Cuttino Mobley Wants to Open a Medical Marijuana Dispensary in Rhode Island

by joePA | 
from: http://www.brobible.com/

Cuttino Mobley retired from the NBA as a New York Knick in 2008 because of a chronic heart condition. Now he wants to open a medical marijuana dispensary in Rhode Island, where he starred for the University of Rhode Island before being drafted by Houston in 1998. In a profile by the Providence Journal-Bulletin, Mobley stated that he wants to open a "wellness center" in Warwick, RI, because he "wants to help people." He is one of the 18 applications under consideration for opening a dispensary in Rhode Island, which legalized medicinal marijuana for chronic pain in 2009. The state will license three of the 18 applicants. More about why the ex-baller wants to become a greenepreuer and open a dispensary below, via the Providence Journal: 

It was about what he wants to do with the rest of his life. “I want to help people,” he said.

He knows that innumerable people have helped him along the way, from Max Good at Maine Central, to Jim Harrick at URI, who gave him confidence, assistant coach Bill Coen, who made him start to believe in his talent. It’s also the way he was raised, his version of spirituality, the sense that you help others when you can. So he helps fund an AAU team in Philadelphia. He built a basketball court in Africa. He helps out his old high school. He has a foundation in Philadelphia that helps single mothers and homeless kids.

“You get it after a while,” Mobley said. “You know what you’re supposed to do.” One of the things he wants to do now is start a wellness center in Warwick, one that will be allowed to dispense medical marijuana. He says he got interested in the field of wellness both through his own medical condition and those of other people close to him, and adds that the health field is one of the fastest growing in the country.

The plan also is to get more involved in Rhode Island, this state that helped him at a vulnerable time in his life, this state that saw him go from a young, unstructured kid to someone who grabbed the basketball dream and has made the most of it. This state that he feels has tremendous potential, a future he wants to be part of.

“I’ve done well,” he said, “and I want everyone to do well. Let’s all do well together.”

The Keg ‘n’ Casket

BY H.L. Parker
From: http://providencedailydose.com/

According The Providence Journal the City of Providence Board of Licenses has heard a proposal for a new pub in the Wayland Square area,

. . . the proprietors of Monahan Drabble & Sherman Funeral Home propose to open a pub in an old garage space attached to their business at Wayland and Waterman avenues.

The license board began a public hearing on the application last week and then tabled the request temporarily while the proprietors, brothers Mark E. Russell and Robert Russell, both of Country Club Drive, Warwick, consult with Stephen Lewinstein, who has extensive real estate investments in the vicinity.

The plan is for a 60-seat eatery to be called McBride’s Pub, complete with an outdoor patio where the cars now park. They’ll need a bouncer with a velvet rope — people are already dying to get in. (More pix after the jump.)

Search For The Best Burger

Search For The Best Burger

Are you hungry? Burgers, burgers an even more burgers. Have you ever searched for the perfect burger made the way you like it? We went on the hunt for the best burger in the state. Burgers, burgers an even more burgers. Have you ever searched for the perfect burger made the way you like it? We went on the hunt for the best burger in the state. With an empty stomach , the mission was to find the best burger in Rhode Island, and boy I was up for the challenge. First, we hit Stanley’s in central falls to taste their traditional burger recipe. Everybody that walks in Stanley’s know, Stanley burger, onions, pickles, that’s basically the standard burger. They haven’t changed the burger since 1932, so people just know what they like. The diner style atmosphere and friendly service keeps the customers coming back for more and the reputation of great burgers lives on. The food is excellent.

Yellow lobster caught in Bay, one in 30 million

By: Peter Lord
From: http://newsblog.projo.com/

Journal photo / Ruben W. Perez

Denny Ingram shows off a yellow lobster he caught last week in Narragansett Bay.

When Denny Ingram hauled one of his lobster pots in Narragansett Bay's East Passage last week, he found one lobster unlike any he had ever seen. It was golden on top and bright yellow on the sides.

"I thought, holy cow, this is unusual. And no one else around here has ever seen anything like it either," said Ingram.

Yellow lobsters are rare, but not unheard of. When one was brought ashore in Massachusetts last year, several experts said its coloration came from a gene carried by both parents that occurs in about one in 30 million lobsters.

