As someone who's lived in both Rhode Island and Illinois, those two states are so dead on as the ones with the least pride.

Rhody has a huge inferiority complex due to being sandwiched between two wealthier states with more resources, both of which are easily reached from anywhere due to RI's tiny size.

Illinois is completely dominated by the Chicago area, which has its own strong identity, and Chicago-area people look down their noses at the rest of the heavily rural state. Then people elsewhere in Illinois bash the state for being dominated by Chicago.

I don't think an increasing number of people relocating to RI is mutually exclusive with an overall decline in population, though. Higher-income people have been moving here during the pandemic because now they can. I was already here, but I'm part of this trend. In 2021 I took a Boston-area job I never would have considered two years earlier because I was only going to be expected to come into the office every other week or so. If I had to commute every day, no way. That job, in turn, enabled me to pay way more for a house than I would have been able to otherwise. RI is ideally situated for this kind of migration.

Meanwhile, as those people move in and housing costs balloon, people who can't get those sorts of jobs may be forced out, and in higher numbers than the people who are coming in. And that's not taking into account an aging population (we're the ninth-oldest state) and birth rates (we have the fifth lowest).

I have no idea about their employee satisfaction, but if you're using the service charge as an indicator of a good workplace, Den Den Korean Fried Chicken also does it. Might be worth looking into it.

Well! You may regret getting me started on this.

Many people will tell you that the difference is the New York City water. I have serious doubts about this theory. For one thing, New York City and Long Island have completely different water sources, and yet Long Island bagels are every bit as good as New York City bagels. It doesn't add up. I've had bagels outside of New York from places that took pride in importing New York water, and they weren't good.

I think the big difference is that making real bagels is a long and onerous process, and places outside of New York think they can take shortcuts. I'll give you the best example I've ever seen. Years ago, when Providence Bagel first opened, maybe even before it opened, I read an article about them in a local magazine. The owner talked about how they were going to bring real New York-style bagels to Rhode Island for the first time. He described how he'd hired a professional bagel consultant from New York to show him how to do it.

The consultant part was already suspicious, as I think anyone who wants to make New York bagels should first spend a significant amount of time apprenticing in a New York bagel shop -- so already you're seeing shortcuts here. But then he said that while New York bagels are traditionally first boiled and then baked, the consultant showed him how he could buy a special oven that would do the same thing in just one step. Even though I was alone, I remember saying, "No, no, no!" out loud. Sure enough, when I went and tried the bagels, I could immediately tell they weren't the real thing.

Here's a good video I saw recently about how they make bagels at Utopia Bagels, a well-respected shop that I've personally never been to. Notice that the process is long, difficult, and best performed by people who have been doing it for many years. Nobody wants to do this, but in New York you HAVE to do it because there's too much competition and you're going to fail if you don't. I suspect places outside of New York are omitting different steps -- but they're all omitting at least one of them. Providence Bagel, for example, isn't boiling them. Others may not refrigerate them first, or may not use malt. Everybody's doing at least something wrong.

One commonality I've noticed in almost all bagels outside New York is a consistent texture. Bagels should NEVER have a consistent texture. They should be slightly crispy on the outside and dense and doughy on the inside. A good bagel should hurt your jaw a little to eat (Rebelle is the only bagel I've ever had outside New York that did this). You shouldn't be able to just chomp right through it -- as you bite, you should feel your teeth sinking further and further into it. It's not a roll. There should be a distinct malty flavor, which I rarely if ever see outside New York. This actually isn't traditional, but I also like my bagels big, so big that the hole almost disappears, which most of the better New York places will do these days and places outside of New York rarely do.

I ALWAYS stop reading at "third world"

Funny, I've lived here for 10 years and I can't think of a single way it's worse than when I got here, except for housing costs, which is a national issue.

Somebody already brought this up, but in the muted fashion you would expect given the context, so in the public service, I'm going to have to amplify it.

I'm also a transplanted New Yorker. Bagels are my thing. Bagels are so my thing that they were even my thing when I lived in New York, where bagels were everybody's thing.

Rebelle are the best bagels in Rhode Island and it's not close. This is a very controversial thing to say here because, as the commenter mentioned, the owner is incredibly unpopular on this subreddit for various reasons. You will be strongly advised to stay away under any and all circumstances.

