About

I’m Doug Alexander. I’ve lived on Providence’s East Side for going on twenty-five years now, which means I’ve watched enough of this city change to have opinions about most of it.

I grew up in western Massachusetts — the hill town end of it, not the Springfield end — and came to Providence in the late nineties for reasons that seemed compelling at the time and turned out to be good ones. I spent most of my working life in print journalism, mostly editing, mostly local. I’ve been writing independently for the past several years, mostly about Rhode Island: its neighborhoods, its politics, its coastline, its food, and the ways it stays stubbornly itself despite everything.

The East Side is a good base for all of this. Blackstone Boulevard in every season, the farmers market on Hope Street, the RISD Museum on a quiet Tuesday afternoon, the walk down Benefit Street when the leaves are turning. I don’t take any of it for granted.

This site is where I put things that don’t have anywhere else to go — pieces that are too long for a conversation and too personal for anywhere that pays. If something I’ve written here is useful to you, that’s enough.