At dawn the city may seem to be standing still, but just as the tide is almost certainly in motion even if you can’t see it, so are the stores, shops, and other commercial entities. But while for some enterprises the tide may be rising, for others it may already have gone out. When money is to be made, Venice stops for no one.
The pandemic is slowly retreating here and normal life has taken a few big summer-weekend bounces that give the city the sensation that the old days have returned. On June 2, a national holiday, there were 50,000 tourists in the city (21,000 from the Veneto, 19,000 from other Regions, 10,000 foreigners, half of which were German). However, it’s becoming clear that the old days could have used a lot of improvement.
All those months during lockdown, etc., when so many people hoped that the city could somehow benefit from the forced suspension of so many activities in order to reassess and resolve the problems of the mass tourism monoculture, was time blown away like so many soap bubbles. We’re pretty much right back to where we were in February, 2019.
For example, outdoor tables and chairs were permitted to occupy more space than strictly allowed during the Old Regime in order to accommodate the necessary social distancing; now they might just stay that way, filling up streets and campos, because now we’re used to it (though the owners won’t feel like paying an adjusted tax for occupying more public space). The aforementioned bars and restaurants and other touristic enterprises have been discovering, to their surprise, that manpower is missing. Bluntly, one out of five former employees isn’t coming back. A year and a half has passed, and waiters and chambermaids and many other toilers in the touristic fields have found other jobs. So let’s nab all the foreign workers we can for temporary (low-paid) summer work, even though they haven’t been vaccinated.
As for daily life, naturally I’m glad that people are working again, but this means we’re picking back up with motondoso and sometimes overcrowded vaporettos and cloddish tourists and pickpockets and seagulls ripping the food out of people’s hands in the Piazza San Marco and so forth, with more of the same coming up, no doubt, as restrictions continue to ease. The great forerunner is the Biennale of Architecture; it opened on May 22 and will run until November 21, B.T.U. (Barring The Unforeseen, not British thermal units.) The unforeseen has become a major player now in any undertaking, psychologically if not logistically.
So now that Venice Inc. is trying to get back underway, I paraphrase the famous remark of American President Calvin Coolidge and say that obviously the business of Venice is business. Or, as I put it, thisisvenicewheremoneyisking. And now that we can talk about business in the present tense again, I see the economic landscape, as illustrated by the shops, as divided into two basic categories. And both show the ways in which the Venetian economy has changed over the past two generations or so.
Category 1: Shops that have changed over the years. Category 2: Shops that have closed forever.
Category 1: Walking around the city, I can add my own version of what I call the Venetian litany: “I remember when that was…..”. When Lino would walk along Calle Larga San Barnaba and tell me, door by door, who used to be there, the coal seller or the fish fryer, it seemed exotic, as if change was so long ago. But now I too have seen it as it is happening.
It used to be, some 25 years ago, that when useful shops succumbed they were most often replaced by ones selling “Murano glass” or Carnival masks. Lately, though, when you see yet another useful shop disappear you can assume it will be replaced — well, certainly by supermarkets, they’re everywhere now — by bars/cafes/restaurants, or by hotels. Evidently people come to Venice to eat and sleep, as if it were a convalescent hospital.
Examples are everywhere. The best nursing home in the city is being converted to a hotel (and the worst nursing home appears to be on the same trajectory).
This was the “Ca’ di Dio” nursing home, not only a beautiful facility but a fantastic location on the Riva degli Schiavoni. Too bad those are the very aspects that exert a fatal fascination on hotel developers. It’s been several long and laggy years since the old people were evicted, and the restoration work has only recently picked up again with some seriousness. So yes, another hotel is on the way. There’s always room for one more.
When the skeletons of the two former gas holders near San Francesco de la Vigna were up for renovation not too long ago, scores of families formed a committee to implore the city to convert them to an urgently needed multi-purpose sports center for the students of the nearby high schools. For a while it seemed as if the city had yet to decide, and then the surprise. Renovation has continued, but the citizens are out of luck because this treasure of industrial archaeology is going to be a hotel. Those are only two examples of how a facility useful to Venetians is removed to make room for something that makes money.
