PROVIDENCE — Vincent A. Cianci Jr. waltzed into the Starbucks at the Biltmore Hotel yesterday morning, intent on getting coffee. Then he spied a queue snaking almost to the door.

“Let’s find somewhere quieter, that line reminds me too much of jail …  or the DMV,” said Cianci.

Retreating to the McCormick & Schmick’s restaurant down busy Dorrance Street, Cianci was greeted cheerfully by startled passersby. “Hey mayor, good to see ya, howareya?” chirped a middle-aged woman.

“Not bad for an older American,” Cianci replied.

“Hey Buddy, no toupee?” a male well-wisher asked the now resolutely bald Cianci.

“I took the squirrel off my head,” said Cianci. “Should have done it years ago.”

Settling into his coffee with a side of tomato juice, Cianci was asked by a reporter if he encountered much homosexual activity during his four years and six months in the federal prison in New Jersey, where he served his sentence after his 2002 conviction on federal racketeering charges.

“Not really…there are more gays in City Hall than in jail,” said Cianci.

Prison life wasn’t much fun, Cianci said. Survival means strict adherence to rules, and there is so little opportunity for distraction.

“You mind your own business and stay out of controversy,” said Cianci. “I was safer in prison than I was on the outside.”

Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald said famously that there are no second acts in American life. He never met Buddy Cianci.

This morning at 10 a.m. on WPRO-AM, the 66-year-old Cianci begins yet another personal reinvention by heading back to the future. Once Rhode Island’s highest-rated radio talk show host, Cianci kicks off a show that he says will deal, naturally, but not exclusively, with politics.

“We’ll also talk about movies, books, the arts, things that interest me,” said Cianci.

“I see myself as an entertainer,” said Cianci. “I’m not a journalist, I never aspired to be a journalist.”

Entertainment apparently pays well. Cianci declined to talk about his salary, but didn’t quibble with reports that peg it at $250,000 a year or more. He is also negotiating for a gig with a local television station, Channel 6 (WLNE), which for years has presented the lowest-rated news program in the Providence market.

Cianci looks different. It isn’t just the toupee. He has shed about 40 pounds and appears healthier; he didn’t smoke for the last two years he was in prison. (He lights up occasionally now). And in the morning, Cianci no longer has a puffy-faced, red-eyed, out-till-last-call look.

Cianci says he read 500 books in jail, where his job was working in the prison library. He says he focused on history and biography.

Cianci says that his prison experience has made him more reflective and introspective. And he insists his latest incarnation is more than mere marketing.

“I am more respectful of people,” said Cianci. “I’ve never been more at peace with myself than I am now.”

But it hasn’t curbed his opinion-on-everything persona.

Asked about the new GTECH building near the Providence Place mall downtown, Cianci said that it must have sent the late Antoinette Downing, the city’s historic preservation doyenne, “spinning in her grave.”

“Governor Carcieri and Mayor Cicilline decided with all their urban planning expertise to let that building go up,” said Cianci. “They did it in exchange for giving GTECH a no-bid 20-year contract for the state lottery and supposedly keeping the company from moving to Massachusetts.

“GTECH was never going to go to Massachusetts. This is what happens when you try to bluff the guys who make the poker machines. Who do you think won that one?” said Cianci. “Is it a horrible building, no. Could we have done better, yes.”

Worse, Cianci said, is the Waterplace Condominium project, which looks like a “municipal detention center” or something “out of the Soviet Union.”

There have been few detractors in Rhode Island since he left federal custody at the end of July.

“I’ve been amazed at the reception, it has really been great,” said Cianci.

A Brown University public-opinion survey released last week showed that the former mayor’s term in prison did nothing to dim his attraction as a radio talker. Sixty-three percent said Cianci’s conviction and sentence would either make them more likely to listen to his show, or would not have an impact on whether they tuned in.

Yesterday, Cianci strolled around downtown Providence and stopped at the Beaux-Arts City Hall, which he once ruled as a duchy. He was greeted enthusiastically. Several city workers gushed over him, the women kissing him on the cheek.

“How are you mayor, you look good,” said George Smith Jr., a member of the Board of Canvassers. Cianci appointed Smith to the post in 2002.

The official reason for the trip to “The Hall” was that Cianci wanted to register to vote — Rhode Island voters last year approved a ballot question that allows convicted felons to vote — but it was clear he chose the eve of his reentry to radio to generate publicity for today’s opening show.

Still disputing his conviction, Cianci said, “I lived by the system, but the system is not right 100 percent of the time.” The view that he was more corrupt than most political figures, he asserts, is a “myth.”

“In jail you find out that there are a lot of people who deserve to be there and a lot of people who don’t belong there,” said Cianci.

Cianci says he knows there are detractors, people who believe WPRO should not be giving Rhode Island’s most notorious political felon a microphone.

“It’s a free country,” said Cianci. “If you don’t like it, don’t listen.”

smackay@projo.com