How to talk about Rhode Island
Downcity Ink: All the local lingo you'll hear from a Rhode Islander out of water
Welcome to Downcity Ink, a super-niche newsletter for a super-tiny state.
In my 12 years living around the Americas and Europe, I have to say I’ve never met anyone who talks about home the way Rhode Islanders do. Most people only know that it’s the smallest state, so when we meet people who’ve never been, we get excited to show off all our quirky bits. You could play bingo with a checklist of all the things you can expect to hear from just about any Rhode Islander you meet outside the state’s borders: bakery pizza, Buddy Cianci, bubblahs. Low-number license plates as a status symbol; never being more than two degrees away from a mutual friend; giving directions based on landmarks that no longer exist; “Emma Watson went to Brown, you know! And Taylor Swift has a house in Westerly!”
If you have ever met me (and if you’re reading Downcity Ink this early on, chances are, you have), you have heard me go on about Rhode Island like this. Maybe we’re old high school friends and we’ve swapped stories over a Dels. Maybe you’re a family member whose roots are still in Pawtucket or Providence. Or maybe you’re the friend of a friend who was unlucky enough to ask for my origin story when I was already two drinks deep at a Virginia dive bar in 2013. (Two hours later, some hero cut off my stream of 401 fun facts to announce that no one cared.)
When you get me going, I usually start by sharing that Rhode Island is 2 percent larger at low tide (even though it isn’t), meander through the list of beloved local snacks, namedrop Buddy Cianci for the time he photobombed my tee-ball team pic, and end with a forlorn story about the Superman Building, my one true architectural love, and how the skyline is at risk.
For someone who loves the Ocean State so much, you’d be right to think it’s a bit weird that I don’t live there, that I’m sending this newsletter from London, old England, and not from the good old PVD. Pawtucket was home forever, until it wasn’t, I suppose. I went away for college, and then got my first job in the South and my second way out West.
But the more time I spend away from Pawtucket, where I grew up, the fonder I am of the little corner of the world that raised me. The idea for Downcity Ink came to me on a walk around Providence in January, when I was working from the What Cheer Writers Club on Westminster Street and daydreaming about having an office at the top of the Superman Building. I’m a professional travel writer, and while I love adventuring far from home in places that look absolutely nothing like it, there’s little that brings me more satisfaction than publishing a piece about Rhode Island, or reading one someone else has written about it. Sure, we have lots of local media writing about the goings-on about town and the absurd local politics that sound like they’re out of a movie, but I want to read more essays about ordinary life in the Ocean State. I want more humor, more love letters that get in a few digs about corruption and beach traffic and cooler & warmer.
And so, here we are: Downcity Ink, a place for anyone who’s ever felt the high of talking about Rhode Island outside of Rhode Island. In this newsletter, you’ll read creative nonfiction stories from current, former, and Rhode Island-adjacent residents.
Next week, you’ll get the first issue, featuring The 2,571-Mile Ache, an essay by Molly Savard. She’s a Los Angeles-based writer who feels the pull back to the 401 the same way I do. We spoke on the phone recently and rattled through that list of things Rhode Islanders like to lob at one another: we miss Dels, we love Wright’s Farm even though we can’t explain its appeal, isn’t it so funny how much we all like to talk about Rhode Island, and also talk about talking about Rhode Island?
Rhode Island is home, even when it isn’t. And we love it, deeply, even when we don’t like it.
—Kassondra Cloos
Editor-in-Chief
Want to see your work in the next issue?
We’re looking for rich, raw, and clever tales about life in Rhode Island from writers with a deep connection to the Ocean State. We publish one piece a month and pay for everything we publish. Learn more and submit your own work here.