Joël of the Fraternity wrote:
You are in Rhode Island? Then you could perhaps help me - while in Providence last summer (in a trip from Boston to NY) to pay tribute to HP, I found nearly no mention of HP anywhere, or as I say in my review:
I didn’t see a thing about Lovecraft in the travel guides or in the official city travel literature found on the net. Not a line, nothing when the guides mention the Who’s Who that lived in Providence… It’s like he never lived there. No ‘Lovecraft road’. Also, I didn’t see any Lovecraft mention in commercial signing either – no ‘Shoggoth Pub’, or whatever
Why ? Why ? Why ?
We could start an online petition ?
Joël
Hmm, well. I'm not *in* Rhode Island per se, but I'm not far and various family members live there as well. Not sure how much help I can be - you are right, there's not a lot of Lovecraft "marketing" going on in Providence; I'm not sure that's a bad thing as from what I've seen they tend to turn into "kitcsch" pretty quick. What there is tends to be seasonal (and by seasonal, I mean Halloween..) - same with Poe stuff in Providence.
Why? That I don't know. Perhaps because no daring entrepeneur has tried it yet? Why he's not listed in the Who's Who? I suppose because the people that write those guides aren't Lovecraft fans; like I said, he and Poe tend to only show up in Halloween-oriented tourist guides, etc.. For what it's worth, Rhode Island does an astonishingly poor job of promoting
any of its tourist attractions; it's amazing the number of tourists that show up anyhow.
As for an online petition, an online petition for what, exactly? An online petition for someone to start the Shoggoth pub? (An idea which has GREAT potential, in my opinion, by the way.) You just need to find someone willing to provide startup cash for such an enterprise...
<wanders off pondering decor ideas for the Shoggoth Pub>
"You see, what you thought was a gibbering abomination from the pits of Hell was really just a fruitbat. We get 'em all the time in Salt Lake."
-Benjamin Dean, Doomtown Ep. 8