In 1969 it seemed perfectly fine that two gas holders had been built next to a 16th-century church designed by Jacopo Sansovino with a facade by Andrea Palladio. I can imagine that the Franciscan monks in their cloisters added the gas works to their daily prayers. (bonificagasometri.com)Work began in January to stabilize the site. Much concrete was seen passing from barges to land.Here is the architect’s rendering of the glorious new incarnation of the old structures. The kids will just have to keep on making do with whatever sports areas have been cobbled together for them around the city because we absolutely need another hotel. I make the futile observation that there are laws that prohibit any construction or alteration that is not in tune with its surroundings. To be fair, these weren’t in tune with their surroundings 50 years ago, either. (Il Gazzettino)
So much for hotels. Let there be restaurants!
This used to be a great family shoe store on via Garibaldi.
I don’t want to bore you to oblivion, but here’s a quick review of the transformation of via Garibaldi, still proudly promoted (not by us) as one of the few places where you can still find real Venetians. Yet many shops that were used every day by the aforementioned Venetians have gradually been removed, one by one. The excellent clothing store has undergone really ambitious renovation to become a restaurant (work appears to be stalled, but there are cartons of wine on the floor); the small deli/supermarket where Claudio reigned behind the case of cheese and butter is now a restaurant; a pork butcher shop dedicated to salame and other such products is a restaurant; the furniture and upholstery store became a bar and gaming salon (closed since the acqua alta of November 11, 2019); the fresh pasta and exotic ingredients shop is now Nevodi Pizzalab for takeaway pizza; a fruit and vegetable stand is now a restaurant.
On the non-comestible side, other stores have also been through various reincarnations that moved successively farther away from ordinary life. The bank became a hardware store (could have been useful except that somehow whatever you needed on Friday was expected to be delivered next Wednesday. This went on for at least two years until it folded) and now it’s a real estate agency. We miss the bank.
The name “Salumeria” (salame and similar pork products) is so wonderfully generic, like shops that still have “Latteria” (milk) carved on their lintels from long ago. Now it’s a bar/cafe’.Another salumeria just down the street from the one above is currently selling cheap clothing. The meat display case is still inside, loaded now with T-shirts and sweaters and shoes. At least these are everyday items, nothing fancy or touristic.This was a scene that stabbed my heart with an icicle. In late December 2019 the dry-goods store had to move out because the landlord raised the rent. This is the classic scenario. Stores keep closing, not because they have no customers, but because the landlord wakes up and thinks he or she would like to have more money. Up goes the rent, out go the tenants, and eight out of ten times (seems like) what comes in is a restaurant or bar. It’s obvious that you can’t sell enough pajamas and tablecloths to make thousands of euros a month more for rent.The shop went back quite a way and contained so many things you need if you lead a normal life: Pajamas. underwear, ribbon, zippers, socks, dishtowels, ordinary towels, sheets, bandanas… Naturally I expected to see a restaurant or bar take its place, because God knows we need more of those. But a year and a half later the shop is still closed, so whatever master plan the owner had devised that required throwing out the socks and underwear isn’t going quite as he or she expected, and meanwhile that’s a year and a half of rent that he/she didn’t receive. Sometimes you just roll snake eyes.Another stab was delivered to my heart when I discovered that the little deli by the church of San Martino had closed in October. In Venetian, the person owning this sort of all-purpose little grocery (prosciutto, cheese, bread, wine, oil, etc.) is called a “biavarol” (bee-yah-vah-ROL). The name comes from “biade” (bee-YAH-deh), meaning fodder. Centuries ago that was where you bought your horse feed because yes, there were horses in Venice; then the products increased to grain and seeds, and gradually other provisions. Like many such small shops, it was often run by a family — in this case, since 1985, although the shop itself was already active in 1907. But as is also often the case, the children took other paths, the parents retired, and so here we are. There was a biavarol, Lino recalls, at the Ponte Trevisan by San Trovaso, and the word “BIADE” was visible above the door until not many years ago. Then, when the biavarol retired, the new owners sold trendy clothes and the word “biade” disappeared. “That’s really a shame,” Lino says. “It was a wonderful relic.”“Seeking a biavarol to continue a century-long story.” As this article recounts, everybody in the neighborhood frequented the shop — there isn’t anything like it nearby — but after 35 years at work Elisabetta and Francesco wanted to retire and spend time with the grandchildren. They’re ready to rent it, though, to anyone who will pick up where they left off. No trendy clothes, thanks.
