35 !
Three decades of icons , shenanigans , colorful characters and fabulous attractions that make Rhode Island the best state evah .
EDITED BY DANA LAVERTY BY EDELINDA BAPTISTA , LAUREN CLEM , JAMIE COELHO , DANA LAVERTY , KAITLYN MURRAY AND KERRI TALLMAN
May 1988 .
Crocodile Dundee II was at the top of the box office charts , Republican Ed DiPrete was governor , the city of Providence was exhuming its long-lost rivers , and a little startup called Rhode Island Monthly put out its inaugural issue — in true Rhode Island style — from its offices just above the old Benny ’ s on Branch Avenue in Providence .
Our first issue dove into the local TV news ratings battle , with well-known faces like Ann Conway , Doug White and Walter Cryan gracing the cover . In the three-plus decades since , we ’ ve written about everything that makes the Ocean State such a quirky , wonderful place to call home , from clam cakes and Rocky Point to Buddy Cianci and Ni-Ro-Pe and everything in between .
To celebrate this milestone , we dug into the archives to find some of the best stories we ’ ve published over the past thirty-five years . We hope you enjoy taking this trip down memory lane with us , and here ’ s to many more years of chronicling life in this little state we all love .
RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l MARCH 2023 41