Rhode Island
4
An astonishingly lovely state, with rolling, pine-covered hills, postcard-perfect lakes and ornate mansions overlooking the ocean, historic cities (well, Providence and Newport, anyway-- it's doubtful a state the size of Rhode Island could fit any more). Newport is a beautiful New England seaport town that exudes a sense of history on every dock and side street (I was surprised to learn it was home to one of the oldest Jewish communities in America). A friend and I spent some time here on our way to Boston years ago, and we each had a lobster dinner for not a lot of money. In nearby Charleston, there used to be a restaurant called Nordic Lodge that for a relatively modest price served you all the steak, ribs, chicken, etc, you could eat (not sure if it's still there, but we'd sometimes drive 4 hours there and 4 hours back to gorge ourselves). Providence, a half hour drive away, also exudes history, one of the things H. P. Lovecraft, one of its native sons, loved about it. He often incorporated Providence into his stories. Lovecraft died in Providence and is buried in historic Swan Point Cemetery, and his gravesite attracts legions of his devoted fans (when I was there, someone had scribbled on his gravestone, "That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die."). Of course, for a Mafia buff like me, Providence is almost as exciting as Newark or Chicago. Federal Hill is the Italian section, and, while not quite as frenetic as NY's Little Italy, it has plenty of quality restaurants, and underworld history, if you know where to look. Coin-O-Matic Distributors, which was where notorious Mafia Don Raymond Patriarca made his headquarters during his criminal heyday, was still there when I visited, and I was able to get a couple of discreet (of course!) photographs (Patriarca, a fearsome mob boss, died of a heart attack in 1984 while in the company of someone other than his wife, and he's buried at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in East Providence in a luxurious mausoleum right at the summit of the cemetery near the statue of Christ on the Cross...almost as if they've kept him up there with the religious heirarchy and away from the peasants-- so far, nobody has dared to deface HIS tomb). I've eaten at a couple of the Italian restaurants in Federal Hill, and, while some are quite good, they didn't beat NY's Mulberry Street establishments, in my opinion. There were a couple of great book stores there (the name of one I visited all the time while there escapes me now, but it was located on Main Street in North Providence). Sadly, I'm not physically up for the long car drives it takes to get there from where I live; I used to go fairly often and I miss it. On a side note: I would recommend the recent biography of one of Rhode Island's most charismatic scoundrels; it is "The Prince of Providence: The Rise and Fall of Buddy Cianci, America's Most Notorious Mayor". Unquestionably, Cianci was a slimebag supreme, but he also played a major and undeniable role in Providence's revitalization.