How To Have A Riot: A True Tale of RISD and Brown Students Gone Wild!
by Alex Lukas
“Who expected Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University students, my god, you think they’d teach them a little more than that for the $25,000 in tuition they pay. You think they’d teach them a little more than to go to a pagan ritual and light a fire in a tunnel.”
Buddy Cianci, Mayor of Providence, May 2nd, 1993.
The RISD Tunnel is a setting for innumerable stories, a lot of rumors, and a few legends; any number of which, in all three categories, are pure bullshit. Rumors fly anytime there are shadows, and if there is one thing the Tunnel has a lot of, it’s pitch-black darkness. Talk of vampires, secret passages, giant rats, hidden entrances in East Side backyards and compromises to the structural city above are commonplace amongst those who talk of “the hole under Providence.” Both ends of the tunnel are sealed tight today (if anyone feels qualified to write a “How to Open a Door That’s Been Welded Shut” article, holla), trapping inside what was left of countless adventures, leaving us with only our memories. Everyone who has ever been there has their own, and for a certain generation, the very mention of the tunnel brings up one legendary story: the Riot.
A century has passed since ground was broken in 1906 on the East Side Railroad Tunnel that runs through College Hill. The RISD Tunnel, as it is commonly referred to, was designed to connect downtown Providence’s new Union Station to the East Bay communities of Warren and Bristol on one consolidated electrified railroad. Service continued south to Fall River and provided a new route for the rail link north to Boston. Opened in 1908, electrified service lasted for close to 30 years, until the Great Hurricane washed out much of the track bed. The combination of dwindling ridership and a generally ailing New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company contributed to the decision to end passenger service in 1938. Freight, mostly oil and coal, was moved through the tunnel through the 1970s, until in the very early ’80s the cost of maintenance outweighed the profits from keeping the tunnel active. The last train through was on a forgotten day around 1981.
Providence & Worcester Railroad, a former subsidiary of the NYNH&H and owners of the track at the time, realized quickly that the value of the real estate between the tunnel and Union Station outweighed the potential for future profits of the railroad line. Creating Capitol Properties Inc., the P&W sold off their holdings of land for substantial profits. The rail viaduct, having become obsolete, was torn down in the name of development (most notably for the Citizens Bank Building). Finally, with the relocation of the station and the main line of the Northeast Corridor, the tunnel was all but forgotten.
Abandoned and overgrown by trees and bushes, ignored by the city and under the radar of the authorities, the Tunnel took on the lawless order common to such places, where a sort of “Code of the Streets” ruled. But, like any place, when too many people got hip to the hipness, the popularity of the tunnel was its own undoing.By the early ’90s, the hole under College Hill had taken on a new life. It had become a mecca for Rhode Island graffiti writers, a party spot for college students and a general destination for those wanting to do whatever. Opening beneath Benefit Street onto a right-of-way ending above North Main Street, the Tunnel sat in the center of everything. Abandoned and overgrown by trees and bushes, ignored by the city and under the radar of the authorities, the Tunnel took on the lawless order common to such places, where a sort of “Code of the Streets” ruled. But, like any place, when too many people got hip to the hipness, the popularity of the tunnel was its own undoing.
The events of May 1st 1993 started as a followup gathering to a Halloween party the year before, one of many previous gatherings in the Tunnel. On October 31st, 1992, about 100 people gathered in costumes inside to play drums and dance late into the night. It ended with the arrival of five slightly confused but otherwise tolerant members of the Providence Fire Department. They extinguished the central bonfire and told the remaining ghouls and goblins to go home. The sequel in May didn’t end so well.
The month of April always makes Providence nicer; the fresh spring air reminds you that the city does not, in fact, suck. Fliers advertising the May Day gathering were distributed by any number of people in any number of locations, from RISD, to Brown, all the way up the old railroad line in Boston.
“MAY 1ST, MIDNIGHT, THE TRAIN TUNNEL, destroy, play, smoke and drink”
The number of attendees varies depending on who tells the story, from 100 according to the Police, 200 according to the Boston Globe, 300 as reported by the Providence Journal (down to 150 the day after that), all the way up to 500 recounted today. Regardless, there were a lot of people, drums, puppets and fires in the semi-flooded, always dank, dark and dripping train tunnel.
At some point after midnight two RISD Public Safety Officers, tipped off by large numbers of people headed that way, entered the Tunnel. The main event was some distance inside and around a bend (directly underneath Benefit Street, where the Tunnel curves eight degrees, then continues straight through to the Gano Street portal). The party was deep enough inside where it could be heard but not necessarily seen from the entrance. The RISD Officers, concerned for the safety of the students inside, began to tell everyone to get out. Initially, people were compliant, but when they reached the epicenter of the party, the RISD Officers began to encounter resistance. In an effort to break up the crowd, they attempted to stop some of the drumming by taking away the students’ sticks. Brian Chippendale was a sophomore at the time and was playing drums in the center of the crowd. As he tells the story:
“I remember seeing a couple people come up with flashlights, someone taking my sticks and looking around and seeing a police officer with a bunch of drumsticks in his hand, and taking them back and playing some more, because we obviously outnumbered these people. It was like our territory and it definitely didn’t seem that serious; it was harmless. I think that a lot of people were leaving at that point and RISD security was trying to take my snare drum, which was tied around my waist. I fell right on top of him. We went down and a bunch of people jumped on top, so I’m just like, ‘Here we go,’ rolling around with a police guy. Lots of scuffling ensued. At some point, I was face down, with my arm behind me, and I remember [the officer] going ‘Bring your other arm around behind ya, bring your other arm around behind ya,’ and then he [pepper] sprayed me in the face.
