My Adventures at Thayer Street -- Part I

How hard is it to find a pub in a college campus town???

Having to spend Friday night alone in Providence, I decided to venture out from the comforts of my room at the Marriott in search for a pint of Guinness. Even for consultants, it's rare to spend a weekend at a client site alone; you're usually with a team of other consultants who'd be just as eager as you are to get out of the hotel room and explore a bit, and you generally have no trouble finding the hot spots in whichever town they're in. However, this weekend, as I had to attend a wedding in Boston on Saturday, I ended up staying in Providence while the rest of the team flew back to their home cities. I figured that the familiar surroundings of a nice mellow pub would do me some good.

Billed as "Brown's answer to Harvard Square" according to the Guest Services Directory at the hotel, Thayer Street had all the makings of the right place; it's the main boulevard at the RISD-Brown University area (College Hill neighborhood in Providence), lined with the usual things that you'd expect to find in such places: school bookstores, cafes, snack shops, restaurants, retail shops, and most importantly, BARS! Dressed in what I hoped would help me pass as a typical college grad student (sneakers, jeans, graphic t-shirt, geeky glasses and out-of-bed head), I hit Thayer Street at 11pm.

Good times, here I come!

Having been trained in the highest form of the art of drunken debauchery in a Big Ten university, I knew exactly what I should be expecting: a bar in every corner, loud indie rock music assaulting you from every where you turn, hippie students playing their acoustic guitars in various crevices, drunken people stumbling into and out of the entrances of the bars, street littered with drunken debauchery, cacophonous noise and smell of grease, bbq, pizza, beer, cigarette smoke and occasional whiff of perfumes stuffing the scene.

Well, what I got was nothing like that whatsoever. I realized that something was amiss when I noticed that even after about two blocks, I had yet spotted a single person who looked like they had more than a couple drinks; everyone was completely sober! Then I noticed that while the streets were lined the kind of shops that I'd have expected, the places that looked promising were restaurants and lounges with names like 'Viva,' 'Paragon,' 'Andreas,' 'La Luna,' and 'Kartalea,' with patrons dressed more appropriately for yuppie lounges and clubs than college campus bars. If the patrons were not all in their late teens and early twenties, I would never have thought that this was a campus area scene!

Upscale restaurants and clubby lounges are fine for a night out in your town; for a lone 'tourist' in a strange city, only thing that would do is a bustling pub with live music where you can quickly lose yourself in the drunken crowd. Dismayed, I continued walking to the end of Thayer Street to the other end (at least the main street portion) and I could not spot a single pub. I could not believe it! I then crossed the street then started heading back to where i started when spotted a sign called, "spiritus fermenti' with a picture of what looked like a wine barrel with the promise of being a great drinking hole. Eagerly, I followed the sign, salivating with the thought of a nice cold pint at the bar... only to discover that it was just a liquor store! (At least they had a respectable selection of microbrew and international beer selection.)

Disappointed, I tried another strategy: follow a large group that seemed to be heading to a party of some sort (or to a bar) in hopes that I'd at least get to see where the Brown University kids party at. Spotting a group of about a dozen random students dressed like they were headed for a fun time (girls in the club black, boys in their best jeans and shirts), I just blended into the crowd, walking to keep up their brisk pace. When they veered off of Thayer street into a side street, at first, I thought that I was mistaken in targetting Thayer Street (of course, the really cool places would be off the beaten path!). However, the streets were lined with what seemed like school buildings and student housing and I was beginning to think that perhaps I was wrong again... then the group started thinning out with each block, then when the final group dispersed into various entrances of a student dormitory, I realized that they were coming back from DINING at Thayer Steet. Why they are dressed like they were going to the best clubs in the city, I do not know. Perhaps that's why I never made it to the good schools. :-)

A few more things I observed:

• The place with the loudest music that rocked the block was, strangely enough, not a bar, but an Italian cafe called Riba Dolce that sold gelatinos and paninis.
• It seemed like every motorbike owner in Providence was cruising around in Thayer streets; young kids in their Japanese crotch rockets and the older ones in the cruisers. Although these bikers lined Thayer Street with their bikes, they were all standing around in their little groups (the Harley guys in their own group; the Suzukies and Hondas in their on... you get the idea) and just talking and posing. No wonder; there are no pubs to go raise hell in ! (The Mongols and Hells Angels would eat these guys for breakfast.)

There is a happy ending to this sad little adventure, however. After abandoning Thayer Street, I ended up finding an Irish pub in downtown Providence (not too far from Thayer Street) called Ri-Ra, where a live cover band was rocking the house and the bar was stuffed with people having a great time. (I discovered later that the students from the nearby university -- including Brown University -- come down to downtown to party.) Over the course of three hours I was there, I ended up chatting up the whole night with a bunch of bar regulars, partaking in random shots with RISD students, and swapping stories with other tourists. Yes, no matter where you are, a good pub never disappoints.