Dock of the Bay

Sometimes you have to reach a breaking point with a situation in order to change your perspective. Earlier this evening Mr. Puffin and I hit the equivalent of our rock bottom with Rhode Island, spending over an hour in the living room on our laptops. desperate to go somewhere and cursing the fact that we were no longer in Philadelphia, New York or Seoul. Eventually, lacking a better option, we decided to go to some bar in East Greenwich that supposedly had a good craft beer selection. We arrived starving, only to find that the kitchen was backed up and an obnoxious crowd had gathered to watch hockey - a sport marginally less interesting to us than an evening at home watching the dishes pile up.

Desperate, we wandered the harbor and were drawn in by the garish signage of Harborside Lobstermania. A banner outside the entrance on the dock advertised "Manicure Mondays with the Mike V. Trio" in the Dinghy Bar, and the smell of seafood was overpowering. We threw caution to the wind and went in for the baked seafood platter. Mike V. turned out to be a muppety little man playing a pan flute, and as we sat by the water enjoying our scallops, Mr. Puffin waved his hand at the strange entertainment and proclaimed his vision of a year of rediscovery of our home state. Nowhere but in Rhode Island, he suggested, could we overlook such local color. If Lobstermania had been located somewhere else we would have gone there ages ago. Clearly the evening was a sign that we should explore our origins, and as if on cue, Mike V. warbled,

Look like nothing's gonna change
Everything still remains the same
I can't do what ten people tell me to do
So I guess I'll remain the same, yes

Sittin' here resting my bones
And this loneliness won't leave me alone
It's two thousand miles I roamed
Just to make this dock my home. 


After dinner we went up to Main Street to check out the bar at the Greenwich Hotel, a place so ossified that the bar sold tinned sardines as snacks and the bartender told us we were the first customers to order cocktails in a long while (the usual tipples seemed to consist of Bud Light for men and white wine in pint glasses with ice for women). Then, unprompted, she began to sing Dock of the Bay. Clearly, the fates intend us to weigh anchor.