence, spend each half hour episode searching for artifacts at sites linked to figures and stories from the annals of American history. In the first episodes, they’ve tracked Blackbeard and Zorro and unearthed an old, rusted pistol on a battlefield of Billy the Kid.

Ladd and Hewitt, who both got hooked on treasure as kids, have been hunting together for about a decade since meeting in a metal detecting club in Taunton. The pair first got noticed for their colorful videos on YouTube, where they whoop and cheer over their best finds around New England.

The antics continue on their reality show, complete with color commentary, their collectors’ motto of “passion over profit” and Ladd’s signature “Yeeeeah!” Amid the excitement of the hunt – and finds – Ladd and Hewitt offer capsule history lessons on the characters they’re chasing and speculate on just how Billy the Kid might have dropped a revolver in the heat of battle. DigFellas airs Wednesday nights at 8pm on the Travel Channel.

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Cool Event

Steel Yard Pours It On

One of the newer fall traditions in Providence is the annual Halloween Iron Pour at the always-entertaining Steel Yard in Olneyville (27 Sims Avenue). In conjunction with the Iron Guild, the event will be held on Saturday, October 26 and will also feature live entertainment, music and food. Check out their website for more details and specifics about this most photo-worthy event. And it rains, it pours... but not until the 26th.

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Event

Bring on the Brews

Enjoy over 100 varieties of craft beer at the second annual Sun Brewfest at Mohegan Sun this Friday, Saturday and Sunday. For three days, attendees can enjoy tasting microbrews, imports and domestic beer from local and national vendors. Some of the beers on tap will include Goose Island, Newcastle, Redd’s Apple Ale, Long Trail, and Otter Creek.

Along with plenty of brews, food tastings will be available for only $1 per ticket. Mohegan Sun’s very own restaurants will be providing good eats including cooking the first BrewBrunch on Sunday, October 6 at the Sunburst Buffet. Goose Island Brewery is sponsoring the fun-filled brunch with ‘beer-mosas’ and creative Bloody Mary recipes that are sure to please. To celebrate the fall season, Mohegan Sun’s pastry chefs will be preparing Shock Top ice creams made with Honey Apple and Pumpkin Wheat beer varieties. It is never too early for ice cream!

There will be live entertainment beginning at 7pm each night along with interactive games such as ping-pong, air hockey and foosball. Tickets are $25 for each tasting and $75 for the BrewBrunch and can be purchased at the Mohegan Sun Box Office or through Ticketmaster. A portion of brunch tickets sold will go towards a to-be-determined charity. All attendees must be 21 and older.

Tasting Session 1: Friday, October 4th from 7:00pm - 11:00pm in the Uncas Ballroom. Tasting Session 2: Saturday, October 5th from 7:00pm - 11:00pm in the Uncas Ballroom. BrewBrunch: Sunday, October 6th from 11:00am - 2:00pm in the Sunbusrt Buffet.   More

Food

Fresh Food Showcase

Living a fit life isn’t just about exercise and the gym. Educating yourself about the foods you eat is a huge part of the equation. Lucky for us, Chefs Collaborative Autumn Harvest BBQ with Rhode Island’s best Farm-to-Fork chefs is taking place again on October 6 at Schartner Farms. Top local chefs will showcase the bounty of the season from the farms, fields and coastal waters of Rhode Island in what promises to be a night of fresh foods and culinary mastery you won’t forget. Proceeds help to fund the important work that Chefs Collaborative is doing, both in Rhode Island and across the country, in their mission to make sustainability second nature in the professional kitchen. 

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Events

Race for a Cause

There’s a new race in town. The Inaugural Ocean Road 10K will take place on October 6 and will travel along coastal miles on Ocean Road in Narragansett. A portion of proceeds from this event will benefit the Narragansett Historical Society, a fitting and worthy non-profit organization helping to celebrate Narragansett’s 125th anniversary this year.

On the other side of town, Flames of Hope Celebration Village takes place from October 11–13, and will boast health screenings, healing arts activities, cooking demos, informative lectures, live music, torch procession and lighting and four family-friendly fun runs to choose from – put on by the Gloria Gemma Breast Cancer Resource Foundation to raise awareness and support.

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Providence Cocktail Week

Announcing the Competitors for the Providence Cocktail Week Cocktail Competition

It's official! We have our line-up of fierce competitors for the Providence Cocktail Week Cocktail Competition Presented by Pernod Ricard and Bottles Fine Wine. On Wednesday, September 25, 12 contestants will square off at Fete for cocktail supremacy. And the best part is, for a mere $10, you get to sample all their drinks – and vote on your favorite. There will also be Pernod Ricard drink specials, live music from the Funky Autocrats, food from the Julians food truck, and your MCs for the evening, our own John Taraborelli and the Rhode Show's Michaela Johnson. Don't miss out. Click here to buy tickets.

