About Cranston Style

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Contributors

Peg B
Cranston native. Knitting genius. RIPTA veteran.

Josh Wood
Cranston transplant. Likes transplanting plants. RIPTA rookie.

Floating Deer Head
Cranston native. Likes eating plants. Bus dodger.

A Cranston Rant

Hello. My name is Josh Wood. I’m an art director. And I’m on a mission. In 2002, I moved to Eden Park, a small neighborhood in the city of Cranston, Rhode Island. In 2006, Cranston made the top 50 in the book “The Absolutely Worst Places to Live in America,” sharing the dubious honor with Seattle and Washington DC. Cranston is funky, strange, eclectic, poorly planned, and at times, ugly, yes. But is it really one of the absolute worst places to live in America?

Cranston is probably best known as the universal nexus of Big Hair. An honor established in the 80’s with the renaissance of mall culture and the pinnacle of glam metal. Cranston is also epicenter of the Rhode Island accent, where r’s are arbitrarily lost and found and where the nasally twang is best heard through snapped gum. It’s a place of exuberant masonry and cement lions, where the dogs are white and small like cats, and the shrubberies are shaped like gumdrops.

The city of Cranston’s web site slogan is “Cranston – We’re on the Move!” Given the reputation of the city, an outsider might read this literally – as if all 79,269 of the city’s residents have packed up their things and decided to seek greener pastures over the border in Providence.

I’m on a mission to change that. I want to capture the sights, the sounds, the smells of the true Cranston. I want to document just how big Cranston hair actually is. I want familiarize myself, and the reader, with the exquisite music of the Cranston accent. I want to discover the superb hidden restaurants, tucked away in the vast, treeless shopping plazas that stretch as far as the eye can see. I want to know if cement lions really are the official city animal. I’m out to discover if there is a Cranston Style.