I moved to Providence after initially living in NYC. Been here as a freelance writer & journalist on/off since 2001. I keep coming back to Rhode Island because it's my kind of quirky. People can be individuals without the drama, solitary without the angst, and creative without the ego. And any time you get down about anything here, you can just go to the ocean and chill with water that actually smells like ocean instead of pollution.

NYC can just make you a hard person. I had to do my time there as a creative to earn my stripes and all that, but I was extremely glad to leave. On Staten Island, they actually have sprinklers on the beach for the kids to play in because the ocean water is too polluted to swim in. The smells alone in parts of the Tri-state area during the summer are horror-worthy. Sometimes NYC seems just covered in a film of....something. So anybody saying Providence is grimy -- I seriously don't get it.