Actually, there are plenty of places that change that don’t turn into restaurants.
This used to be a huge store selling glass. Now it’s a huge store selling pet supplies. Supply follows demand, as Adam Smith probably said. This is one case where the dog- and cat-mad locals got the benefit of a change, as nobody here needs “Murano glass.”Butcher shops just can’t seem to keep going. The kids want to do something else in life and anyway, with the population shrinking by the month, jewelry clearly has a better chance at survival than pork chops. I’m glad the new people left that marvelous relief carving of the beef.Further along the street near the Rialto Market is yet another defunct butcher shop. Fun fact: Venice was the home of one of Europe’s largest slaughterhouses in the mid-1800’s, just after Padova, Vienna and Rome. If you think the streets are unpleasant when jammed with people, try to imagine the calle de la Beccaria near San Giobbe when it was time to drive the cows, horses, sheep, and pigs to their doom. In the summer. Not made up.I don’t know what this shop originally sold, but at least it’s not a restaurant. As you see, some bright sparks have made it into a social-message emporium. Half-hidden by the condensation is a large tote bag proclaiming that “Plants are better than people.” This is original, if a bit antisocial, but I assume they’re thinking of popcorn and peonies and not kudzu, Venus flytraps, killer algae, purple loosestrife, water hyacinth, castor beans, deadly nightshade, wolfsbane, poison hemlock, rosary pea, or your neighborhood oleander tree.
Apartments for rent: Of course this is a business too, and by now a very big one. The pandemic across Europe pretty much obliterated last year’s crop of tourists, but they are coming back. Collectively calumniated in the popular mind as “Airbnb,” apartments for tourists are offered by scores of other companies.
The continuing depopulation of Venice has left ever-more apartments empty, so of course they’ve become another commodity. Venice is far from unique in this, as we all know, but the sheer quantity has distorted (or is the result of the distortion) of Venetian life. Now that the apartments are being registered and regulated, virtually all of Venice’s some 3,000 streets (calle, calesela, ruga, salizada, ramo, etc.) has at least one door with an official tag indicating a touristic apartment within. We knew there were lots, but now that we can see them it’s a bit unnerving. Still, all those people who rail against Airbnb as the destroyer of Venetian life need to recognize that nobody has forced the apartment owner to do this, and otherwise the apartment would most likely sit empty, which isn’t a positive thing at all.
“Touristic location” and license number.
I could add a thousand more of these images, but you get the idea.
So much for Category 1, shops (and apartments) changing. Before I go to Category 2 (shops disappearing), here are some thoughts on the economics of bread.
Every morning at 6:30 a ponderous barge briskly backs up along the rio de Sant’Ana, with huge roaring, till it reaches an open space to park. One of the two men aboard jumps ashore, loads a few plastic boxes containing variously shaped bread onto his handtruck, and rolls it rapidly toward the Coop supermarket on via Garibaldi.
Exactly five minutes later he has returned with the empty boxes and the barge is roaring its way forward (there is no space to turn around) out of the canal.
This phenomenon interests me because the barge is enormous, yet by the time it gets to us it is carrying a load that would qualify as almost nothing. Seems like a heck of a boat to use for that small a cargo, but let’s say that this is the last stop, and that the run started at 4:00 AM with ten stops and eight tons of bread. That’s not exactly my point. It seems like a huge expenditure for a small return, but clearly the formula is working fine.
My point, however clumsily expressed, is that this is a proverbial coal-to-Newcastle situation. Within the area of about two city blocks, there are three full-time bakeries turning out bread every morning as the handtruck from who knows where rolls by. So in my primitive lizard brain, anybody who’s in favor of keeping local businesses alive ought to consider the possibility of the local bakeries supplying the supermarket, though I realize that’s slightly nuts because people could just go buy the bread straight from the baker.
So why do people buy bread at the Coop when they could buy it up the street at Crosara? Because it’s cheaper, of course. But it isn’t as good. So at the intersection of price, quality and convenience (bakeries close in the middle of the day), we see the bread on the truck at dawn a mere half hour before the first bakery opens.
