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11.28.2001 00:07
Bob Kerr
A showdown
in a place
that's special
Ever notice how in many ways it's safer to be a jerk in a really precious place, where the drinks rest on coasters and there are no pickled eggs or beef jerky behind the bar?
There's an unwritten code in these joints, where the bar rag is almost never blood-stained. It says: If you're willing to pay the extra two bucks for Scotch and aren't trying to sell wristwatches out of your overcoat, then you can act up a bit.
There's a frat-house indulgence about it. Amidst the brass fixtures, the pink cocktails in the blender, and the clean shirt on the bartender, the slobbering lout becomes the zany scamp.
"God, Binky, I can't believe you dropped an olive down that woman's dress."
There is some social leeway.
Which might explain why John "The Journalist" DePetro and Artin Coloian didn't get the heave when they acted as they acted a couple of weeks ago.
DePetro, of talk radio, and Coloian, of Providence City Hall, had a spat. But they had it at Raphael's Bar Risto, a watering hole catering to assorted hungers in the heart of Providence's thriving new drinking-and-dining circuit.
If they had had their spat a few blocks away, at The Safari Lounge, or Muldowney's Pub -- places with some memories on the bathroom walls -- a person with a sense of limits might well have told them to put down their drinks and head for the door. In those naturally appointed bars, crude behavior never looks charming.
But Raphael's is stunning: all soft tones and muted transactions, and nothing to read on the walls above the men's-room urinals. It is there that DePetro met Coloian -- in the men's room. Reports differ, as reports from men's rooms often do.
DePetro, a frequent critic of the administration of Mayor Vincent Cianci, and Coloian, Cianci's chief of staff, each say the other started it.
DePetro says that Coloian demanded to know what he was doing there, and made some harsh observations about DePetro's radio show, on WHJJ.
Coloian, who along with Cianci is under indictment in the Plunder Dome corruption investigation, says that DePetro taunted him by saying the FBI was going to get him on corruption charges.
This tacky
exchange spilled out of the men's room and into the restaurant, where Coloian says DePetro seemed to be putting on a show for some women
.
DePetro says Coloian got close to him and demanded to know what he was doing there.
It was a Plunder Dome moment, the kind of ugly social stain that will continue showing up in Providence as those on one side meet those on the other -- at adjoining urinals and other places.
And it took place in one of the shrines to Cianci's endlessly flogged Providence renaissance, a restaurant that can sometimes serve as a playpen for people who just want to get dressed up and act like little kids.
Since the confrontation, DePetro's lawyer and Coloian's lawyer have taken over the verbal exchange. Both have suggested that it would be best if there were no second course in this surf 'n' turf war.
There was apparently no physical contact
in this showdown between the ratings-hungry talk-show host and the indicted right-hand man of an indicted mayor.
It was all within the limits of being a jerk in a really, really nice place, where almost no one shows up unless he or she belongs there.
As far as anyone knows, there was not even one final challenge in the DePetro-Coloian Rumble at Raphael's.
Neither man stared defiantly into the eyes of the other and said, with feeling:
"Let's take this over to The Capital Grille."
Bob Kerr can be reached by
e-mail at bkerr@projo.com
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