The Providence Detour (#7)

I’m developing a bit of a graveyard of unfinished posts, so let’s see if I can get this in and out nice and quickly. It should be a short rant:

On my way home today, one of my roads was completely blocked off for construction, and I was reminded of another lame feature of Providence. In front of the construction site was a typical orange “detour” sign. In Providence, this does not mean what it means elsewhere. In places that treat their inhabitants civilly, you would follow that orange detour sign, and then you’d see several more clearly marked “detour” sings, all pointing you helpfully back to your original route. In Providence, the meaning of the detour sign is rather different. It means “Fuck you, don’t go this way.” When you turn off your intended route, you’re left to fend for yourself and figure out where the hell you should go. It wasn’t such a problem for me today, since I obviously know my own neighborhood pretty well. But the person in front of me was a little bewildered when they realized there was no obvious way back to the road they tried to turn onto.

Similarly, the “to 95″ signs down in the Jewelry district seem to have been placed randomly, for the express purpose of making people drive in circles. They’re all over the place, but none of them are followed with further instructions after you turn. One will say to turn right only to leave you at a dead end, wondering where you’re supposed to turn next. Then you’ll find another one that seems to point you in the exact opposite direction of the first, and eventually you’re back where you came from; and since where you came from was Providence, there’s really nothing redeeming about that.

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