“So I eventually brought [my arm] around and he arrested me, marched me and a friend of mine, Seth, out. Seth was dressed in a golden tuxedo with an alien head on, saying something like ‘What’d we do? I’m an alien, he’s a rat.’ [Chippendale was wearing a homemade papier-mâchè rat mask.]
“By then, everyone had gone out to [Benefit] street. As soon as they marched us out in handcuffs everyone went, ‘Fuck that,’ and just went nuts. Shit started flying and I got stuck in a police car.”
The Providence Journal reported that, “A police car carrying Chippendale and [Seth] Rumsey inched north on Benefit Street and as it approached Meeting Street, the crowd pelted it with rocks and bottles.”
“Everyone I talked to later said they felt totally liberated,” Chippendale recalls, “Everyone was saying ‘It was great, I was throwing bottles at cops!’”
“The sky just opened up and bottles started coming towards us,” Sergeant Gary Nevins told the Providence Journal at the time. “Let’s get out of here—let’s just leave the cars and get out of here,” he remembered saying to Kenneth Simoneau, another Providence Officer who had just been hit in the face with an unidentified object and was bleeding profusely. The two, along with Patrolwoman Sandra Kittell, managed to make it to the fire station at the corner of Meeting Street and North Main, where the rest of the Providence Police force was responding to their calls for help.
“There, the city’s entire on–duty force of about 30 officers assembled,” according to the report in the Journal. “Arming themselves with billy clubs and pepper gas, (the police) marched back up Meeting Street to Benefit.”
“Shoulder to shoulder, nightsticks at the ready, the platoon of police officers…(drove) the crowd back along Angel and Waterman Streets, into dorms, apartments and backyards along the way. The rocks and bottles kept coming, even as the crowd thinned,” wrote Journal reporter Laura Meade Kirk in the May 4th issue.
The next morning, the legend began to form. Some of the content of the fliers as well as the drumming and bonfires led the Providence media to declare that the party was some sort of satanic ritual. Leading with the story, Channel 12 used the sensationalist line “Police say it began as a satanic party inside an abandoned railroad tunnel. It ended in a wild riot.”After about two hours of chaos, eight students had been arrested, three police cruisers damaged and seven police officers injured, the most seriously being Sgt. John Kaya who required 60 stitches to his head after being hit by a piece of concrete.
The next morning, the legend began to form. Some of the content of the fliers as well as the drumming and bonfires led the Providence media to declare that the party was some sort of satanic ritual. The television interviewed experts on the occult speculating on the satanic nature of the event while showing students with skulls painted on their faces. Despite the lack of any substantiation of these claims, the media, especially the local news stations, latched on to the catch phrase. Leading with the story, Channel 12 used the sensationalist line “Police say it began as a satanic party inside an abandoned railroad tunnel. It ended in a wild riot.”
Like wildfire, and with more veracity than the rumors of Satanism, accusations began to spread of brutality on both sides. “My people got the [shit] beat out of them,” the Journal quoted Police Chief Bernard Gannon as saying. Downplaying the rumors, Gannon told Channel 10’s Rhondella Richardson, “Whatever it was, satanic, pagan or a Catholic mass, the results were the same: seven officers suffered injuries and are still out of work.” Brown University student Howard Rigberg challenged the police handling of the situation in a piece on the Journal’s Op-Ed page, writing, “The actions of the Providence Police seemed more geared to provoke the ire of the people who had gathered than to dispel the threat of violence and calmly disperse the crowd.” Channel 12 News footage shows one unidentified officer yelling at a student, saying, “That’s what you’re going to stand there and tell me? That we escalated it, that we should stand by there and discuss it? It’s not discussable. That’s not the job of the police.”
This paper’s very own Matt Obert wrote at the time, in the now-defunct NicePaper: “People who were there saw cops savagely beating kids, smashing video cameras, and spraying pepper gas indiscriminately at confused pedestrians. The police treated students like animals, herding them from one place to another in an effort to disperse the mob.”
Who knows which accusations had more veracity? People on both sides got hurt. RISD student Wendy Jackson summed it up on the Channel 10 News the next day, saying with a sheepish shrug, “Everyone did something wrong last night. I mean, the police did not act appropriately, and once the police arrived, neither did we.”
A year later, in 1994, Chippendale was finishing up probation for a charge of disorderly conduct, Sgt. Kaya was suing the city and the Police Department for its lack of riot gear, and the state was in the process of sealing both entrances with the metal walls you see today. The Tunnel, as it had existed, was no more. It would continue to be a spot for high school kids to smoke weed and paint graffiti while RISD students did installations for years after the riot. In August of 2000, the former right-of-way running from the tunnel to North Main Street was cleared of the trees and plants that had grown up over the previous 20 years. Plans were underway for the development of the properties on both sides of the right of way. The land was turned into a parking lot for million-dollar condos. While it is amazing that it took so long, it marked the end of one of the last wild, forgotten and truly beautiful places in Providence.
The story of that night 13 years ago seems to have only grown over time. I was in 7th grade when it all went down, hearing about it only six and a half years after it happened. By that time the story involved tear gas, riot helmets and burning police cars being pushed off of cliffs. Everyone in Providence at the time whom I mention the Tunnel to claims to have been there. By my estimate the number of people in attendance must have been close to 30,000, with roughly every man, woman and child in the city making an appearance. But such is the nature of any good legend; it survives off of rumors to grow and become bigger than the story itself. Such is the tale of the Riot in the Tunnel.
Alex Lukas is the author if the forthcoming Under Providence: A History of the East Side Railroad Tunnel, to be released eventually by Cantab Publishing. Anyone with an interesting story to tell — true or not — or photo to share, should get in touch: alex [at] cantabpublishing [dot] com.