In the service of sharing the bagel gospel with New Yorkers, though, I have to say it, downvotes be damned. They are, in fact, the ONLY bagels I have EVER HAD outside of the New York metro area that I would consider "good," and I have sought out acclaimed bagel places far and wide. Yes, they are expensive, and I would argue unnecessarily so. The owner promotes the high-quality flour she uses, for example, when I can pretty much guarantee you that Ess-a-Bagel and Murray's don't give a damn about the quality of their flour.

She was nominated for a James Beard Award last week. It's the highest honor in food. It's unheard of for the owner of a bagel shop to get that. I'm just putting that out there for you.

I'm seriously so mad at Boneheads for closing. I moved REALLY close to them, too, but they were already gone. I'd get 'em once a week if they were still there.

Huh, I actually got a bresaola from Italian Corner yesterday (my favorite sandwich in RI, by the way) and I was thinking that it was loaded with way more meat than it usually is.

Disney World is twice the size of Manhattan!

Highly recommend taking a drive past all the mansions on Bellevue Avenue and then continuing on Ocean Avenue along the coast until you get to the end. It's one of the most scenic drives in America and is the No. 1 thing I like to do with visitors.

Yeah, not understanding why RI is near the top is an extremely "I Never Leave RI" thing. Any person anywhere in RI can commute to another state. That's not true of any other state -- maybe Delaware. If you live in Columbus, Ohio (metro population 2 million, twice as big as this entire state), you can't commute to another state, period, it doesn't matter how much you want to or how good the jobs are. I don't think people realize just how small RI is and what that means.

Well, Kent is the only county that doesn't border a major population center in another state. It borders Connecticut but it borders the middle of absolutely nowhere in Connecticut. Providence County borders Attleboro and that whole dense area; Newport County borders Fall River; Bristol County borders Seekonk and Swansea; Washington is next to the Connecticut Shoreline and places like Pawcatuck and further afield Mystic, New London, the casinos. Only Kent isn't right on top of out-of-state jobs.

Except that RI is the only state where the percentage doesn't appear on the map itself, so it's totally a map that forgot RI exists.

Every since I learned about those, after I get dressed, I always say, "I'm all dressed, like Canadian potato chips."

My research reveals that the Canadian Oh Henry! is sold in the U.S. as Rally, though it's not very common. Oh Henry! is actually an American candy bar, but the Canadian version is now different.

Fung really was a strong candidate and Magaziner is kind of a dud, but that wasn't enough to overcome the district's huge partisan lean.

The problem for Republicans here is, as the saying goes, land doesn't vote. If you drive around Northern RI, you're going to see a lot of red and not a lot of blue. But that area is relatively sparsely populated. The population centers in Providence, Warwick and Cranston (where Fung is the popular former mayor and only won by 3 percent) make it very difficult for a Republican to win this district even if most of the land leans to the right.

Yeah -- Congress was more important to the national GOP, though, and they heavily recruited him for this race.

I threw my hands in the air, awkwardly looked up at the camera, and yelled: "ENOUGH ALREADY! GTFO, Allan Fung!"

Trader Joe's isn't really supposed to be a place where you get all your grocery shopping done. It's supposed to supplement a larger grocery store. It's also very geared toward giving you ideas. So if you're sitting at home thinking, "What do I want to eat this week?" and you make a grocery list, you probably won't be able to buy everything at Trader Joe's. But if you just show up with no idea what you're going to eat this week, you're supposed to think, "Oh, that would be great, I'm going to do that."

Masala on Quaker Lane on the Warwick/West Warwick line does it. I haven't been, but they have a sign that says they do, and I was in last week to pick up dinner and they still had all the chafing dishes from the buffet out.

>The couple fell in love over their passion for travel and adventure

"Travel and adventure" sounds about right

I believe i3 is East Bay only.

I legitimately don't understand why anyone would have Cox when Fios is available. Cox just sent me mail last week to tell me I could have a third of the download speed I have with Fios for only $10 a month more than I pay now. And that's before we even get to the upload speed. I know that many people don't have Fios as an option, but still, how do they stay in business?