I’m sorry folks, but it’s still a mess.

The bridge, I mean.

You know – the bridge.

The watchers at DOT insist traffic’s better there now, but, well, not always. At certain times of day, the backups are, well – Lord deliver us. To which the Lord replies: Maybe in two years?

This being an article about standout Rhode Island stories of 2024, how else can you begin but the Washington Bridge, author of so much – forgive the borrowed pun – street sorrow?

But Rhode Island being Rhode Island, there is always a long list of annual quirks, upheavals, weirdnesses and celeb sightings. Especially a particular celeb. Admit it, all of us get a shiver of pride that a certain superstar who goes by the name Taylor lives here. At least occasionally. As someone’s mother once described Ms. Swift: “You know, that woman from Westerly.”

It was a Rhode Island year of the scary Conjuring House and its at times scarier inhabitant making the news. A year of local star-studded weddings – Mazel Tov to Olivia Culpo and Elizabeth Beisel. No, don’t start rumors, not to each other.

A year of giant trolls in South County, a migration of wicker-like elephants in Newport, and the refurbishing of that guy atop the State House who is almost as much a symbol of us as the Big Blue Bug.

It was a year of whither Hasbro, of deep-blue Rhode Island turning more red in election maps, and speaking of that, a time when Gina Raimondo was briefly mentioned as a Dem presidential “contenda” – probably just as well she missed that bus.

And finally, since life, in the end, is personal, I should add that it was also a Rhode Island year that saw my daughter’s 13-pound Pekingese named Ziggy increase his bullying of my 40-pound mixed breed Charlie when scraps were thrown between them.

Technically, the bridge was closed at the end of 2023, but it certainly counts as a 2024 story, since that’s when the worst news arrived, the state announcing, “Oops, sorry, it can’t be patched – got to tear it down.” DOT scrambled to shoehorn an extra lane on the non-damaged side of the bridge, but it has created a squeeze-point in Rhode Island’s circulatory system that will be with us for a while.

The breaking news as I write this is that finally, after zero bids the first time around, there are now a pair of bridge pros competing to rebuild the thing for a mere $368 million. Most of that will hopefully come from taxpayers in places like Wichita by way of the federal budget. But it’s only fair, since Biden promised to finance the whole rebuild of that Baltimore bridge knocked down by a barge, so don’t we deserve the same? And it’s too bad we didn’t have a Baltimore-like event: If it had been a barge vs. the Washington Bridge, the bridge wins. Instead, we were done in by some rods about a 100,000th as big as that barge.

We’re now promised a new bridge by August 2026, and if you believe that, I’ve got a perfect house to sell you in Narragansett for a few mil whose deck is now hanging over an eroded beach.

Which was another Rhode Island story this year, the Coastal Resources people announcing some parts of the Ocean State are living up to that name as various waterfronts here erode by almost a foot a year.

But let’s move on to more Page-Six-type 2024 R.I. news, starting with Olivia Culpo, 32, who my own kids knew a bit through their similar-age friend group back in the day.

For a humble student from St. Mary Academy in East Providence, Olivia went on quite the trajectory as she did us all proud in 2012 showing that a local could outshine those ladies from the big states by becoming, first, Miss USA, second, Miss Universe, and third, last June, the missus of Christian McCaffrey, who is not only an NFL football player, but, in the status permutations of that sport, in the vaunted backfield. A running back to be specific, and might I add, since Rhode Island women don’t marry slouches, McCaffrey is arguably the best running back in the game.

The Culpo-McCaffrey nuptials took place at Ocean House in Watch Hill, possibly the most magnificent resort on the East Coast – I’d choose it every time over The Breakers in Palm Beach or even the Sandy Shore Motel in nearby Misquamicut.

The Ocean House, after all, is next door to the home of That Woman From Westerly, who turned Rhode Island into celebrity-sighting ground zero in August when she gathered there with a star coterie including boyfriend Travis Kelce who perhaps surpasses Mr. Olivia Culpo in football fame as a star tight end for Kansas City.

