Here’s something I learned today: Electric surfboards exist. They don’t literally go in the surf, but are big rectangles of plastic with a battery-powered motor and a cord to hang onto, and you just zoom away having the water-skiing time of your life without having to bother with attaching yourself to a motorboat. I guess it could be compared to an electric scooter, but on the water. Or a jet-ski that you stand on. Or a turbo-charged paddle board without the paddle.
This much is news to me. What isn’t news is that somebody (two somebodies, actually) decided to bring their toys to Venice and try them out on the Grand Canal. It happened this morning (Wednesday, August 17). What also isn’t news is that imbeciles have some primitive instinct that compels them to come to Venice in the summer, like the wildebeest have to surge across the Serengeti in May. If you are an imbecile with money, you will get there before all the ordinary, common-garden-variety idiot tourists who do mundane little stupid things like jumping off the Rialto Bridge, or cooking your lunch hunkered down around your camp stove in the Piazza San Marco.
Two men aboard these entertaining vehicles suddenly appeared in the Grand Canal, as I said, and after zooming from Rialto to the Salute they somehow managed to disappear before anybody had means, money, or opportunity to nab them. Mayor Luigi Brugnaro was livid and posted this on Twitter (translated by me): “Here are two overbearing imbeciles who are making a joke of the city … I ask everybody to help us identify them and punish them even if our weapons are blunt … there is urgent need for mayors to have more power to ensure public safety! To whomever identifies them I offer dinner!”
Well, they got caught, and it didn’t take more than a few hours. Bulletins didn’t name who gets the credit — and the dinner — for tracking them down, but it may be a while before these two bright sparks will be feeling that rush of adrenaline and endorphins and serotonin and oxytocin and dopamine they were savoring this morning.
They are two Australians who now, at nightfall, have had their boards confiscated (total worth 25,000 euros, or 36,662 Australian dollars), and been fined 1,500 euros each (2,344 Australian dollars). It’s only money and they almost certainly can afford it, but the mayor has initiated legal proceedings against them for “damage to the city’s image.” I don’t know what that is likely to add up to, but I can see lots of lawyers’ fees and whole lots of time being spent on making an example of them.
Naturally I’m as glad as the next person to know that they have been hauled away in chains and leg shackles, but my gladness is curdled by the thought that if it seems incredible that somebody would do this, it is equally, if not more, incredible that they weren’t stopped in flagrante. Along the entire stretch of the Grand Canal (3,800 meters or half a mile) there was not one carabinere, state police, local police, lagoon police, firefighter, dogcatcher, anybody at all with a badge and a walkie-talkie who was on the scene, ready to intervene.
I know it’s an old joke to say that you never see one when you need one, but if I were the mayor I’d be spending less time dudgeoning about these two cretins, and instead be chairing a serious meeting to find out where the hell everybody was. It’s invigorating to want — what was his phrase? — “mayors to have more power,” but it seems to me that if people were on their assigned jobs at their assigned times and places, the mayor wouldn’t need more power. The mayor’s supposed to make the system work, not BE the system.
I can imagine scenarios more serious than electric surfboards that would have had urgent need for a rapid intervention (baby falling into the water comes to mind), and yet, nobody’s on hand. “Please leave a message at the tone….”
Oh wait. The shell-game shysters have returned to their traditional places to pluck the unwary tourists ready to gamble. Maybe that’s where the police were. If not there, they must have been out patrolling the myriad motorboats causing extreme motondoso this year, though the waves make me doubt it. If not there, maybe they’re going around checking store-owners’ certificates of fire inspection.
The Grand Canal is Fifth Avenue! It’s the Champs Elysees! You can’t have Fifth Avenue with no police officer in sight. Something goes wrong on the Champs Elysees — there must be at least one policeman patrolling. But here in Venice we have the Grand Canal with nitwits running wild in broad daylight and the mayor has to turn to Twitter to ask for help finding them. Am I wrong, or is that just a little bit dumber than speed-surfing on Main Street?
