Perception of the Culture on Weybosset Street - Essay Example

10 May Perception of the Culture on Weybosset Street It is Saturday, May 9, as I make my observations within the area of Weybosset Street that surrounds the Providence Performing Arts Center. It is warm out, signifying the signs of springtime in downtown Providence, Rhode Island. It is a bit cloudy as I sit in the downtown area around 5:30 p.m. It is staying lighter a little later finally and I sit and I observe the people and the landscape around me. The landscape has not changed. It is a busy area on this particular evening as there is a performance that began at 7 p.m. The Rhode Island School of Design was presenting a fashion show that was hosted by the Apparel Design Department at the university. Around the time I arrive, I see people on other streets near to Weybosset Street busy with cars. It is a beautiful Saturday and people are out enjoying the day. Since there are numerous posts scattered in the area which are made for people who are cyclists or leisure bikers, there are a few scattered in the street. The people seem to be enjoying their early evening bike ride. It seems as if most of them are on a leisure trip though one man in full cyclist attire comes pumping his legs up the street as fast as he can pedal. Again I take note of the unchanged landscape of buildings. Large stone buildings all around me, lined with the fancy paved roads and sidewalks. The black posts are still in place alongside the sidewalk. The fancy light posts look as if they will be ready to glow later than they have been. They are still decorated with robust looking flower baskets and the ambience is very spring-like because all of the areas which are landscaped are in bloom and any plants are a bright green. It seems as if the area appeals to a more culture-oriented crowd and it would appeal to those who found the Performing Arts Center as educational and entertaining and that does not always appeal to lower class people, black or white. The streets are still lined with banners announcing to potential pedestrians they are in downtown Providence. The marquee on the Performing Arts Center is displaying the upcoming event of the evening though it still had been performed earlier that day. The Providence Performing Arts Center has information in the windows about upcoming events. The street has becomes very busy with people hustling in and out of the Providence Performing Arts Center. There are numerous students, carrying garment bags going in and out of the building as if to carry their last minute projects into the fashion show presentation. They are dashing as if in a scramble to be in a scurry and there are numerous cars in the parking garage. The parking meters surrounding the theater remain empty as the students know that their presentation will last for a while. Down the street, the occasional group of people are heading to Grace Church as if to attend a Saturday evening service or religious study group. As there are not many shops in the area, it is rather calm in the area with little foot traffic aside from those getting ready for the performance. The area is still alive and a group of students who do not appear to be associated with the fashion show are sitting next to the windows within the Pizza Queen, having dinner and some laughs, taking their Saturday evening in stride with calm and relaxation. Sakis Pizzeria is busy as well as student-aged people are walking in and out, taking their pizza to go. A small group of people of all different ages are headed to the Yogurt Queen. It is a group of people of all different ages and it appears as if they might be a family. They range in age from young children to an elderly woman with grey hair and everyone in the party of about eight people are helping her in for an evening dessert. They are full of laughter and the children are darting around as the old woman smiles on them. A group of college-age looking students come out of the pizza shop and go next door to the Vapor Lounge. They stand out in front of the lounge for a bit and then they come stand in the middle of the street where the tower in the median is. They stand around the landscaping and just discuss their plans for the evening. Since I am sitting near them, I can overhear their discussion. Ironically, their discussion is about the shooting that had occurred earlier that day, wondering if it was close to the downtown area and trying to figure out where in Providence the shooting had occurred. The spoke fast and it was as if they were anxious about it as it seemed they had not heard details, only that there had been an early morning shooting in a Providence apartment building. The discussion I overhear shifts and I am thankful as it was actually making me a little bit nervous. Their conversation turns lighthearted and to laughter as they decide eventually that they will be heading back to the Vapor Lounge. My eavesdropping session where I cast an occasional smile at the college-aged kids in their direction though I am sure it was obvious I was listening. The bus surprisingly is not running as much as it had been before. Since it is Saturday evening, I suppose it has less stops than on a week day. Most of the traffic in the area remains pedestrians mostly early on. It is not until closer to performance time that the people in the area start to gather, waiting for the doors to open for the curtain call. The show shuttle is running around transferring people to the area where they are starting to gather for the fashion show outside the Providence Performing Arts Center. Many look to be college age students, dressed in a trendy manner. Most of the group is of females with the occasional men accompanying them in large groups. There are also many families which are likely to be related to those who are participants in the fashion show. People are taking a lot of photos together outside of the Providence Performing Arts Center. The atmosphere is light and compared to the last time when there was a large name performer at the center, there are no people scrunching together to try to get in the door first. People are simply standing outside the Providence Performing Arts Center waiting but are laughing and having a good time. There are a few groups of very posh dressed women. They look as though they do not belong with the college age students. I presume they are fashionistas out on the town to enjoy the fashion show and to admire the pieces that students had worked on. Surprisingly, I see a group of people all dressed in black, making a beeline from the parking garage and move quickly through the crowd. They carried with them briefcases and tablets with a modeling agency logo on the side. As it gets closer to the time of the Rhode Island School of Design fashion presentation at 7 p.m., a crowd starts to grow. Some people had been standing outside the theater around 5:45 but it seems as though they are just enjoying the evening, socializing with others as they stand upon the stars that line the front doors to the entrance of the theater. It is not until about 6:15 that people really start to trickle in and a crowd steadily streams in around 6:45 p.m. Still, the crowd remains to be mostly made of females. There do not seem to be any children and very few elderly awaiting in the crowd of people to get in. Everyone just appears to be happy and they are a distraction from the people on the opposite side of the street. The people on the opposite side are mostly just