Hence the eternal decision is ever-present on via Garibaldi: Save 5 cents per kilo on my daily bread even though it tastes like styrofoam, or spend the 5 cents more on something divine just out of the oven. Venice will be making money somehow in any case, because that’s the way it is.
Speaking of little shops, we come to Category 2, the most poignant witness to how Venice has changed: Shops that have closed forever. In your wanderings around the city you may have seen, but not observed, them. They are everywhere, mute witnesses to crafts and businesses and livelihoods and families that made Venice a place where life was vivid and intimate and dense.
Campo Ruga was bound together by shops; almost all the doors at street level led to some sort of business. A friend of mine who was born here could tell me, door by door, what used to be there. “The milk shop…the shoe repair…the fish seller…” Now they are apartments, or storerooms, or small offices, or nothing.This small corner shop at #128 brings new meaning to the word “closed.”
Adjacent streets were one shop after another, on both sides of the street, as you see.
One of the best hardware stores in the city, in my opinion. Gone.Campo Do Pozzi is a monument to the way almost every campo was when Lino was a boy. Literally every door and window around the campo belonged to a shop of some sort. This is the north side.Campo Do Pozzi looking east. Gaze at this and populate it with everybody who lived here and did the shopping here every day, throw 20 or 30 kids outside to play, and you might get a faint sense of how, as the saying goes, “Stavamo meglio quando stavamo peggio” (We were better off when we were worse off).South. This was a butcher shop. The street on the right, Calle del Forno, was obviously the location of a bakery.West side.
Whatever this shop was, it closed before the last Ice Age.
Take your pick, you’ve got a whole street of defunct shops. These are long since deceased, but the lockdown of March-June 2020 and the few tourists who came during the summer forced many businesses to close.“Do you have a shop?? You have to die!!” So begins this cri de coeur from one merchant, reminding us of the crushing expenses even your little enterprise has to face. “Income: 500 euros per day, 120,000 euros per year. Annual expenses: IVA on sales (value-added tax, since 1968) 20,000; buying stock 60,000; rent 12,000; INPS-INAIL (Social Security) 4,000; accountant 1,500; electricity 2,000; store sign and cash register 2,000; trash collection 1,200; telephone 500; IRAP Regional impost for productive activity and local taxes 2,000; 5% perishability of merchandise 3,000. Total expenses 108,200. Gross income 11,800. IRPEF income tax 4,000. Annual net profit 7,800. Work 12 hours per day for six days of the week to earn, if things go well, 650 euros a month. And you hope you don’t get sick.”
So whenever you see a dead store, remember that it, and all the others, kept Venice alive until basically yesterday. Lino says it repeatedly: “Every time you go over a bridge you’re going from one island to another, and every island had everything it needed, right there.”This dry-goods store near Sant’ Aponal was the only place in Venice where I could find the socks that Lino likes. It was obviously a neighborhood fixture, but it couldn’t last forever. I don’t know which factors determined their decision (rent? grandchildren?). At least the owners left a farewell note that might have applied just as well to every closed shop in Venice, if the owners had the heart to write anything. I translate: “The shop’s voyage has now reached its end. Here, at the end of the line, we want first of all to thank our clients who believed in us, who appreciated the work and the products, who have chosen at the shop items for special days of their lives, but also for the daily routine which has offered us friendships, esteem, gave us smiles and satisfaction, company, laughs, the grapevine, gossip, coffee, words of comfort and compliments. Have a good life and smiles and joy always to all of you! Angela, Raffaella, and Flavia.”
How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of … shops. I am glad that at least I have memories of so many visits since the 1970s, when some of the past which Erla recounts was still in evidence.
It’s also a nice memory to have met you in person in 2018 in Dorsoduro, Erla
I’m so glad you experienced Venice back when the city was relatively self-sufficient. I envy you. Yes, I have a happy memory of our rendezvous too, though it is becoming part of the distant past by now. You have to come back.
This was a long, fascinating and often depressing read, Erla. Thank you for taking the time to go into such detail, to express your feelings about what has happened/continues to happen to Venice, and to post so many photographs. I’m planning to return in September/October – B.T.U. – and will stay for three weeks, injecting as much business as I can afford into the local economy.
