☕ Kaboom

Monday, June 1, 2026 | Edition #39

GOOD MORNING, WARWICK. Welcome to the month of June, which, by the way, is named after the Roman goddess of marriage, Juno. She was the queen of the Roman gods and the wife of King Jupiter. 2,000 years later, we still honor her with naming rights to the 6th month of the year. Imagine the NIL dollars she's missing out on right now.

The numbers behind the American wedding industry are genuinely unhinged. Rhode Island alone hosts nearly 7,000 weddings each year, with close to 15% of them taking place in June. Average wedding costs here land somewhere between $65,000 and $80,000. That's some serious cheddar. And studies show that anywhere from 56-67% of couples go into debt to pull it off.

Not only are weddings expensive for the bride, the groom, and any family members willing to help, but they're also expensive for those attending. The numbers can obviously fluctuate depending on a ton of variables, but according to several studies, the average cost to attend a wedding is more than $600 per person. Members of the wedding party often spend more than $1,000 all-in.

Whether you're hosting or attending this summer, here's to hoping the filet is cooked according to your preference, the DJ doesn't try to sell his hip-hop mixtape to the Gen Z guests, and the open bar stays open long enough to justify the gift you gave off the registry. Welcome to June. It's expensive here.

Here's what's goin' ahn.

⏱️ Sunset Time: 8:14PM

🌖Moon Phase: Waning Gibbous

⛽ Avg. Gas Price: $4.26 - Prices finally seeming to fall (click here to find the cheapest gas near you)

💧 Chance of Rain: 20%

I tried to negotiate more hours in the day directly with the sun. It was not interested. I looked into hiring an intern. My wife said no.

All jokes aside, in order to continue producing a newsletter worth reading, I simply need more time to write it. So for the time being, we’re moving to weekly! Before I lock in a day, I want to hear from you. Do you want to read this on Mondays to start the week? Fridays to close it out? Something else entirely? Thirty seconds. Tell me here.

Picture this: you're driving through town, you spot a cop jogging down the street, and your first instinct is panic. Relax. Put the burrito down. He's not chasing you. He's carrying a torch.

Law enforcement officers from departments across Rhode Island recently laced up for the annual Law Enforcement Torch Run, benefiting Special Olympics Rhode Island. Police, firefighters, corrections officers, and other public safety agencies ran relay legs throughout the state, passing the "Flame of Hope" from community to community before converging at URI for the opening of the 2026 Special Olympics Rhode Island Summer Games. Rhode Island is apparently one of the few states where police, fire, corrections, and justice agencies all participate together, which honestly sounds like the setup to a very wholesome joke.

The run supports more than 4,000 Special Olympics Rhode Island athletes who train and compete year-round, and organizers say the event keeps growing through volunteer participation and fundraising across the state. So next time you're stuck in a mystery traffic jam and finally creep up to find a group of officers jogging down the road with a torch, maybe ease off the horn. They're not the reason you're late. You left late. And they're out here doing something genuinely good.

Read the full story here

If you grew up in Warwick and went to Pilgrim, you probably have a memory tied to that building. A hallway, a teacher, a Friday night game, a bubbler that produced liquid that was technically water in the same way that a gas station hot dog is technically food. Last week, the new one got a little closer to replacing it.

Construction workers, city leaders, students, and teachers gathered at the site of the new Pilgrim High School for a topping off ceremony, marking the placement of the final structural beam. Keeping with construction tradition, the beam was painted white and topped with an American flag and an evergreen tree before a crane guided it to its resting place on the second story. Students and workers were invited to sign the beam, leaving their names literally built into the structure. As far as legacy moves go, that's a pretty good one.

The new school is part of the $350 million bond Warwick voters approved in 2022 to replace both Pilgrim and Toll Gate. Work now shifts to interior and exterior systems. The bones are in place. Pilgrim is going up.

Read the full story here

If you were home Saturday afternoon and heard a loud boom that rattled your windows, you were not imagining things. Your neighbor did not finally snap. It was a meteor.

Around 2:06 PM on Saturday, a meteor estimated to be about 3 feet wide entered Earth's atmosphere near the Massachusetts/New Hampshire state line, traveling at roughly 75,000 miles per hour before exploding 40 miles above the surface. NASA confirmed it was a natural object, not space debris or a rogue satellite, which is somehow both reassuring and less interesting. The energy released at breakup was estimated to be equivalent to about 300 tons of TNT, which would explain why people across Southern New England reported their houses shaking. A 3-foot rock did that. Three feet.

For context, most meteors are about the size of a grain of sand, which is why we don't hear anything during meteor showers. This one was slightly larger. The American Meteor Society says it likely disintegrated before hitting the ground, so no crater, no catastrophe, just a very loud Saturday afternoon reminder that space is enormous and occasionally drops things on us without warning. Welcome to June, Warwick. The universe wanted to make an entrance.

Read the full story here

Saturday, June 6: 🎶 Symphony in the Park | Info Link | Pawtuxet Park, 5PM. The Warwick Symphony Orchestra takes the stage with fireworks over Salter's Grove to close it out. Bring a blanket. Outside food welcome. Best free Saturday night in June.

Saturday, June 6: ⚾ Sandlot Saturday | Info Link | Norwood Field, 42 Frederick St., 6:30PM. Free pickup softball followed by an outdoor screening of The Sandlot, hosted by the Norwood Neighborhood Association. Rain date June 13. If you’re not going, you’re killing me, Smalls.

Saturday, June 6: 🛼 Rhode Island Classics Bout | Tickets | 5-7 PM. Free parking, all ages. Providence Roller Derby brings the chaos to Thayer Arena for a themed home-team showdown. Doors open at 4:30.

Beginning Saturday, June 6: 🥬Conimicut Village Community Market | Info Link | 9AM-12PM. Free admission. I will be there filling up the basket. Come meet your neighbors and support local vendors.

Saturday, June 13: 🏃🏼‍➡️Gaspee Days 5K | Sign Up Here | One of Warwick's most iconic events is less than 2 weeks away. The streets will be decked out in red, white, and blue. My friends will be trying to keep pace with my dad. I better see you there.

Where in Warwick was this photo taken? Answer shown at the end.

Confounding (adj.) | con·found·ing | /kənˈfaʊndɪŋ/: bewildering, baffling, defying all logic and reason.

Out-of-staters find a lot of things confounding about Rhode Island. The accent. The coffee milk. The fact that we call a water fountain a bubbler (pronounced bubba-lah). But nothing stops them cold quite like discovering that we consider a 13-minute drive up Route 2 to be an unreasonable commute. They moved here from Atlanta. They sat in traffic for two hours every single day. And we're over here losing our minds because the light at Bald Hill Road took three cycles. We must not take it for granted!

Thanks to Sue H. for submitting today’s word of the day! You can submit a word of the day yourself, here. I’ll be sure to include it in the next edition!

✅ Where in Warwick Answer: That stunning shot was taken from Greenwich Cove, one of Warwick's best kept waterfront secrets. Tucked along the shores of Greenwich Bay off Narragansett Bay, the Cove is accessible from the boat ramp at Goddard Memorial State Park and offers kayaking, paddleboarding, fishing, and, apparently, some of the best sunset views in the city.

What most people don't know is that the southern end of Greenwich Cove is actually listed on the National Register of Historic Places, home to a prehistoric archaeological site with shell middens and stone tools dating back thousands of years. Native Americans were watching sunsets from this exact spot long before any of us got here. Can't blame them.

That's it for today. Make this the best June of your life. Take some risks. Strike up a conversation with a stranger. Get on the dance floor at that wedding this month. Make Juno proud.

Thanks for reading. Keep smiling!