The Providence Journal,
January 15th 2004
< back



David Brussat: Downtown as it was meant to be

01:00 AM EST on Thursday, January 15, 2004

IN 1987, a man charged with assault tried to win sympathy by displaying a letter alleged to be from a Southeastern collegiate athletic conference. It said the man had invented an electronic tracking device, to be implanted in footballs and monitored from the sidelines, which was to be tested that season.

Highly unlikely. Still, such a device might actually have been useful to me last Saturday, not for tracking the Patriots-Titans game but for tracking the zigs and zags of my own night on the town.

Here is a play-by-play account:

We eat lunch at Tazza, the new café owned by Mike Corso, in the Alice Building at Westminster and Union. Its bar may be the most zany machine for drinking I've ever laid eyes on: a glowing tangerine semicircle at the far end of the large space. Etched into the bar top are poetry and wildly eclectic, mostly figurative, drawings. A lot of them remind me of the bizarre, acidic German cartoonist Heinrich Kley -- "Rubens corrupted by Rabelais." The bar was designed by Saulius Sruogis, formerly of Lithuania, whose pen sketched much of the art.

Next, it's time for a downtown launch party starring B.B. King, the blues singer and guitarist. The Providence Black Repertory Co. is celebrating the opening (soon) of its Black Rep Music Café -- the final name's not yet chosen.

We walk from Tazza half a block up Westminster to the Black Rep, in the Wit Building (1925), whose ornate cornice peeps sadly from atop a brown 1950s modernist blouse -- something that ought to be removed (and replaced by something more attractive, although, sadly, the original facade is gone).

We find a crush of people, a crowd as notable as you'll likely find at another launch party, this one to celebrate the Downtown Neighborhood Alliance, which will be at Tazza on Sunday, Jan. 18, starting at 6 p.m. and starring Mayor Cicilline.

Starting on Jan. 29, the Black Rep will present Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill on the café stage. The main stage, on the second floor, should be ready in June, but the company's theatrical, educational and public programming is already swinging into action. Incubated at AS220, the Black Rep opened in a bleak fourth-floor space on Washington Street in 1996. Now it's time for livin' easy. Sort of.

The café area, with its stage and its L-shaped mezzanine, reminds me of Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel -- a smaller, more intimate and refined version of the famous rock emporium (which has now moved from the Peerless Building to the Strand on Washington Street). B.B. King takes the stage to a roar of approval, sings two songs, gives a short speech, signs the guitar (not his own beloved "Lucille"), and watches as Black Rep Artistic Director Don King (no relation to B.B., but there is plenty of gentle, witty confusion) auctions it off for $6,000.

After B.B. King sings, we climb to the mezz and commandeer a bench overlooking the throng in full schmooze. The café was designed by Kyla Coburn, who laid down a brown tile floor with a most engaging trail of inlaid wood tiles -- rectangular shapes of red, orange, brown, green, yellow and tan -- that snake by right angles through the space.

While the mezz recalls Lupo's, the profusion of couches and booths calls to mind two other places. The café might be the love child of the Cable Car and L'Elizabeth, both on South Main, and both famous for the couchful proximity they encourage.

Tazza's edgy artistry has a cousin in the Black Rep café's artful coziness. Both feature lamps formed with an artist's touch -- Tazza's more abstract and intellectual, the Rep's more ethnic and sensual. The Rep has African art on display; Tazza will be a display space for RISD students, and plays a continuing loop of old movies on its rear wall -- a constant source of curiosity from the sidewalk.

These two places should, as Don King pointed out, be joined by others. Yes! An intersection with four gas stations thrives. Competition rules.

We leave the Black Rep to dine at Tazza; we return to the Black Rep. Then we hit Blake's Tavern for the first half of the Patriots game, then Murphy's Deli for the third quarter, then my loft at the Smith Building for the fourth quarter, then back to the Rep for dancing, and Tazza for a nightcap.

The Sunday Journal had a "drive chart" tracking the action of Saturday night's game. The "walk chart" for my own Saturday night is as follows:

Smith Building to Tazza, one-half block.

Tazza to Black Rep, one-half block.

Black Rep to Tazza, one-half block.

Tazza to Smith Building, one-half block.

Smith Building to Blake's, 1 1/2 blocks.

Blake's to Murphy's, 1 1/2 blocks.

Murphy's to Smith Building, one block.

Smith Building to Black Rep, one block.

Black Rep to Tazza, one-half block.

Tazza to Smith Building, one-half block.

That's 10 walks totalling eight blocks, none farther than a block and a half from my loft.

High five! Downtown as it was meant to be!

David Brussat is a member of The Journal's editorial board. His e-mail is: dbrussat [at] projo.com.