The same figure was cited when a yellow lobster was brought ashore in Maine in 2006.

Slightly more common are blue lobsters. The Audubon Education Center in Bristol has one in its tidal pool that was caught in Narragansett Bay. It replaces another blue lobster that was caught in the Bay in 2003.

"The first blue lobster got too big - about a pound and three quarters - so we released it back into the Bay," said Anne Dimonti, director of the center. "Now we're on our second one and its doing wonderfully."

She said she did some research on lobsters with unusual colors and found estimates varied widely. For blue lobsters, she said estimates ranged from one in a million to one in 20 million. She thinks one in 4 million seemed to be the most cited figure.

"Being born a blue lobster is not so rare; what's rare is surviving into adulthood as a blue lobster," Dimonti said. "When you're a bright blue baby lobster walking around on the ocean bottom, somebody is going to pick you off very quickly."

Lobster shells are colored with blue, yellow and red pigments, so genetic variations are expected.

These have been stressful times for local lobstermen. Shell disease is damaging large percentages of their catch. Prices are down. Expenses are up. And recently biologists for a regional regulatory agency recommended a five year moratorium on lobster fishing because they said lobster populations were in trouble.

Lobstermen insisted their catches are fine. The agency postponed any action and ordered further studies.

Ingram plans to keep his unusual lobster on display at the fishermen's co-op at the State Pier in Newport, where 22 shellfishermen sell their catches of lobsters and crabs to the public. Its hours are 1 to 6 p.m. on weekdays and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends.

The lobster is about a pound and a quarter, he said.

"A perfect little male."

Later, he expects to donate it to an aquarium.

Dimonti said lobsters are so territorial the yellow lobster would fight with the blue one if it was added to the Audubon Society's tidal pool. She said some bigger aquariums might have room for such an unusual animal.

RI gov signs bill banning indoor prostitution

By Ray Henry Associated Press Writer

PROVIDENCE, R.I.—Police could start targeting some of the more than 30 suspected brothels operating across Rhode Island after Gov. Don Carcieri signed legislation Tuesday banning indoor prostitution in the only state where it was legal besides parts of Nevada.

The new law, which took effect immediately, makes prostitution a misdemeanor crime regardless of where it occurs. Prostitutes will face up to six months in prison for a first offense, while customers and prostitutes convicted of a subsequent offense could be punished by a maximum one-year sentence.

State officials hope the new law will help drive the brothels out of business, either because they voluntarily shut down or are targeted by police.

"This legislation will give law enforcement officials the tools that they need to curb prostitution in our state, make our communities safer," Carcieri said before signing the bills at a Statehouse ceremony.

It's unclear how quickly police will try using the new law to thwart a sex industry built off a decades-old legislative mishap.

State lawmakers inadvertently opened the loophole in 1980 when they passed legislation trying to crack down on prostitutes and their customers creating havoc in the West End of Providence. They adopted a law targeting those who sold sex in public, but it was silent on indoor prostitution. Judges would later rule the change had the effect of legalizing paid sex in private.

That legal gap allowed dozens of suspected brothels to operate in the state's cities and suburbs, including many thinly disguised as Asian spas advertising services such as body rubs and table showers in a weekly newspaper. Until recently, police had struggled to prosecute those involved in the trade.

In 2003, a state judge dismissed charges against prostitutes working just blocks from City Hall. Their lawyer admitted the women offered sex for cash, but he said it didn't matter because indoor prostitution was legal.

Few police departments said they were ready to launch mass raids against the spas, but Pawtucket police Maj. Arthur Martins said his department will investigate at least four suspected brothels operating in his city. School children cross in front of one of them on their way to class.

"It's no secret what's occurring inside these spas," he said.

Attorney General Patrick Lynch said some brothel owners may simply close or stop offering sex instead of risking arrest. Police could enforce the law by sending undercover detectives into suspected brothels, he said.

Critics of the legislation have argued it may penalize destitute or drug-addicted women, including some who may be victims of human trafficking. The new law allows accused prostitutes to be acquitted if they claim they were threatened with violence, had their immigration paperwork stolen or were held against their will.

