Physical Gratuity

In 1956 the League of American Wheelmen designated May as American Bike Month. Might have rode a tricycle that year. Its predecessor, League of American Bicyclists, renamed it National Bike Month with Ride-a-Bike-Day on its 1st Sunday, and Bike-to-Work-Week Monday through Friday of 3rd week. For New England region, it’s when recreational bicyclists generally begin their 6 month season anyway. Hardcore riders with right gear defy mud, rain, and snow year round.

LAB has a conflict of interests advising anyone to take on sports challenges in that they represent bicycle manufacturers and sellers, not consumers and users, especially incompetent or infirm folks for whom bicycling could be dangerous. These days their claims of congressional influence are largely confabulations and deceits; Republicans in control hate cycling and uniformly vote against funding. Throughout LAB literature you’ll note many references to avoiding automotive traffic and obeying motor codes that cause unsafe situations for cyclists. Seems they’re serving Big Oil more than the 70 million liberated Americans who arrive anywhere by biking there.

Stories about amusements or food might get read, but not mundane routines by which one earns bread. Media highlights so many gratuitous distractions, tips, and what to do with your time, makes you wonder whether they’re safe hacks or scams, and why insiders are so interested in your welfare as to share so-called secrets. Misery craves company, so be wary. It’s been indubitably proven that, instead of Houses of the Holy in nonviolent service to humanity, villains promote harm for their own gain (e.g., sell opioids for which WHO attributes 600,000 fatalities annually worldwide, still less than heart disease in USA alone caused by lack of exercise due to automotive convenience and idiotic policies). Your demise leaves more for them. Billions of your taxes dutifully and involuntarily forwarded are being stolen outright by highest office as treasonous capital felonies beyond prosecution. Constitution entitles courts to issue writs of mandamus to cease and desist, but justices appointed for life stand idly by or support corruption during current administration.

Hard to admit, 6 decades ago cut lawns, did chores, and shoveled snow for empty promises or literal coins. Not having a bike at the time, delivered newspapers on foot; summers, walked to Roger Williams Park Carousel to collect tickets, pick up rings, start/stop rides, and sweep spilled popcorn. All work is heroic, inevitable, noble, and taken for granted by ignorant ingrates and selfish narcissists. Minimum wage laws didn’t apply to part time teens, so took years to save $125 for a Schwinn Continental (aged Kodachrome slide); bought used cars for less, in fact, restored and sold them for profit. Waitstaffs are just now getting to keep physical gratuities previously taxed, not due to an altruistic policy but a political stunt. Trudged miles on mornings to restock assembly cells at Elmwood Sensors, not on a bus route, next to Pawtuxet River, forever a threat to flood its banks.

Even before Led Zeppelins’s Physical Graffiti dropped on original vinyl half a century ago, began own bicycling transportation scheme through crosstown commutes to high school. Didn’t work out... no safe place to store an attractive new 10-speed during a bike boom; one in family was stolen despite sturdy chain and locked to a wrought iron fence. Nevertheless, ever since learning of this recurring observance, determined to bike everywhere feasible, not just to work. Bomb proof gear, dedication, early rises, lights, and logistics were needed to cover 250,000 miles in under 25,000 hours, which equates to a full time job for 13 years, yet half as far as stressful commutes in cars on highways. Some weeks drove 1,000 miles. Traffic has only gotten worse since. Little wonder why so many need mood altering and pressure reducing medicines.

Now retired from a 40 year professional career and consultancy, 3 proprietorships, and 38 sundry paid positions, decided to revisit by bike from Eden Park all 33 Rhode Island work venues except Portsmouth; also excluded a construction site, 2 colleges, 3 Fortune 100 medical device manufacturers (though bike commuted to 2 of them), and a regulatory agency in Massachusetts. Was engaged at multiple sites for certain employers, though most are now either gone altogether or repurposed for new businesses. Given short distances, regret not biking to more at the time. Throughout personally did steady work of carpentry, electric installation, gardening, landscaping, masonry, painting, plumbing, and roofing for sweat equity, unless tasks were dangerously complicated, a slew of short term volunteer gigs including Procycle 2009, region's 1st all bicycling art gallery show, and worked long overtime hours late into nights, so may have been preoccupied with those projects.

