If all of the people on this sub complaining about how much they hated providence just got up and left, we wouldn't have a housing crisis anymore.

I was posting here then under a different name. Left Reddit for a while and came back for a bit when COVID first hit and again recently. It had become alarmingly toxic around the COVID time, but seems to have settled down some now. Definitely not the same though.

It’s fine not great. Boring as fuck compared to New York.

Love it here! Moved here from Boston 16 years ago and never looked back. Best city. ❤️

It wasn't always this way. A decade ago both this and the state sub were much smaller, but, oddly enough, more reflective of the residents of RI, albeit skewing younger, college educated, and middle class.

I used to put together meetups on a regular basis, sometimes with up to 50 participants, and attendees had a great time. I'm not sure I could pull that off now.

The East Providence Library Weaver branch has a plant "library" where you can get free cuttings.

Briggs is a good place to go. Could spend a good amount of time in there. The cafe is nice.

I moved here from right outside of Worcester, so I get that feeling a lot! I actually recently went carless this past summer (much to the demise of my MA family who cannot fathom this at all) and feel so much better not being car dependent like I was while in MA. I can walk to most places that I need to go from where I live currently and it’s the best feeling.

I moved to Providence after initially living in NYC. Been here as a freelance writer & journalist on/off since 2001. I keep coming back to Rhode Island because it's my kind of quirky. People can be individuals without the drama, solitary without the angst, and creative without the ego. And any time you get down about anything here, you can just go to the ocean and chill with water that actually smells like ocean instead of pollution.

NYC can just make you a hard person. I had to do my time there as a creative to earn my stripes and all that, but I was extremely glad to leave. On Staten Island, they actually have sprinklers on the beach for the kids to play in because the ocean water is too polluted to swim in. The smells alone in parts of the Tri-state area during the summer are horror-worthy. Sometimes NYC seems just covered in a film of....something. So anybody saying Providence is grimy -- I seriously don't get it.

Curious , what brought you to want to live in the Midwest?

I’ll be closing on a home in RI on Tuesday! I’m excited to be there. I’ll also be a transplant from worcester and so excited to have things within a 15 min drive max

Love it here! It's diverse, and progressive, but somehow still townie and old school. And the food is top notch. As well as the friendly banter from strangers. I've never heard so many people crack random jokes when I'm out and about.

It really does feel like a barren concrete desert, and the layout of the city is totally nonsensical. Having lived in various parts of the country, I'd say RI and MA have the worst drivers and Providence has the worst roads. With a government that wants to increase police presence and decrease funding for schools, this place is way more conservative that I expected. Planning to leave asap.

And the building on the Johnson & Wales campus is the "Tay-co" Center, not the "🌮" Center!

i lived in a loft and can totally agree.

lived next to a problem tenant and when i say problem i mean PROBLEM. she would constantly be throwing shit at the walls and screaming at the top of her lungs with her boyfriend, id hear fights breaking out next door where they were absolutely whaling on each other.

called the cops on them multiple times but when they knocked, alls quiet all of a sudden, kept complaining to the property manager who did...nothing even when these lunatics would go literally all night long with this behavior

it took the better part of a year for anything to move on them and when i looked inside of the apartment when the maintenance guys were there the place looked like a bomb went off, holes, shattered glass all over the place you name it

Just curious… you are currently subscribed to this subreddit because…?

I feel that way about virtually all location subreddits. They’re mostly collections of the most bitter and overly-analytic people in an area.

I didn’t realize people view this sub as being that negative. It’s a very active subreddit compared to the overall population of the city, and was a huge reason why I came to visit the city when I was looking around the country in 2021.

If you really care about something, you want to improve it. I think a lot of criticism comes from people who see room for improvement, which is great. There’s just a few too many people who talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk. Get involved with your community people.

Then there’s also a group of trolls and conservatives who sow discord and act like the sky is falling every day. That’s where I see the worst of the negativity.

Having lived in lots of different places I can’t think of anything worse than providence. I’ve seen war torn cities look better. The politics, the people, the culture it’s just in another level of horrid. And nobody realizes it I’m guess because they have never been anywhere else. No reason why it takes 5 plus years and going to fix a freeway. No excuse other than the politics. Anyway hard pass on providence need a real city.

Eatily at the Pru is quite all right. I’ve lived in Newton, Lexington and Concord for large portions if my adult life. Since 1990, I always advocate a trip to Federal Hill over the North End.

I chime in on /boston to try to tell transplants to the Western sector of BOS to try to commute from Pawtucket or Providence.

Born & Raised in Washington Park. I left RI for almost 12 years, and it was 10 years too many. Been back since 2010 and I'll never leave again. I was homesick every day I lived in the Midwest

Moving to Providence may be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life. People here may be tired of me constantly saying this place is wonderful, but this place is paradise compared to a lot of places in the south.

Now I’m not saying there isn’t a lot of work that can be done to improve this place, but what I am saying is this is in the top 10% places you could across the country.

The issues here can be fixed as well. The community can work together and make the changes they want to see. Laws need to be changed, housing needs to be built, some cops need to be fired, the list goes on. I feel better about the state of things here compared to where I came from in Florida.

Love it. Have lived on both coasts and internationally. Reddit is a very very very small subset of any given population. I will say Rhode Island as a whole breeds a special sort of online crank (peruse the comments section on globe Ri section or Dan McGowans ri politics page). So there’s that. But the scale of the city is great. Arts / food scene. The ocean. Slightly more parochial In the suburbs than I’d like? Sure. But that’s why I’m in the city.

While it's disappointing that they are not involved with tacos, they are one of the few remaining international manufacturers headquartered in RI which is pretty cool. Also they pronounce it Tay-co

https://www.tacocomfort.com/company/

Love it here. Transplant from CA via MD.