21 Comments
Having lived in Venezia myself for 7 years, I can’t help but wonder what drove these two to find it alluring to engage in this activity IN A SEWER !!!
BTW I love your blog.
I’ll never understand the clueless idiots who treat someone else’s hometown as their personal theme park. There seem to be no shortage of barbarians at the gates (although your witty prose suggests there is still hope!).
I sincerely apologize, as an Australian who loves and reveres Venice, for the stupid mindless behavior of these idiots.
It does seem that it is not the mayor but the police who are to blame for this fiasco–the mayor is in an office somewhere, while the police should be (SHOULD BE) omnipresent on the Grand Canal, given the highjinks that occur there with some regularity. Of course, the mayor is in charge of the police (or is he?) but he cannot be expected to patrol the canal. The police can and should be expected to do so.
Oh, just saw the picture of you in your sailor shirt! Looking good!
Thanks! All that fresh air, you know…
(I think I forgot to click post, so I’ll try again.)
There goes the neighborhood. Again.
Since Venice no longer draws and quarters malefactors and hangs them in cages from the Campanile, a fitting punishment — blunt, as the mayor says — would be a couple of weeks in i Piombi during the hottest weeks in August.
I am so ashamed that those two idiots were from Australia.
You know I don’t hold it against you, or anyone else in Australia. Actually, the cretins are usually Americans, so I’m glad we’re off the hook this time.
Everything that can be said about the two dimwits and their idiotic behaviour has probably already been said,so I’ll just leave it at that, but the problem that you bring up, dear Erla, is much more interresting.
The fact that no representative of any kind of officialdom intervened is truly fascinating. In the northernmost Sweden, and maybe also in Australia, there are police districts where a couple of squad cars are supposed to cover the area of Croatia but in the centre of Venice you ought to be able to see a cop or two, one might have tought. The scenario that you exemplify doesn’t seem too far-fetched in a city like Venice and then what? Rely on the kindness of strangers, perhaps?
Cheers from Solna!
If you are short of members of Team Moron we can always supply a highly tattooed selection of both sexes from dear old Blighty although mercifully TM favours stags, hens and projectile vomiting in the Costas, Ballearics and Algarve where the amount of culture is not as daunting and the bars are open 24×7.
How sad that some people have no respect for beauty and seem to lack the ability to get pleasure from just admiring it.
Could not agree more. Are all the CCTV cameras that Brugnaro boasts of installing never watched by anyone in real time? That would not only sort out the antics of Australia’s Team Moron but also teh horrific amount of graffiti and, my pet hate, those bloody padlocks on bridges.
Thanks for your usual top notch story.
I was cheering on the effort to hold the wayward Aussies accountable, when accountability turned into amazement that these idiots were even able to start up their motors without the civic ‘eyes in the walls’ reporting them, or the powers that patrol pinpointing them, or even those who monitor the cctv alerting someone in charge.
I’m guessing the joy ride started before Venice officially wakes up.
this brings to mind the idiot (English speaking) tourists in 2018 who decided to camp out on Ponte Della Fava one summer after midnight, yelling and screaming, diving off the bridge & breaking bottles…. I couldn’t raise an eyebrow from the keepers of the peace.
The sozzled local who decided to pick a 2hour fight after midnight with the post box outside the Central PO, yelling, screaming, vomiting, he eventually won, opened the box and left mail strewn across the street and trailed behind him… again, inspite of alerting local authorities near Rialto, and then another patrol in San Marco, the deed was done.
The idiots that I saw many cold high tide evenings/early mornings in their canoes on Piazza San Marco, with the carabinieri standing high and dry chatting and smoking.
I have many ‘idiots at home and abroad’ stories.
The idiots have been growing in numbers for years now, but the security measures needed have not.
I guess the mayor doesn’t have the power to arrange a more coordinated security network.
Idiots will always be around, and they need help to not be idiots due to their lack of/faulty critical thought processes…. god forbid any of them become mayors!!!