Both People magazine and TMZ competed mightily to report on Taylor’s weekend Watch Hill guest list, including Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes and his wife, Brittany, as well as Blake Lively, Bradley Cooper and Ryan Reynolds, the last two of whom I frequently get mixed up, since I’m of the age where the other Reynolds – Burt – as well as Clint Eastwood, are my “it” guys.

But here’s my favorite twist in all this – and maybe the most Rhode Island story of the year, using “Rhode Island” here as an adjective. In October, Travis Kelce’s Kansas City home was burglarized and guess where one of his stolen watches was recovered a month later?

Providence.

You have to love that, in the same way we loved it seven years ago when the nation’s top podcast was about our capital, never mind that the series title was “Crimetown” – what mattered is we made the national radar.

The year 2024 also saw Rhode Island Olympian Elizabeth Beisel say “I do” while barefoot on Bonnet Shores Beach. Her betrothed was Jack Nichting, a fellow contestant on the reality show “Survivor.” Elizabeth, of course, brought honor to the state competing in three Olympics as a swimmer, winning a bronze and silver.

And in yet another cool twist in the saga of Celebrities Who Buy Homes in Rhode Island, that’s exactly what rising comedian Matt Rife did, purchasing 80 acres in Burrillville, prompting a podcaster to ask him if that didn’t account for most of the state’s total land mass. Close.

Speaking of Burrillville, let’s move on to another 2024 story there, in the village of Harrisville, home to the Conjuring House, built in 1736, and where some 1970s residents reportedly saw paranormal activity dramatized in the 2013 film “The Conjuring,” you know, like apparitions and stuff.

This year, there was activity there that made the paranormal seem ho-hum. Last month, due technically to things like building code violations, the Burrillville Town Council pulled the owner’s license to run the house as a tourist spot. But the story behind the story is that owner Jacqueline M. Nuñez, who bought it in 2022 to give tours, behaved, shall we say, in an interesting manner.

Nunez admitted she has been a patient in psychiatric hospitals a few times recently and submitted a document to the town titled, “Jacqueline Marie Nunez: The person who has saved all of humanity.”

In the aforesaid document, she also said: “I am no longer required to pay any taxes whatsoever.” And other statements that were, um, “para-normal” in the non-supernatural sense.

Speaking of apparitions, Joe Mollicone, who owes the state $11.9 million for ripping off his credit union and causing the state’s 1991 banking crisis, apparitioned in Superior Court at age 81, and got his monthly restitution payments cut from $270 to $70 because he’s now poor. As a result, by my calculation, he won’t fully pay back his debt for 14,000 years, which, coincidentally, is exactly how long a lot of us feel it will take the state to fix the bridge.

And forgive me for changing the subject to less consequential matters, but there was also an election in 2024. Not a lot of surprises in state races, with both Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Congressman Gabe Amo winning repeat terms, but check this out: Trump did way better here than the last time, making gains in every single one of the state’s 39 cities and towns. Could a purple hue be in the state’s future? Were you to go back a few decades and talk to folks in longtime Democratic Johnston and Woonsocket, they’d be freaked out to hear an ultra-conservative Republican named Donald Trump won in both places in 2024.  

But maybe that guy atop the State House would approve in a nonpolitical way, since the Independent Man personifies Rhode Island’s founding principal of freedom of conscience and refusal to embrace orthodoxy.

The state lowered and refurbished him for, gulp, $2.2 million, with plans at first to put him back around Dec. 11 of 2024, but rain and 40-mile-per-hour winds got in the way – or maybe he just wasn’t in the mood – pushing his return back to Dec. 18.

Meanwhile, the state saw – and so did I – some unusually large visitors, including two giant trolls made of recycled stuff who hung out this summer at Ninigret Park in Charlestown. I have to admit, they were impressive, as were a big herd of life-sized stick-woven elephants from India that were in demand by places like New York City but first walked the lawns of Newport’s mansions because doesn’t Rhode Island always come first in the quirky category?

