Providence Attacks!

My friend Billy and I went up to Providence, RI on Saturday to see our friend Neil perform at the Providence Improv Festival with his improv group Dr. God.

Traffic was backed up everywhere. There was a two hour wait to get over the George Washington Bridge, so we decided to keep going north (we were in Jersey, coming from Hoboken) and use the Tappan Zee bridge. It was then that Billy asked me if I remembered the directions.

He didn't print them out because they seemed pretty easy. I told him that he should've used GoogleMaps and asked why he had chosen GoobleMaps. He said it just took a bit longer to translate the directions from Russian to English, but it sure beats WikipediaMaps. The problem with WikipediaMaps, we agreed, was that the directions are measured in "paces" and all the destination points are marked by a large X under a palm tree. You usually have to travel through a Thieves Forest of some sort and a Dragon's Glen.

We got there with enough time to knock back a few beers before the show. The bar next to the theater was pretty empty, but within ten minutes of getting our beers, it was beseiged by a group of 30 people looking to do karaoke. Billy informed me that as he was returning from the bathroom he saw a fight between four guys, arguing over who would get to sing "Ace of Spades".

Later we discovered that these karaoke addicts were in town for the Transformer's Convention. I didn't know that there was actually a convention devoted to Transformer's fans. Now I do. And so do you.

We ended up drinking until the early morning and then crashing on the floor of Dr. God's hotel room. We left early to get Billy's car out of the parking garage we had left it in, only to discover that all the gates were closed.

We called the number for the security group to open the gates.

"Yeah, we don't usually open until noon." Well, that makes sense, we thought. Who wants to get up that early on a Sunday? As it was 10:45 am we decided to wait and just walk around the town.

Everything was closed.

It appears that Providence does not open until noon on Sundays.

We returned to the garage at noon and it was still closed.
It was still closed at 12:30.

Eventually I noticed a tattooed kid and some guy entering the garage and opening a gate on the other side of the garage. We walked around as a car pulled out of the open gate and the tattooed kid started walking away. We approached the gate and it started closing!

We both contemplated diving under the thing like Indiana Jones, but then we'd be locked inside.

"Hey man!" I yelled.

The tattooed guy turned around.

"Oh man," he said. "You got a car in there too?"

"Yeah. Can we get it."

"OK. Hey, uh, listen, we're supposed to charge ten bucks for opening the garage after hours."

When we entered the garage it said it was ten dollars to park there, so we weren't paying any more than expected.

"Sure man, here"

"Yeah," the guy said. "The garage is closed on Sundays, cuz it's like, the summer, and stuff..."

"You guys should put up a sign to let people know that," Billy said.

"Oh man...there's no sign?"

"No," we both said.

"Shit."

Providence being the kind of town that doesn't open until noon, we could totally understand why you would close a parking garage on Sundays becuse it was the summer and stuff.