Wonderful to hear that you’re coming for such an unusually long stretch (B.T.U.). What you inject into the local economy will be hugely appreciated by the individual shops and/or vendors you patronize, but until the city radically redesigns Venice’s economic future the support you give for three weeks to some vendors won’t have much effect on the overall picture.
The point I was trying to make is that hotels, bars and restaurants are not generally kept afloat financially by Venetians, but by tourists (from wherever, the country is unimportant). I don’t understand what you intend by referring to creating a vacuum, but because of tourism the rents are unreasonably high, so regular people are thereby discouraged (also by incredible bureaucracy) from conducting a business not related to tourism. Does that answer your question?
Thank you Erla, for your insight and observations. As excellent as always. I wish, as all the others have also expressed, that the reality was different. But, as you point out, economic forces will not easily be denied. I am coming to visit for a few days in October, B.T.U. as well, but as you say, I am the problem, not the solution. We all deeply appreciate the time, effort, insight, and breadth of knowledge that you bring to these posts. Gracie. Peter
Peter, please come often! I can’t see how you could possibly be a problem — the only thing worse than too many visitors is too few. If there were a middle ground we’d all be happier.
Like others, we look at the pictures you show, and even we, who have only been “regulars” staying a few times each year since about 2000, can recall some of the places when they were alive. It is so very sad, and frightening, too. I recall once, when my luggage had gone missing, rushing out to a good, old fashioned underwear shop I remembered, for “essential items” to get me through until that case returned from its unauthorised by-trip, I’m sure it’s not there now.
Thank you for pointing all this up so superbly. All of us who love Venice are upset, but you, you have to live with this slow, hacking death of a thousand slicing knives. We salute your fortitude.
Cara Erla,
I know you do not intend pain with your excellent reports, but
this one truly struck at my heart. Many of the places you mention
are shops where we regularly bought everything we needed in our
weeks in Venice. The little deli around from our apartment on
Campo Arsenale was a daily stop…such a nice couple there. And the
shop where we bought a year’s supply of dishcloths and handkerchiefs.
And Claudio, who endured my miserable Italian with a smile? Oh, please….
For us, the pain is at a distance; for you and Lino, it must be a daily
ache.
I think my own feelings have a large proportion of anger at the sheer inconvenience of life here, as exacerbated by the disappearing shops. To satisfy anything beyond the simplest needs now requires the planning and execution (and time spent) of a hostage-freeing situation. A young woman came into the card/stationery/school supplies shop (it hasn’t become a restaurant yet!) to ask where she could buy a tablecloth, seeing that the dry-goods store has closed. The owner of the shop and I went through quite a series of options, none of which held up for various reasons, though we did suggest, not very confidently, a place on the Strada Nova (hence dooming her to at least another hour in her quest). The owner of the closed dry-goods store has managed to reopen in a much smaller space on Salizada S. Antonin, near the Campo Bragora, but first we weren’t at all sure she was still selling tablecloths in her reduced space, and second, we had no intelligible way to describe how to get there. The weekly market on the Lido would have been a sure bet, but that’s on Tuesday and our encounter was on a Thursday. They are driving us into the arms of Amazon, whether we go willingly or not. (Gosh, I never thought of suggesting she order the tablecloth online for next-day delivery, though it may come to that next time).
Gorgeous photo of the canal, and all other photos.
So very sad for all…..
Thank you for your insight and I pray that the economy
will turn around and make Venice what it used to be.
Take care,
Ronda
That is so very sad Erla. As the others have expressed, we share your pain on a very tiny scale. We can only hope to do our bit each time we come (BTU). Long live Venice.
Am I the only one who doesn’t know what BTU means? Back To You doesn’t make any sense. Nor do Blame The User and Better They Understand (all suggested by Google).
Actually, I could have written this post last year, five years ago, ten years ago. The changing and the closing of shops has been going on for decades. The only thing new in my report is that a tremendous opportunity to develop new projects and commercial activities for the city not related to tourism was completely wasted. Your spirit of optimism is a beautiful thing and I will certainly be hanging in!