Long before graduating from university, knocked out brass tags and rubber stamps for A. A. White, Chestnut Street; this entire workshop was absorbed into Johnson & Wales campus, as was iconic Outlet Company, then state’s largest department store, having served in payroll-personnel office on 5th floor high above bus hub Weybosset Street, downtown’s oldest thoroughfare, before landmark edifice was raised to rubble. Parallel Westminster Street had E. L. Freeman stationers, where as an East Side high schooler worked late afternoons delivering packages to skyrise offices on route home by a 2nd bus. In 1969 and 1970, worked at Wingate Computing on mezzanine floor of Dorrance Building above Waldorf cafeteria processing payrolls for client companies during a Night Flight shift.

On way downtown to them intersecting old paper route led by fading sharrows, rode by what once was Jake Kaplan’s car lot on Elmwood Avenue. As a licensed chauffeur drove a bus for Warwick schools from behind Thayer Rink, and a decrepit Yellow Cab out of a dingy garage on Lockwood Street near Central High School. Passing city’s “scenes of occupational crimes” returned via Field’s Point, having driven Jake’s new cars off cargo boats from Europe and Japan, including Datsuns (Nissans), Saabs, Volvos, and whatnot. About this time took a bus trip to Manhattan, and hiked though St. Mark’s Place in Greenwich Village; it definitely resembled album cover. Shipyard once built naval vessels under banners proclaiming “On to Nippon” blocking sun at dawn during war in the Pacific. Ironic that Japan sent competitive vehicles back through same docks.

Blocks away rode by Federal Products’ 3 buildings. Wrote thousands of instruction manuals, Ten Years Gone yet holding on, for dimensional inspection machinery crucial to product quality and reliability among world’s largest manufacturers. The “sheer amount of physical energy poured into writing” (both Led Zep's and own) impressed contemporaries, but AI now outputs many more paragraphs per hour, surpassing foundational lifetime efforts. Earlier on Eddy Street, rang up purchases and wrangled carriages at Almacs food market, which served South End shoppers and was bought by Federal. Almacs competed with A&P and Star, both on parallel Broad Street but now long gone. Eddy branch, known to insiders as “The Zoo”, was where they sent incompetent newbies fresh from their training facility on Noyes Street, along Seekonk River in East Providence. Also did a stint at a nearby waterfront dye mill on Dexter Street. Used Gano Street Bike Path to get to Richmond Square, a CyberMdx worksite, Henderson Bridge Bikeway to Dexter and Noyes, then Broadway to Rumford Mill at Greenwood Avenue, having braided shoestrings and shuttled barrels of them for further processing or storage. Returned via Commercial Way past another place for CyberMdx, Waterman Street, East Providence, Wampanoag Mall, having crafted leather and sold retail, then Henderson again, across Wayland Square, down Angel Street, and through Providence Place to level of Woonasquatucket River.

Made it a point to pass both former Brown&Sharpe facilities on Promenade Street on a new adjacent bikeway, and South Main Street where it was founded in an old house on defunct harbor. Passed Pat Izzy Trucking, at Hemlock Street, having served there as a driver and striker, that is, an apprentice who rode along on triangle runs among Boston, Cape Cod, and Providence to help unload trailers and learn to drive tractors. Without climbing Chalkstone Avenue a few blocks away, got close enough to Roger Williams Hospital, where washed commissary pans and pots during a college summer break. Same bikeway accessed 2 other spots: silk screened panels in Eagle Square, and stamped tags in what’s now the Rising Sun Mill, on Valley Street in Olneyville. Not at all funny, seems the more onerous conditions and strenuous demands are the less employers are willing to pay. When after 6 months they refuse to give the 5 cent raise they promised as a sign-on incentive, it’s either get trampled under foot or time to ramble on, neither of which ensure unemployment compensation.

Arranged a separate trip to Frenchtown Road grounds of Brown&Sharpe, North Kingstown, which was sold off after parent Hexagon moved them to Quonset Point’s Kifer Park. This award winning property of berms and natural gardens hidden from highway has crumbled into ignominy behind chainlink gates that disturb pine scented memories of 3 mile lunchtime walks twice around Precision Park’s perimeter road. During 14 years there producing new media and publishing technical documents it stood as the largest manufacturing plant in Rhode Island, and probably still is its biggest single structure, nearly twice the floor space of national food brand Daniele in Mapleville. Indeed, it now encompasses 6 medium size ventures including a massive rooftop solar array, though question remains whether its water treatment has been kept operational. Was where bike commuting became routine, although 24 mile roundtrip route crossed some tough segments including Apponaug Circulator, since improved for motoring but not bicycling or walking.. 