Continuing the subject of unlikely creatures spotted locally, a humpback whale named Binary who had been followed for decades by a coastal research team was found sadly no longer with us on a beach on Block Island. But she had a good life, with at least nine calves and having traveled from the Gulf of Maine to the West Indies, but, God bless her, when she decided to lay herself to rest, she chose the promised land of Rhode Island.

And get this – an actual flamingo was spotted on Briggs Marsh in Little Compton, before presumably returning, as many human Rhode Island denizens do each year, to Florida for the winter, presumably the stretch between Boca and Vero Beach which comprises Rhode Island’s 40th city-and-town.

It was a year that brought a few causes for stress here, like Hasbro – shades of the PawSox – poking around Boston for a possible new headquarters after a century in Pawtucket. Come on, guys – you can’t leave. Hasbro IS Rhode Island. This is what happens when the founding Hassenfeld family, who remain among the greatest benefactors in the state’s history, hand over the keys to the C-suite to someone else.

That possible corporate move got enough attention that even Elon Musk, an aficionado of Hasbro’s videogames, asked on X how much it would cost to buy the firm. He tweeted something similar once before about a company that used to be called Twitter, so anything’s possible.

You know what’s one of my favorite Rhode Island stories ever? Those guys who walled off a secret apartment in the Providence Place mall parking garage in 2003 and, on-and-off, lived there for four years. Turns out, as performance artists, they filmed 20 hours of it, leading to a new 2024 documentary called “Secret Mall Apartment” that proved movies on the big screen can still draw: The lawn of The Elms in Newport was packed during the film’s debut showing there. Reviews were in the “rave” category.

Providence Place seems to be having less success than the film, having gone into receivership because its managers owe a bunch of money to creditors. But the mall vibe still seems pretty good, so I don’t think it’s going anywhere. But I have a suggestion. Guys – you still have a lifetime ban against Michael Townsend, the main artist behind “Secret Mall Apartment.” If you want a gold mine of publicity – let him back in. Sheesh. That one’s so easy.

We are running out of space here, but an account of Rhode Island 2024 is not complete without mentioning a few other matters either weird, notable or both.

Like a Brown alum’s $320 million wedding at the family home in Mumbai. Or like Jamie Lee Curtis hanging out on the East Side here for the filming of “Ella McCay,” and Gwyneth Paltrow sighted with her son at Brown, both actresses noting that the food here, duh, is great. Keeping the Brown theme going, Lifespan was rebranded as Brown University Health. And Brown itself, along with other Ivys, was branded for much tumult around Gaza War encampments, protests and campus controversy.

Also, the meanies at Stop & Shop shut down the iconic Eastside Marketplace, demoralizing folks who had shopped there since the FDR administration – at least it seems that long.

In the category of “our state’s older than your state,” in August, Italian Air Force jets streaked over Newport to celebrate the 500^th anniversary of Giovanni da Verrazzano’s sailing into Narragansett Bay, a reminder that Columbus, despite the claims of his PR team, never made it to present-day America – having remained in the Caribbean. The first European documented to have gone up the East Coast was good old Gio, and thank goodness, because if it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t have so cool a name for the Jamestown Bridge.

To wind this up, I’m a bit worried that certain events in Rhode Island 2024 may signify the prophetic “End of Days.” Like, there was an earthquake here in April. And northern lights in October. And making it biblical, a swarm of dragonflies took over Misquamicut Beach in July, raising the question of whether locusts, frogs, lice and hail are next.

For those who feel I’ve missed other important 2024 stories, my defense is that I chose from the democratic (small d) metric of those that got lots of clicks on The Providence Journal site.

The closing good news is that we seem to have survived 2024.

Yet, at least to me, the real Rhode Island question going forward is how well, in 2025, my dog Charlie will endure bullying by his pint-sized Pekingese little brother Ziggy when treats are thrown between them.

An update on that – and the bridge … and God only knows what else will unfold here in 2025 … will be coming next New Year’s.

mpatinki@providencejournal.com