While individual prostitutes may be arrested and prosecuted, Lynch said his office was primarily interested in targeting criminal ringleaders.

"The point is, we'll go from the person who is selling it, predominantly women. But our target overall is to shut it down," Lynch said. "And the best way to do that is to go after the owners, the pimps, or those that manage these types of operations."

© Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Minors in R.I. can be strippers

By Amanda Milkovits
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE –– Rhode Island teens under 18 can’t work with power saws or bang nails up on roofs.

But dance at strip clubs? Sure. Just as long as the teens submit work permits, and are off the stripper’s pole by 11:30 on school nights.

It’s enough to surprise even those in America’s mecca of striptease and sin –– Las Vegas.

“Everybody buzzes about ‘Nevada and Sin City, tsk, tsk,’ ” said Edie Cartwright, spokeswoman for the Nevada attorney general’s office. “But we regulate it.”

Providence police recently discovered that teen job opportunities extend into the local adult entertainment world while they were investigating a 16-year-old runaway from Boston. The girl told detectives that she worked at Cheaters strip club this spring, and the police got tips about other underage girls working at another club on Allens Avenue.

That’s when the police found that neither state law, nor city ordinance bars minors from working at strip clubs. Those under 18 can’t buy pornography, and no one may take pictures or film minors in sexually suggestive ways. But the law doesn’t stop underage teens from stripping for money. Even if the police saw underage boys or girls on stage at a strip club, they wouldn’t be able to charge them or the club owners with a crime.

“I’ve been doing this a long time,” said youth services Sgt. Carl Weston, “and I can’t find anything that says it’s illegal for a 16-year-old or a 17-year-old to take her top off and dance.”

State law says that anyone who employs a person under 18 for prostitution or for “any other lewd or indecent act” faces up to 20 years in prison and up to $20,000 in fines. But that isn’t enough to prevent underage girls from working in strip clubs, said senior assistant city solicitor Kevin McHugh, who researched the issue a dozen years ago when a teenage dancer was found at a raided strip club.

The term “lewd or indecent” is subjective, McHugh said, and is applied to behavior that’s protected by the First Amendment. “Since we have strip clubs in Providence,” McHugh said, “citizens don’t consider [stripping] lewd.”

With the age of consent at 16 in Rhode Island, the police worry that teenage strippers could take their business to the next level and offer sexual favors –– and it wouldn’t be illegal. State law currently allows indoor prostitution, and two bills intended to ban it have stalled in the General Assembly.

State and federal child labor laws dictate the number of hours and times of days that minors may work, and forbid certain jobs considered to be hazardous. For example, those under 16 can’t work on ladders or pump gas. Youths age 16 and 17 can’t work in manufacturing or excavation.

“Nowhere does it say anything about a kid not being able to strip,” Weston said.

Establishments with city liquor licenses need to keep the teenagers from the booze, but not the stage. “You can’t serve alcohol if you’re under 18,” Weston said, “but you can be the target of a man’s groping hands at age 16.”

But a Rhode Island teen stripper won’t find work in Massachusetts, where state law prohibits anyone from hiring minors under 18 for live performances involving sexual conduct.

Other states have had mixed encounters with the issue.

After a 12-year-old girl was found dancing nude in a club in Dallas last year, the city council swiftly passed rules barring minors from strip clubs and automatically revokes for a year licenses for sex businesses caught employing or entertaining minors.

But an Iowa county judge ruled last year that a striptease by a 17-year-old girl at a strip club was artistic expression protected by the First Amendment. The state attorney general’s office has asked the state Supreme Court to review the ruling.

Nevada, meanwhile, doesn’t let anyone under 18 work in casinos or in public dance halls where there is alcohol — and there are no strip clubs in Nevada without one or the other, or both, said Cartwright, of the attorney general’s office. Minors aren’t even allowed to deliver mail to brothels.

When questioned about Rhode Island’s law, Michael J. Healey, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, offered a copy of the current state law but did not comment for this article.

But Weston, of the Providence police, was adamant that the law should be changed.

“It leads to a societal breakdown,” he said. “These are just little girls.”

amilkovi@projo.com