Last bike commute of career turned out to be favorite one, 30 miles roundtrip, one hour each way to pharmaceutical giant Amgen in West Greenwich, where edited and spot checked regulatory filings. Used West Bay Bike Path, a segment of the East Coast Greenway, to get to Coventry Center, then climbed Hopkin’s Hill to campus, where they had lockers for bike storage. Amgen was title sponsor of annual Tour of California, once America’s premier pro cycling race, so understood cycling needs. Often varied routes, especially on summer returns along country roads, so week after week covered century mileage, even double metrics, nothing to brag about, since professional Giro d’Italia and Tour de France racers go farther in a single 4 hour stage. Return trip transited Metro Center, where in 2 different offices separated by half a mile compiled dicenial population data for US Department of Commerce. Rounded third by Midland Mazda on Post Road where stocked auto parts, self start-up Warwick Woodcraft on Harrington, Elmwood Sensors at Wellington, then home, site of many succesful consultancy projects and job searches. This 4th revisit loop completed personal Bike-to-Work challenge.

Details matter. Bicycling is how you gauge your vitality and reward yourself for being in shape. In final day of Spring, Memorial Day recalls sad memories derserving of the mood boost that bike spins bring.

“And if you feel that you can't go on, and your will's sinkin' low, just believe and you can't go wrong. In the Light you will find the road, find the road.” John Paul Jones, Led Zeppelin, Physical Graffiti, Swan Song Records, 1975; Grammy winner and 16 times platinum

Reflective Interim

Flying was once cheaper, faster, and safer than driving. Times change. Airlines are now experiencing increased incidents with air traffic controllers being laid off, NOAA cuts that jeopardize flight path strategies, NSA and TSA searching aggressively for contraband, and officials over reaching with immigration enforcement resulting in cancellations, delays, and lost luggage. Leaves passenger vehicles or some combination of bicycles, rental cars and trains for relatively unencumbered transportation.

Before digital gaming, internet searches, and social media, kids were bored senseless by long drives. Parents concocted all sorts of competitive games to keep them from monotonously chanting, “Are we there yet?” or singing endless verses of B-I-N-G-O or Bottles of Beer. Websites list many of them, but somehow seem to neglect the prime example: Points for Traffic Signs. Bicyclists in groups routinely watch for them as inducements to sprint. 

Beyond mere entertaining and quieting carload so you can concentrate, Points for Signs serves 3 positive and separate purposes:
1) Encourages participants to be observant, training eyesight for fine detail.
2) Sharpens accounting skills, adding various point awards and running totals.
3) Teaches operating a vehicle safely in future and playing fairly by set rules arbitrated by an impartial referee.

One need only to bring a pencil, download this list, and state game’s begin and end points, such as state line or time limit. Suggested rules include:

a) Points are awarded to whoever first perceives a sign and starts to claim.
b) Any colored sign (or specify blue, brown, green, orange, and/or yellow) displaying a listed legend or graphic equivalent is worth 3 points, with a 3 point bonus for claiming 3 or more with same legend. Plentiful black, red and white guide and regulatory signs are exempt.

c) Put player's initials next to listed sign names each time points are awarded. At end, designate which sign is least seen, and award a 25 point bonus to whoever found it.
...or you can agree to you own variations. Familiarize yourself with graphic images found at official USDOT website.