Bartender, Bar, Cocktail:

-Meagan Maloney, Bluewater Bar & Grill, "Into the Misty"

-Jennifer Leisenring, Tazza, "Sunrise Sangria"

-Vito Lantz, The Dorrance, "The Down City Sour"

-Justin Erickson, Vanity, "The Bell Toll"

-Silas Axtell, Farmstead, "Nervous Fugitive"

-Lara Pietropaolo, Local 121, "Black Friday"

-Joseph Haggard, The Grange, "Cervantes"

-Jason Lawrence, Providence Fermentery, "Pink Betty"

-Jason Kindness, Malt on Broadway, "September Shrub"

-Juan Isaza, Bravo Brasserie, "Christmas In a Glass"

-Mateo Mancia, representing his own damn self, "The Graveyard Shift"

-Perri Peet, Fete, "Limbic Kalopsia"   More

Books

A Local Author's Book Has Some Familiar Mentions

Around here, we’re used to writing the stories you read, not being in them. Imagine our surprise to find out that local author Charles Pinning - a ProJo alum who once wrote for Providence Monthly back in the day - included our magazine in his new book, Irreplaceable. In the crime thriller, an art heist has taken place at the RISD Museum (during production on a movie about the famous art heist from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, no less), and it’s up to a writer and his long-lost lady love to solve it. There’s one particularly thrilling scene when the lead has dinner with Iphigenia Melikis, the sassy, tough editor of this very magazine, at Red Stripe. Any resemblance to what we’ve really got going on here? You’ll just have to read it to find out. Order it on Amazon.

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PM Experiment

One Day I’ll Play Bass

At the age of ten I asked my parents if I could take music lessons. I imagined playing something badass like bass guitar, swinging wild the phallic instrument and doing that Gene Simmons-tongue thing. After some persuading, my parents came over to the musical dark side, felt its dangerous chill and knew their son had to experience the full effects of hardcore music.

So they signed me up for accordion lessons, at Arruda Music.

It’s important to remember my age, as the naiveté of youth made the following scenario possible: my parents convinced me that the accordion was a stepping-stone for playing the bass guitar. Like it was some kind of training wheels instrument that introduced me to music before I was allowed to rock.

Four years later, still playing the accordion, I realized that the bass guitar remained out of my grasp. Worse still, when I confronted my parents about the stepping-stone concept, they denied all allegations. So I quit playing the accordion.

Now, as a 25-year-old who digs Gogol Bordello, I felt the urge to again pick up the musical mantle and pursue my bellow-pumping ambidexterity. After snagging a used 120-bass accordion from Warwick’s Blue Merle Consignment, I scheduled a lesson with Arruda Music, still located on Newport Avenue. As if frozen in time, the place looked exactly the same as it had a decade before. The only thing that changed was my instructor – then a bubbly college girl; now a suave gentleman named Ralph.

First Ralph ran me through the basics, like reading music and counting time. Then he moved into the total-body coordination that makes the accordion such a monster of an instrument. Basically, playing an accordion requires one hand to play piano keys, the other hand to press bass buttons and for both arms to breathe the accordion’s bellows. All the while, the musician must simultaneously read two lines of music, one for bass and one for treble. It’s an overload of information that left me flailing like …   More

Malcontent

Looking Beyond Providence’s “Bad” Climate for Business

Providence’s economy is ailing and continues to lag in its recovery efforts. The job market is tough. The taxes are high. It routinely ranks near the bottom on various lists of cities that are good places to do business. These harsh truths are among our favorite topics of discussion – on talk radio, during election season, around the barbershop, at the dinner table, it seems like someone is always decrying the economic climate in our fair city. While none of these facts are in dispute, and improving these grim circumstances remains imperative for the health of the city, we must also examine the full scope of our socio-economic reality before throwing up our hands in utter despair. There’s a lot more to a vibrant metropolis than taxes and employment numbers, and a lot more to the business climate than the concerns of – to borrow a phrase from one partner in a small, creative local business – “silver-haired CFOs.”

A couple of months back, venerable news site The Daily Beast published its list of “America’s Thriving Cities,” ranking the 100 largest cities based on factors like population growth, unemployment and earnings, and market strength. Not surprisingly, Providence was nowhere near the top. Among the cities that were: Gilbert, AZ (#8); Plano, TX (#7); and number 1, Irvine, CA. If you’re ready to pack your bags and leave Providence behind in favor of any of those boomtowns, I’ll drive you to the airport.