walking, parking cars in the metered parking or going into one of the eateries. They do take a glance at the sign above the theater but do not seem to give it a second thought. I sit and I wait and watch the crowd on the streets. It has hit 6:45 p.m. and the last people are trickling into the Providence Performing Arts Center. There are a few starting to hurry as they know that the presentation is starting soon. I cannot help but to peak my head inside the theater close to 7 p.m. just to look inside and I see information about the fashion show. I find that it is a big performance by the seniors at the university that are showcasing their final projects and that there will be several critics that sound famous. One being a designer and one working for a fashion magazine. There will also be other fashion students who will be showcasing their garments as well. This explains why some people are dressed casually, some trendy and then some very posh and fashionable. This appears to be quite an event for the students who are participating and it helps me to understand more about the people in attendance. When I am noticed inside the door reading the information, I duck my head back out into the street and after the crowd has all gone in, it seems very quiet and serene. The Providence Performing Arts Center seems very quiet for the next hour as I know that there is some serious fashion business going on inside the doors. There are a few people trickling around in the downtown area but since it is after 7 p.m. and the majority of the people are already inside the performing arts center, the stragglers seem to be just going to the pizza joint, the yogurt shop, or even a few to the Vapor Lounge. There are a few people who just seem to be walking for exercise, including one group of girls in workout gear running with a small dog. For the rest of the hour and until 8 p.m., it seems very quiet. It seems that there might be a few people leaving the Providence Performing Arts Center close to 8 p.m., probably having already seen the part of the presentation they had hoped. It is shortly after that I decide to gather my things and leave to think about what type of people I have seen in downtown Providence that night. When looking back at the “Ethnos and Cosmos” chapter and thinking about the people I had seen during my observation, I realized I really had not seen too many groups of people of race. It was more like the groups I had seen were of mixed race. The one large family of laughing people who had gone into the yogurt shop were African American, but they did not seem to appear to have a presence of ethnocentrism such as Anderson mentions in “The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life.” According to Anderson, these people who are ethnocentric typically have a loyalty to their own skin color (189). It was simply a family of people rather than a group of individuals who just happened to be of the same race. They may have not all been related but they behaved the way some families do when they are on an outing so there was no indication of ethnocentrism. When I thought about the other groups of people who I had seen, I noticed that most of the people who were going into the theater for the fashion show were mostly white. The posh women who were dressed up seemed to be quite the opposite of who might be black ethnocentric people. Instead, they seemed to be Caucasian ethnocentric women. It is likely that they carried themselves in that manner and dressed in that way because they did feel like they were attending an elite event and behaved in a way to kind of shield themselves from others, such as Anderson describes (190). However, it was from the white perspective rather than the black. It seemed as if those women were actually shielding themselves off from anyone else and might possibly have been a little on the snobby side. Though they were all white, I do not think that there was any evidence that they were prejudice against any race but just against other groups of people in general though Anderson mentions that many blacks view white ethnocentrism as form of prejudice (191). They might just be those kinds of people who acted as if they were just in a caste-like position and who knows whether or not they had issues with race but it seemed to be more of an issue of status (194). Despite what Anderson might say that few blacks and whites might interact, I never saw that there seemed to be an obvious concern. The groups of people I saw were mostly mixed races of both black and white women and men, and as said before, mostly women. Perhaps there is no cosmo and ethno social gathering in the cosmopolitan canopy present here as it seems that there is no implication of a racial divide in this particular scenario such as Anderson discusses (196). The only indication of racial issues that I ever picked up on was when the group of white kids were talking about the shooting in Providence that had occurred. I heard them mention that it was probably in the ghetto which is a term that Anderson does use. It is a stereotype that whites often associate with blacks or people of lower class and that discussion I overheard was the only one that seemed to suggest any ethnocentrism. What is ironic is that since I was near the theater and I compared it to Anderson’s beliefs, I found them to be completely wrong. He states, “Still some black people view the symphony and the theater as ‘white’ places and consider the activities conducted there off limits for black people,” (212). There may have been people of other races staying away because they felt like they did not belong but based on the crowd of people outside the Providence Performing Arts Center, there did not seem to be an issue of racial divide because there were blacks and whites interacting together at the theater. It was a performance to show of students’ work though and perhaps students are more open-minded. However, since they attend a university, it also is possible that the performance appealed to particular crowd because it would be people who had the necessary funding to attend college which would include those people who are in search of higher education and are typically from middle and upper class families. These are merely assumptions though as it was not evident in observation. I believe there is a type of culture in the particular area on Weybosset Street because it appeals to people who are fond of cultural events. This group included students who were striving to get an education so though there may not be a racial divide, there is likely a class divide. There are a lot of people who cannot afford to go to a prestigious school and would therefore, not be participating in an event that was featured around fashion. Many people cannot afford fashion trends so the event itself drew in a certain type of crowd who likely had money to invest in school or fashion and found it appealing. This is not to disregard the people who had money to go out to eat. Everyone seemed middle and upper class if I were to closely analyze it so perhaps there was an absence of a culture that I had not originally acknowledged. There just might be a putative canopy that existed that I did not really recognize until I sat down and gave it thought. Who was present at Weybosset did not tell much but the people who were not there told a much bigger story. Works Cited Andereson, Elijah. The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life. New York City, NY: W.W. Norton, 2011. Print. Read More