The moose, or the IT-gnomes, ate my reply? 🙂
Everything that could be said about the idiotic and disrespectful behavior of some tourists have already been said but the problem that you’re highlighting is quite another matter. The fact that not one representative of some kind of officialdom were at hand to take appropriate action is, to say the least, a bit weird. Of course in northern Sweden, and maybe in Australia, there are police districts the size of Croatia with just a couple of squad cars on a weeekday night, but that shouldn’t be an issue right in the very centre of Venice.
Whatever happened to the good old-fashioned patrolling cop with a sound knowledge of everyone and everything that went on in the neighbourhood, one might ask.
Unbelievable……. sorry I’m late in responding.
Well, … did they get identified and caught?
Yes, caught, fined and the flying saucer was confiscated.
Good. Pleasant change to find somone was actually caught!
Erla,
Guilty as charged… Revolution or Revulsion…. Have been a boat builder for over 40 years now (including passing the Gondola Shop during one of my Venice visits). Have been following your site for the last few years now. Claim Venice as my favorite place on the planet. Proclaim “Spaghetti and Clams” as my absolute favorite food on Earth (Have tried in Germany, Disney World, Chicagoland resturaunts, other outlets; nothing comes close…).
I’m now involved in developing hydrofoils that are now suddenly sprinkling the whole planet. One of my remaining life-buckets is to be the first to run the whole Vogalonga foilborne under human power. I was already involved in running the first pedal powered “watercycle” in Venice.
[ http://www.freeenterprises.net/HPBoats.VGL.html ]
The “imbociles” seemed to have been using electric hydrofoils (maybe more than just boards?), and this latest hydrofoil board movement includes “E-foils”, sail craft, SUP (stand up paddle), wave surfing, downwind surfing, “water skiing” behind a boat except without a rope, even jumping off a pier and pumping, all with hydrofoils. A revolution is taking place. Except for the E-foil and maybe sail, all can be “pumped” under human power.
The sad and dangerous [for me] part seems to be that there seems to be a crassness of activities other than use of cultural respect, caution, and safety: would an innovation such as a water cycle now be offensive to operate? Wouild human powered water propulsion still be the same as a bicycle operating on a road packed with automobiles? Is an “HPB” (human powered boat) now viewed as an “auto” (are non-Vogolonga sea kayak or eight seat rowing shells on the thumbs-down list?)? From an auto perspective, cyclists are obsticles. From a personal perspective, they wear colorful jerseys and have very favorably toned bodies. From a universal perspective all HPB are not only environmentally intriguing, but are environmentally *mandatory*! they and their behavior hold the key to our survival.
Hopefully, the two main factors human powered boats could still hide behind might be 1. going slow enough as to not make a wake, especially in a sensitive place like Venice, 2. does the kinetic energy of the action disrupt the usual flow? In other words: Wake? Speed?
Aditionally, could the ultimate platform for an emergency vehicle, police, fire, ambulance in a no wake zone in some ways provide a demand for hydrofoils? Could the “nit wits” have been quickly pulled over by a police hydrofoil?
My outfit has always been ideating hydrofoils as pursuit vehicles because they can go fast, and they can go fast *without making a wake*. Venice includes a famous no-wake-zone (partially enforced), however there are huge multitudes of no-wake zones all over the planet, and would that opportunity be met by E foils? The technology is upon us at present. Imagine a police pursuit vehicle not making a wake at all while going 25 knots….Watch out for those bridges though.
So the question remains. Will the dream and environmental encouragement of ecotourism include an eight seat recumbent human powered hydrofoil that is signed up for the Vogalonga? Will it gather favorable attention or end up as a strange outlaw?
So many interesting questions. Don’t forget that even the most worthy projects here (as possibly everywhere) find themselves having to navigate the cross-currents and undertow of the political waters, so to speak. Those currents and undertows have sunk so many obviously excellent proposals. Some years ago the American entrepreneur who created a “wave-eater” design for the vaporettos got lots of enthusiasm in the press. People were amazed and impressed. I don’t have any idea where the carcass of the prototype has been left to molder. Not sure how many people remember it even existed. In any case, I wish you all the best.