Federal Hill, Columbus Day Parade, and My Favorite Building in Providence

 Welcome. That is what pineapples mean. This post will be long, but mostly because of pictures. You think you are a picture-taking addict? I've gotten used to taking pictures at all kinds of inappropriate times and inappropriate places. That...sounded bad.

Anyway, Imma introduce you to Federal Hill, Providence's for-serious little Italy. I looked at an apartment near Federal Hill, and when we drove onto Atwells Avenue and saw little old men playing checkers on the sidewalk, I felt certain I wanted to live there. (And then neither of the apartments were available/in my price range and I got it over it a little bit.)

Federal Hill is pretty much just Italian restaurant after Italian restaurant, one after another after another. Apparently the block also features some of the best restaurants in the country (according to some magazine; yes, this is very well-documented stuff I'm talking about.) I've only been to one - when my parents came - Cassarino's. It was pretty swank, but it was so much food that I had three people's leftovers for a week. You can see the sign for it here...

 

Oh, what is that enormous creepy thing waving to you from in front of the sign, you ask? 

Oh, just a puppet. 

A giant puppet.

Another view. He's worth it. He's actually from some kind of puppet-making and performance group in Providence called Big Nazo. You're rethinking this whole "Lexington is so much cooler than Providence" thing now, aren't you?

Let me back up - Providence does not just have random puppets walking the street. I happened to hit up Federal Hill just as they were having a parade for Columbus Day. (Also, who celebrates Columbus Day?) I had known there would be a Columbus Day Festival, but it was just serendipity that I came right as the parade was happening.

More parade stuff:

These guys WITH A CANON followed right behind a group of military guys WITH RIFLES who would just shoot their rifles (on cue) into the air, all at once. The guys with the canon would also shoot canons - they did it like three times in front of me, and my ear drums have not been the same since.

 

I hope you can see this. There were a lot of really random groups dressed in historical costumes. These guys, in Roman ware, followed guys who looked like Revolutionary soldiers. I hope you can see the guy in the middle wearing a bear pelt over his head.

I did  not realize it until now, but I love Shriners. Their hats, their tiny cars, their little-old-man-ness: what is not to love? This is "RI Shriner's Hillbilly Clan" float, which made nooo sense to me whatsoever. They pretended to try to wrestle someone out of the old-fashioned latrine that's behind them and yelled "HOWDYY" at us several times while wearing overalls. It all made me miss the Midwest very much.

So many random cultural floats. This one is about El Dorado and featured four girls in what essentially amounted to Princess Leia outfits. Disturbingly, three of those girls looked to be about eight years old.

More cultural floats. The whole band managed to fit into the back of that thing.

Now for some random pictures of Federal Hill, so you feel like you were walking along next to me, trying not to buy meatball subs and cannoli:

(This is the square on Atwells. Gotta love that fountain.)

I love it when buildings look this tacky.

I went into this place called Venda Ravioli. They're an Italian grocery store, and it's like a tiny, smelly heaven. I promise I took pictures of stuff besides meat; this was just the only picture that didn't come out blurry.

So after I walked up and down the festival twice and didn't buy anything because I'm poor and apparently a sadist (who goes to a festival that is pretty much just food and doesn't eat?), I walked onto Broadway, a street parallel to Atwells, and not crowded. And look what I found:

A reminder of the ole C-bus. I feel like maybe the "Opening Soon" is some kind of message to me, but right now I can't create any really bad metaphor around it.

And lastly, I've been meaning to show you my favorite building in all of Providence, and I finally took a picture of it.

It might be hard to see why it's my favorite building unless you enlarge it. Over the front door-arc thing is this Greek-God-like guy looming over everything. The building is like a soft-angled triangle on the weirdest shaped street possible, and I reach it right before I go into downtown. Every time I see it, I'm in awe. I have absolutely no idea what happens inside that building, but it's got to be fantastic. Or really boring. There's a copy place and a bank on the other side of the street.