The problem with gauging a city’s health by purely economic readings is that they’re so cut and dry –there isn’t a whole lot of room for the intangibles that can make a place truly great. New Orleans, surprisingly, is in the midst of a tech-driven economic surge that has led some to call it “the Silicon Valley of the South.” If I were to ask you to list the top ten appealing things about the Big Easy, you probably wouldn’t land on that one. It’s the food, the music, the celebrations, the history and countless other …   More

Keeseh Woodshop Hosts a Pumpkin Carving Party

Halloween brings about nostalgia from the first of the holiday's candy displays to the long-awaited question of what character children will choose for their night-time masquerade. With visions of sugar and costumes blowing in with the autumnal wind, what better way to prepare for the holiday of fright than a Pumpkin Carving Party? Boys and ghouls of all ages will be able to stop by Keeseh Woodshop from 6-8pm on October 23 to create their scary, silly, detailed and creative designs (all of which are superlatives for prizes). All participants are asked to bring is a pumpkin, some scooping tools and their imagination to help illuminate Keeseh with Jack-O-Lanterns. Carving supplies will be provided by the shop at this free event, and while you compete, be sure to enjoy pumpkin seeds toasted up from everyone's pumpkin entries while you work. Check out their web site for more details.   More

Two Mayors Offer a Lesson in Civility at the Quonset O Club

Politics is Rhode Island’s favorite sport. Even though it’s still more than a year away, people are already gearing up for the 2014 election. The governor’s race looks like it’s shaping up to be a particularly bruising one. However, Mayors Angel Taveras and Allan Fung, two presumptive candidates for governor, have boldly chosen civility over callousness – at least for one night. The two competitors and friends have decided to face politics in a new way: together. The Mayors of Cranston and Providence invite all who can attend to An Evening with the Mayors: Civility in Politics, on Tuesday, October 22 at the Quonset O Club. The event features a buffet dinner. It’s sponsored by Rhode Island Commandery, Military Order of Foreign Wars, marking this night of innovative debate and consensus as an homage to reason and unity in Little Rhody's history.

Tickets are $40 per person in advance and available by calling 401-738-3844 or mailing check to RIMOFW at 26 Mohawk St, Coventry, 02816. See www.rimofw.org for further information.   More

Taste Test

5 Local Craft Beers We're Drinking this Fall

Rhode Island’s pre-winter chill and changing leaves act as harbingers for something tastier on the horizon: October’s seasonal beers. Breweries all across the state are overflowing with the stuff, each beer a combination of the respective brewery’s ideals and hands-on techniques. So of course, we had to have a taste.

With creamy chocolate tones and an unapologetic assertiveness, Revival Brewing’s Octoberfest Lager features an initial sweet kiss hello followed by a deliciously bitter goodbye. 

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Clear hints of autumn dance through Narragansett Beer’s Fest, a traditional German Oktoberfest-style beer that balances seasonal flavor with refreshing drinkability.

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A little sweet, a little bitter, Grey Sail’s Autumn Wind offers a toasty, smooth flavor that sends a surprising chill across the tongue, as if the beer were actually infused with an autumn wind. 

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When it comes to beers appropriate for accompanying autumnal pumpkin desserts, Newport Storm’s Oktoberfest takes the cake - or pie - with its intoxicating smell and light caramel taste. 

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Smoother than the typical IPA, Foolproof’s Imperial IPA combines a strong bitter kick with floral hints, creating what one taster described as an “Olde English” drinking experience. 

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Community News

Date of Final Thayer Presentation to be Changed

After months of internal discussions, in addition to several public neighborhood meetings, the consulting group that has been hired by the City’s Department of Planning to analyze the Thayer Street district had been set to make their final recommendations at the end of September. This has now been changed to the end of October. As we go to press, neither the date nor the location has been finalized. The best plan is to either call Emily Kish at the Planning Department at 680-8523 or check their website for the specifics when available. This will probably be the last chance for residents to speak out on the consultant’s recommendations that will potentially change usage patterns, traffic flow, parking, late night closings and the like. It’s an important meeting so if you don’t show up, don’t complain later.

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Halloween Fun

Get into the Spirit with Providence Ghost Tours

As the leaves begin to turn and the chilly October winds swirl along our East Side streets, the timing is ideal for the return of the East Side Ghost Tours, those masters of the macabre, who regale visitors with stories about the strange happenings that once took place in Providence. These guided walking tours begin at 60 Congdon Street, near Prospect Terrace, nightly throughout the month at 7pm. Tickets are $15 in advance or $18 on the day of. Contact Providence Ghost Tours to make a reservation or to learn more about the program. Thanks to some of our politicians, Providence can be a scary place anytime. But come October... well, the ghost tours will explain that it could be worse.

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Chairty

Clad in Reaches Out

Clad in, the haute clothing and accessories boutique in Wayland Square, will be offering a rather different evening as they go theatrical and sponsor Tziporah Salamon performing her one-woman show entitled The Fabric of My Life: A Sartorial Autobiography at RISD Auditorium on October 3 from 7-9pm. A well-known stylist, performance artist and fashion icon frequently featured in the NY Times, Salamon takes pride in what has been described as “elevating dressing to an art form.” There is a suggested optional donation of $25 that will go to charity.

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