My opinion is that there was little attention or concern expressed about the large cruise ships until the Costa Concordia disaster (2012). Nine years have passed, and changing political parties and politicians have continued to maneuver around the issue of limiting the size of the ships coming to Venice and offering a reasonable alternative. Please note: The issue isn’t banning the ships, it’s banning their passage across the Bacino of San Marco. Banning the ships isn’t something any rational person could seriously propose — 5,000 families depend on jobs connected to the cruise industry. The more important problem for Venice, in my view, is the risk meanwhile of losing a large segment of the cruise traffic, perhaps forever. The cruise companies have already expressed exasperation with the changing regulations and proposals; they can’t plan or sell itineraries to city where everybody keeps dithering about what will be permitted, and how, and when, and etc. Other cities, such as Trieste, would be thrilled to get the cruises that abandon Venice, which would mean more money to Trieste and less money to Venice (obviously). So we’ve got economic, political, environmental, and even human factors tangled up that nobody is capable of unknotting in a way that doesn’t damage — perhaps seriously — at least one of those categories. To conclude: Whenever some politician comes up with a plan everybody can agree to, then the situation will change. It took 30 years of maneuvering to finally reach the point of beginning construction of MOSE, so you can make your own forecast about resolving the cruise-ship issue.
28 Comments
I have tears in my eyes after reading your article, Erla.
I have plenty of tissues for both of us, Bert. Thanks for responding so quickly, too.
How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of … shops. I am glad that at least I have memories of so many visits since the 1970s, when some of the past which Erla recounts was still in evidence.
It’s also a nice memory to have met you in person in 2018 in Dorsoduro, Erla
I’m so glad you experienced Venice back when the city was relatively self-sufficient. I envy you. Yes, I have a happy memory of our rendezvous too, though it is becoming part of the distant past by now. You have to come back.
This was a long, fascinating and often depressing read, Erla. Thank you for taking the time to go into such detail, to express your feelings about what has happened/continues to happen to Venice, and to post so many photographs. I’m planning to return in September/October – B.T.U. – and will stay for three weeks, injecting as much business as I can afford into the local economy.
Wonderful to hear that you’re coming for such an unusually long stretch (B.T.U.). What you inject into the local economy will be hugely appreciated by the individual shops and/or vendors you patronize, but until the city radically redesigns Venice’s economic future the support you give for three weeks to some vendors won’t have much effect on the overall picture.
Erna, the city is becoming a museum. I am so sorry to see this. But, are the hotels, bars, and restaurants filling or creating a vacuum?
The point I was trying to make is that hotels, bars and restaurants are not generally kept afloat financially by Venetians, but by tourists (from wherever, the country is unimportant). I don’t understand what you intend by referring to creating a vacuum, but because of tourism the rents are unreasonably high, so regular people are thereby discouraged (also by incredible bureaucracy) from conducting a business not related to tourism. Does that answer your question?
Thanks, Erna. Yes, that does answer my question at a deeper level than I was thinking.
How very depressing. Your story, the photos, the memories.
Sorry to read the demise of Venise.
Thank you Erla, for your insight and observations. As excellent as always. I wish, as all the others have also expressed, that the reality was different. But, as you point out, economic forces will not easily be denied. I am coming to visit for a few days in October, B.T.U. as well, but as you say, I am the problem, not the solution. We all deeply appreciate the time, effort, insight, and breadth of knowledge that you bring to these posts. Gracie. Peter
Peter, please come often! I can’t see how you could possibly be a problem — the only thing worse than too many visitors is too few. If there were a middle ground we’d all be happier.
Like others, we look at the pictures you show, and even we, who have only been “regulars” staying a few times each year since about 2000, can recall some of the places when they were alive. It is so very sad, and frightening, too. I recall once, when my luggage had gone missing, rushing out to a good, old fashioned underwear shop I remembered, for “essential items” to get me through until that case returned from its unauthorised by-trip, I’m sure it’s not there now.
Thank you for pointing all this up so superbly. All of us who love Venice are upset, but you, you have to live with this slow, hacking death of a thousand slicing knives. We salute your fortitude.