Bicycle
Bicycle Lane
Bike Route
Blind Driveway
Bump
Cattle Crossing
Construction Ahead
Cows Crossing
Cross (upcoming Intersection)
Curve Ahead (sometimes designated by a chevron)
Dangerous Curve Ahead
Dead End
Deer
Detour
Divided Highway Ahead
Do Not Enter
Do Not Pass
Duck Crossing
Emergency Signal Ahead
End Road Work
Falling Rocks
Farm Machinery
Firehouse
Flagperson Ahead
Fork Ahead
Golfers Crossing
Hairpin Curve
Hazard Ahead (could be stack of slashes)
Hidden Driveway
High Water Possible
Lane Drop/Reduction
Left Turn Ahead
Low Clearance
Merging Traffic
Moose (limited to northern US states)
Narrow Bridge
No Passing Zone
No Left Turn
No Outlet
No Right Turn
No Turn on Red
No U-Turn
Object Marker
One Way Traffic
Pavement Ends Ahead
Pedestrian
Ped-Xing
Photo Enforced
Playground
Raised Pavement
Right Turn Ahead
Road Ended
Road Narrows
Road Work Ahead
RR Crossing
School Zone
Share Road with Bicyclists
Sheep Crossing
Side Road Intersection
Slippery When Wet
Slow Moving Vehicles
Snowmobile Crossing
Speed Advisory (versus b/w Posted Limit)
Speed Hump
Speed Change Ahead
Squeeze Left/Right
Soft Shoulder
Steep Grade
Stop Ahead
Thickly Settled (often least posted)
T Intersection
Tractor Crossing
Traffic Circle (Roundabout)
Traffic Island
Trail Crossing
Truck Crossing
Truck Escape Ramp
Truck Rollover Warning
Two-Way Traffic
Winding Road (or Squiggly Arrow)
Yield Ahead

Parents can impart best practices on offspring by following not only traffic regulations but warning suggestions, including always yielding to bicyclists and pedestrians, never entering intersections unless you can clear, pulling over so emergency vehicles may pass, showing courtesy to other road users, stopping fully at boulevard stops and yielding at unsigned intersections. Such thoughtful guidance may someday avoid senseless deaths including your own. After all, motorists seated in air conditioned luxury can comfortably afford to let others pass and gracefully merge into the great traffic dance.

Granted, many motorists stick to highways where such local signs are seldom visible. It's a shame, because you see little but interstate uniformity and other vehicles. 

What strikes as ludicrous are Rhode Island’s penalties for impaired driving. A DUI conviction, 2nd violation with Death Resulting, earns a top prison sentence of 20 years, but only a 5 year license “revocation”. Technically, this means felon/killer could be out on parole and operating again after 5 years. “Revocation” is supposed to mean lifelong permanent; this is just an extended “suspension”. Driver’s Manual also neglects to mention Frank’s Law, which specifies a $75 fine for motorists crowding bicyclists by passing within 3 feet. Though enforceable, police never notice, stop, or warn violators.

Sick of hearing how lenient courts are for fatal and serious transgressions. Convicted drunks, felons, pedophiles, and rapists run America now, and they’ve weaponized justice for ethnic cleansing and extortion tactics in total contempt of constitution and justice.

Famous For What?

As this blog is shaping up as a series of lists, followed through with another describing what Rhode Island is best known for:

Cabinets & Grinders: Not at all what you think, they mean something different to locals than power tools or wooden caseworks. "Cabinets" describe milkshakes (often coffee ice cream, syrup and milk, always blended), whereas grinders are elongated sandwiches, otherwise known as “submarines”, subs for short. During last century Italian immigrants set up shops near shipyards and assembled these torpedo shaped lunches. They called shipbuilders who ground rivets “grinders”, and somehow the name transferred to the sandwiches with which they stuffed their faces, though some argue teeth needed to eat these chewy monsters had to be the real grinders, thus the name. Lexicographers also dispute the origin of cabinet; some say it had to do with the blender being stored in a wooden cabinet at pharmacy’s fountain. But it could be a bastardization of the word “carbonate”. Rhode Islanders speak in an odd dialect, a cross between Boston and Brooklyn, that confuses an “r” with an “ah” sound and vice versa; for example, chowder, a kind of soup, is pronounced “chowdah”, whereas idea is “ideer”. So ordering an ice cream soda may have sounded like “cahbinat”. Speaking of ships, Narragansett Bay and Rhode Island Sound reputably have more wrecks per square mile than anywhere on either coast. During WWII, Kaiser Shipyards in Fields Point hung massive signs that read, “On to Nippon”. Ironically, by the 1970’s, Field’s Point became a major port for unloading cars imported from Germany and Japan. Maybe that’s why the generation before held onto gruesome August holiday Victory (VJ) Day, only celebrated here, which commemorates ending war with Japan by the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Celebrities - Actors, authors, composers, filmmakers, rock stars, and sports people have prowled its streets for centuries. Ghosts of H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe haunt Providence’s East Side to tunes by George M. Cohan, Nico Muhly, and Talking Heads. Dozens of movies have been made here. Offspring of A-listers attend area colleges. Venues for MLB, MLS, NBA, NFL and NHL franchises and several farm teams are all within 50 miles. Yet it’s no match for New York, where such sightings are commonplace. And residents can’t claim any credit or glory by mere association.

