The Big 1-2-5

11/24/2013

You don't often hear many good things on the news about my hometown of Woonsocket, but it really is a great little city.

This summer we celebrated the city's 125th anniversary. It wasn't an easy year for the city, so it was nice to see everyone come together and be reminded that there's still a lot Woonsocket has to offer.

The giant event was paid for through sponsors, like CVS, who's corporate office is in Woonsocket, as well as donations from local restaurants, businesses and residents.

This structure was put up just for this event. It was inspired by France's Arc De Triumph and is covered with a mural of pictures depicting the city's history.

There isn't tons of parking available near Main Street where the event was held, so they sent out maps designating parking lots around the city, and school buses came to pick us up. We were skeptical that this would run smoothly, but we never had to wait for more than 5 minutes for a bus to or from the lots.

Of course these troublemakers went straight for the back of the bus...

Stadium theatre is a beautifully renovated historic theater on the corner of Main Street. They have lots of great shows here, and free movie nights. It is more well known for being the location for the film premiere of There's Something About Mary. The Farrelly brothers are locals from a neighboring town.

There's a pretty active antique car club that can be seen driving or parked around the city. There were tons of these beautiful cars parked all along one part of Main Street.

Hot wieners at New York Lunch! If you ever do find yourself in Woonsocket, especially in the wee hours of the morning, stop by New York lunch, order yourself 3 with the works, a large (fry) and a coffee milk. If you are reading this from outside RI, coffee milk is like chocolate milk, only coffee flavored. I know, it's hard to understand. But it's amazing.

It was hard to get a good picture to show just how HUGE the crowd was. This is only one half of the length of the celebration. You can see just how many bodies there are past the bridge.

This is the train station from the movie Hachi!

Movie Trivia: This train station, and the house that Richard Gere's character live in are in reality an hour drive from each other, depite the fact that in the movie he walks to the station every day. Now that's quite a morning stroll!