Cara Erla,
I know you do not intend pain with your excellent reports, but
this one truly struck at my heart. Many of the places you mention
are shops where we regularly bought everything we needed in our
weeks in Venice. The little deli around from our apartment on
Campo Arsenale was a daily stop…such a nice couple there. And the
shop where we bought a year’s supply of dishcloths and handkerchiefs.
And Claudio, who endured my miserable Italian with a smile? Oh, please….
For us, the pain is at a distance; for you and Lino, it must be a daily
ache.
I think my own feelings have a large proportion of anger at the sheer inconvenience of life here, as exacerbated by the disappearing shops. To satisfy anything beyond the simplest needs now requires the planning and execution (and time spent) of a hostage-freeing situation. A young woman came into the card/stationery/school supplies shop (it hasn’t become a restaurant yet!) to ask where she could buy a tablecloth, seeing that the dry-goods store has closed. The owner of the shop and I went through quite a series of options, none of which held up for various reasons, though we did suggest, not very confidently, a place on the Strada Nova (hence dooming her to at least another hour in her quest). The owner of the closed dry-goods store has managed to reopen in a much smaller space on Salizada S. Antonin, near the Campo Bragora, but first we weren’t at all sure she was still selling tablecloths in her reduced space, and second, we had no intelligible way to describe how to get there. The weekly market on the Lido would have been a sure bet, but that’s on Tuesday and our encounter was on a Thursday. They are driving us into the arms of Amazon, whether we go willingly or not. (Gosh, I never thought of suggesting she order the tablecloth online for next-day delivery, though it may come to that next time).
Gorgeous photo of the canal and all other photos, as well.
Such a sad time for all…..
Thank you for sharing your insights.
Ronda
Gorgeous photo of the canal, and all other photos.
So very sad for all…..
Thank you for your insight and I pray that the economy
will turn around and make Venice what it used to be.
Take care,
Ronda
That is so very sad Erla. As the others have expressed, we share your pain on a very tiny scale. We can only hope to do our bit each time we come (BTU). Long live Venice.
Absolutely tragic, a city slowly being strangled by greed. My heart aches.
Am I the only one who doesn’t know what BTU means? Back To You doesn’t make any sense. Nor do Blame The User and Better They Understand (all suggested by Google).
It stands for British Thermal Units. I mentioned that in parentheses. I can’t explain why Google doesn’t know that.
Thank you Erla. I leave a small footprint. I am coming in October for a few days. To reconnect.
Wow, Erla, downer! My prediction – things will turn around soon. Hang in there! xx
Actually, I could have written this post last year, five years ago, ten years ago. The changing and the closing of shops has been going on for decades. The only thing new in my report is that a tremendous opportunity to develop new projects and commercial activities for the city not related to tourism was completely wasted. Your spirit of optimism is a beautiful thing and I will certainly be hanging in!
Erna, what’s your feeling about the potential for banning the huge ruise ships? Any chance of that?
My opinion is that there was little attention or concern expressed about the large cruise ships until the Costa Concordia disaster (2012). Nine years have passed, and changing political parties and politicians have continued to maneuver around the issue of limiting the size of the ships coming to Venice and offering a reasonable alternative. Please note: The issue isn’t banning the ships, it’s banning their passage across the Bacino of San Marco. Banning the ships isn’t something any rational person could seriously propose — 5,000 families depend on jobs connected to the cruise industry. The more important problem for Venice, in my view, is the risk meanwhile of losing a large segment of the cruise traffic, perhaps forever. The cruise companies have already expressed exasperation with the changing regulations and proposals; they can’t plan or sell itineraries to city where everybody keeps dithering about what will be permitted, and how, and when, and etc. Other cities, such as Trieste, would be thrilled to get the cruises that abandon Venice, which would mean more money to Trieste and less money to Venice (obviously). So we’ve got economic, political, environmental, and even human factors tangled up that nobody is capable of unknotting in a way that doesn’t damage — perhaps seriously — at least one of those categories. To conclude: Whenever some politician comes up with a plan everybody can agree to, then the situation will change. It took 30 years of maneuvering to finally reach the point of beginning construction of MOSE, so you can make your own forecast about resolving the cruise-ship issue.
Sorry…Erla. typo!
Not only Venetians are leaving. Sad to hear other Venice insiders as Sig. Nonloso have had enough. Sad.