Firsts - Given its diminutive size, you’d think staying ahead of the curve would be easy: fewer to convince and lower costs to implement. Rhode Island was first to declare independence from and strike a blow against British rule, but last to join other 12 colonies to form The United States. It was, however, the first to ban slave trade at which it formerly excelled. The Blackstone Canal was North America’s inaugural civil engineering project, though the Viking Tower in Newport is believed to be its oldest structure (est., 1120 A.D.). US-1 runs right though, built atop the Boston to New York Highway, nation’s original Post Road. Even older is Great Road, RI’s first, begun in 1683, where Arnold House (stone ender shown in pretty autumn colors increasingly harder to find) can be counted among RI’s half dozen 17th Century homes still standing having survived over 3 centuries of fires and wars. Now that's remarkable; despite modern restoration, they make history palpable along with other architecture from every era.

The industrial revolution started here with Slater’s cotton mill powered by waterwheels in the mighty Blackstone River. Before anywhere else in America, RI judge Darius Baker jailed a motorist for speeding recklessly at 15 mph. Nation's first golf open, jazz festival, lawn tennis tournament, and outdoor polo match were held in RI. United Nuclear in Richmond was the only place in America where a nuclear explosion occurred outside a controlled environment. Adjacent Massachusetts recently garnered firsts for permitting same sex marriages, something Rhode Island’s catholic majority will forever condemn, and providing state sponsored health insurance, which Rhode Island left to abundant insurers once Obama signed it into federal law. Healthcare had already been its fastest growing business sector, rivaling finance, still number one, home to banks and brokerages. Some federal pilot programs were also tried, though nobody seems to remember them. Rhody has yet another chance to be first, to complete its leg of the East Coast Greenway System from Florida to Maine before any other state; only a few miles remain, but will is weak to designate a corridor through Pawtucket and Providence, or link Coventry and Woonsocket to adjacent states, even though ECGS has proven indispensable to commuters. “Hope” heads list as USA's shortest state motto, and "Rhode Island and Providence Plantations" its longest, most controversial name.

Food - Culinary schools, hospitality industry, and resultant restaurants rely mostly on meats and produce provided from elsewhere, though champion pumpkins up to a ton are still grown. Only several dozen dairies, farms, orchards, and ranches remain, and they sell out all too soon. Farm-to-table initiatives and outdoor markets are nevertheless afoot, but drawn as much from CT and MA stock. Coffee milk was made its official drink in 1993, but only 1 local craft roaster makes a caffeine free syrup, and “plantations” never grew coffee beans. Rhode Island does have a greater concentration of colleges within a one hour drive than anywhere in nation, yet illiteracy hovers around 17%, among the nation’s worst, because politicians “import” unschooled Third Worlders, presumably for federal grants and minimum wage servitude.

Huge, interminable, wasteful projects - Over the course of a half century, expensive highway constructions chewed through state revenues like locusts across arid farmlands. First it was the small Greenwood Bridge over AMTRAK, which, for some inexplicable reason, took more than a decade to repair. Similarly, the Cranston Street underpass, but that was tied to Route 10 beltway improvements, which also took nearly a decade and yet seem incomplete. The so-called Q-way between RI-4 and Quonset began as a link from I-95 to a proposed container port, but design flaws meant all overpasses had to be raised for containers to pass beneath. In the end, the 2.5 mile stretch cost more than a quarter of a billion, 10 times more than the national average per highway mile. Meanwhile, a single mile of I-way across the Providence River cost 3 times as much. Similar figures for I-95 bridges across Blackstone River in Pawtucket didn’t deter in the least starting the Viaduct Project, RIDOT’s biggest boondoggle yet. Because they failed to keep up bridge cleaning and painting for decades, those existing deteriorated into a $1 billion unfunded snafu. All key RIDOT officials have been fired and positions are being refilled. Then there were civic and convention centers, sports stadiums, sweetheart deals for business startups, and such assaults on public trust. Taxpayers will be repaying for generations to come.

Jewelry & Sliverware - Indeed, there are 1,000 factories still in existence churning out baubles, bijoux, costume trinkets and toys, but silverware is long gone. Gorham, who fabricated the America’s Cup and served as foundry for 700 notable statues across the continent, may still be in business as a subsidiary of Lennox, but products are manufactured or sourced elsewhere. Empty mills being renovated into retirement living is more typical.

Obscure directions - If asked, long time residents will give you directions based on landmarks that may no longer exist, for example, “Turn past where Almacs used to be.” Luckily, cell towers are plentiful, so mapping via GPS obviates the need to ask the hostile, ignorant or senile.

Political corruption - For decades Federal Hill was the epicenter of New England mob activity. Dozens of lawmakers and at least one mayor have gone to prison because of what they did in office, not just general crimes. However, some endured terms despite miscarriages of justice; locals joke about buying judges. It took citizen advocacy groups like Common Cause to investigate and uncover. Gina Raimondo (shown, left center), one of only six women in the country currently serving as governor, made an unprecedented attempt to end excess pension entitlements and reign in costs. Kleptocracy and the rule by thieves have consequently slowed, though not yet altogether gone. Assets spirited away in a Winnebago could be recovered, but to what end?

Potholes & Road Rage: Boats unload onto train cars. Both construction and neglect impair flow. Highway planners add lanes and eschew tolls. Towns put red lights and stop signs at every intersection after numerous accidents. Truck dispatchers plot cheapest/shortest routes. What results is an interwoven knot, a traffic nexus, that beats alternately baked and frozen pavement to rubble and regularly forces vehicles to slow or stop. Expect to see drivers rolling well below speed limit in left lane, since it may be the only one passable given abundance of damage in lanes most used. This encourages passing on right, a proven hazard that catches blind spot and causes cutoffs. Add rubbernecking tourists who don’t know where to turn and residents who only use interstates to go the few miles between malls, it’s no wonder impatience mounts and vehicles reach turnpike speeds on the few remaining secondaries which resemble phony TV car ads. Some find it faster to bike around during rush hours. Maybe all this keeps housing costs reasonable compared to states adjacent. It often takes an hour on interstate to go the few miles from Attleboro line to Providence or Seekonk line to Washington Bridge. The knot tightens upon Nibbles Woodaway, the World’s biggest bug, and The Vortex, a sci-fi auto zone made real that eats space and time.

Tourism - In the gilded age of robber barons, they built in Newport a bunch of gaudy “cottages” (really rivaling European castles). Once they came under control of a trust, visitors were allowed to enter and gawk. Long ago the state’s capital during its slave trade days, eateries sprung up along Thames Street among Newport's wharves. Airport expansion in Warwick, bridges replacing ferries, legalized gambling at Jai Alai fronton, later Newport Grand casino, and presence of a naval base resulted in Newport becoming one of the nation’s top ten destinations. Rest of state has little to offer apart from bikeways, parks, and perhaps small pockets of charming quaintness, such as Bristol and Wickford, amidst urban blight, waste treatment plants, and working ports. You’d never guess there are over a thousand practicing professional artists, six hundred squeezed in ghost town Pawtucket, because even RISCA holds artists in contempt. A Percent for Art Law exists, whereby 1% of any government project is supposed to be set aside for art adornment, but only 0.01% has actually been allocated since enacted in 1980’s. Almost every installation was awarded to insiders and resulted in controversy, such as birdsong at Kent Courthouse and fine mist at Sundlun Airport Terminal. Even traditional realist bronzes get besmirched by blood, as was Christopher Columbus, heroic explorer and imagined villain. Nevertheless, visitors throng to Waterfire (shown), a tribal celebration along Providence's renovated riverfront, where scores of bonfires are lit in braziers standing above the flow for a delightful but temporary effect, while both live and recorded music blares and buskers and hawkers bust butts for a buck.

Units of Measure: Hardly a day goes by when someone isn't foolishly comparing size of Rhode Island to some other area: Asteroids, bigger cities in other states, regions on remote planets, and whatnot. Some wag combined micron, a basic unit of small measure, with “Rho Dialin”, how residents pronounce state’s name, and so coined the portmanteau “rhodialon” to indicate any vague area, roughly 1212 to 1776 square miles (3140 to 4600 square km), depending upon whether you include Narragansett Bay, which bisects state into so-called East and West Bay. In fairness, since residents designate a loosely defined South County area, there could also be a North Bay section from Providence to Woonsocket, but, obviously, that would seem too sensible, so will never happen. Providence is too high and mighty to get lumped into the likes of “the Bucket” Pawtucket, Lincoln, or “Loony Woonie” Woonsocket, all arguably better places to live despite hype.