History | Venice: I am not making this up

Ready on the firing line

September 18, 2010 No Comments

Walking home yesterday afternoon, I noticed this boat. And I instantly deduced that hunting season is about to open in the Venetian lagoon. It isn’t just the camouflaging reeds that give the game away, it’s the fact that they are freshly cut.

Actually, a glance at the Veneto Region’s official calendar of hunting season shows that it had already begun (September 1, and a few scattered dates thereafter) for a small group of winged creatures that keep to the shore, such as turtledoves, blackbirds, jays, magpies, and crows.

The Northern pochard. (Photo: Gary Houston)

The Veneto has the highest density of hunters in Italy. However, the total number of hunters in Italy has fallen from 1.4 million in 2000 to about 800,000 today. I can’t usefully interpret either one of those facts but there they are.

Bird hunting — I don’t mean pheasant and duck and other famous flying comestibles, but lesser-known sort-of comestibles such as song thrushes and skylarks — is a topic that could easily lead us into unpleasant political and environmentalist territory (the island of Ponza, for example, is essentially a seasonal killing field for any avian who enters its air space), so I’ll just stick to the basics.

In the Veneto, from September 19 till January 31, a person sitting in a blind freezing in the dark in the middle of the water is permitted to attempt to slay mallards, coots, common moorhens, common teals, shovelers, pochards, gadwalls, water rails, wigeons, Northern pintails, garganeys, tufted ducks, common snipes, Jack snipes, and lapwings.

Their landbound confreres gazing skyward will also be freezing and waiting for partridge, red-legged partridge, pheasant, ruff, skylark, woodcock, fieldfare, song thrush, redwing, common wood pigeon, and quail.

Male and female tufted duck. (Photo: Andreas Trepte)

The catbird isn’t found in Europe, but all these hunters will be sitting in its proverbial seat starting tomorrow, because the Venetian lagoon is situated on one of the most important flyways in Europe. At certain times of year there can be as many as 200,000 birds here, nesting or resting or spending the winter diving, dabbling, or digging through the mudflats at low tide.

When UNESCO designated Venice as a World Heritage Site in 1987, it specifically included the Venetian lagoon. You wouldn’t have guessed that by the antics that go on in it, but let’s move on for now. The lagoon covers an area of some 212 square miles, and is one of the few coastal wetlands left in Europe, a region which has lost 2/3 of its wetlands in the past 100 years.

In other words, the lagoon is one of the best places in Europe to be a bird, except in the winter. Depending on your species, a hunter is allowed to bag from 35 to 50 of your relatives in a season.

The days designated for this divertissement are Wednesday and Saturday in the Southern Lagoon, and Thursday and Sunday in the Northern and the Caorle Lagoon (where Hemingway used to love to hunt).

When you have shot one bird flying you have shot all birds flying,” Ernest Hemingway wrote. “They are all different and they fly in different ways but the sensation is the same and the last one is as good as the first.” You can’t say that about everything, or even most things, in this life, so I’ll let him have the last word on the subject.

I’m glad I mentioned hunting, though, because it constitutes a direct link to the Great Days of the Venetian Republic.

The male mallard, which the old Venetians described as the "wild duck with the red feet," was the original ducal gift. (Photo: Greg S. Garrett)

From farthest antiquity, the doge was expected to give a specific Christmas present to all the noble families, who formed the Great Council (there were 1,200 such families for a long period, then the number began to increase).

That present was five mallards per family, which comes to 6,000 ducks a year. Eventually this number dropped to two, but finally there were so few birds that on June 28, 1521, the Council decreed that instead of the ducks, the doge would give each patrician a coin specially minted for the occasion, worth one-quarter of a ducat. This coin was known as an osella, Venetian for “bird.”

The osella of Doge Pietro Grimani (1751). (Photo: Classical Numismatic Group, Inc.)

With the exception of two extremely short-lived gentlemen, every doge from Antonio Grimani (1521) to Ludovico Manin (1797) minted an osella each year. One side bore a generic image of him kneeling before San Marco, and the obverse a particular design highlighting an important event or aspect of the past year.

The poster for the exhibition of the oselle owned by the Banca Popolare di Vicenza.

The Banca Popolare di Vicenza (People’s Bank of Vicenza) happens to own the most complete collection of oselle in the world visible to the public, which comprises 275 coins. After the middle of the 17th century, the oselle were minted in gold. The Bank of Vicenza collection was on display here for a short while last spring, and even though I know next to nothing about numismatics, they were spectacular.
Just think: Even when they start with ducks they end up with money. I love this town.

One of who knows how many duck blinds left behind when the season ends.

a)selvaggina stanziale: 2 capi giornalieri con un massimo di 35 capi stagionali; per la lepre, 1 capo

giornaliero con un massimo di 5 capi stagionali;

b)selvaggina migratoria: 25 capi giornalieri (di cui non piÃ¹ di 10 codoni, 10 canapiglie, 5 morette e

5 combattenti) con un massimo di 425 capi stagionali (di cui non piÃ¹ di 50 codoni, 50 canapiglie, 15

morette e 15 combattenti); per la beccaccia 3 capi giornalieri con un massimo di 20 capi stagionali

Boatworld, Events, History, Tourism, Venetian-ness

Storica: Missing detail located

September 8, 2010 No Comments

A sharp-eyed reader has already zapped me a note to alert me to the fact that in my account of the kerfuffle surrounding the Regata Storica, I neglected to mention who won.

Strange how one can miss the most obvious things, but it does show me, yet again, that I mustn’t be writing at midnight.

The winners were the Vignottini (canarin/yellow).

Second place: Bertoldini/Vianello (viola/purple). Third place: Luca Quintavalle/Gaetano Bregantin (rosso/red). Fourth place: Franco dei Rossi “Strigheta”/Luca Ballarin (arancio/orange).

These are the “bandierati,” or winners of their respective bandiere, or pennants, and glory and praise, and money. If you finish from fifth to ninth place, you get a manly shake of the hand, and money. If you’re the reserve, or last-minute-substitute boat, you just get money.

More details will be forthcoming about the deeper nature of the skirmish between Tezzat-d’Este and the Vignottini. The more I think about it, though, the more these races resemble high-stakes horse racing. In some ways it’s not what you do or don’t do, it’s mainly what you can manage to get away with. If I have misinterpreted anything about horses, I apologize.

Based on past races, I have no doubt that the Vignottini were not, nor have ever been, what they call “farina da far ostie,” or “flour for making Communion wafers.” I’m not taking sides, I’m just pointing it out. But why the hammer fell on Tezzat this time is indeed a convoluted tale, which I will try to relate as soon as I can manage to organize the particulars, the context, and the history. And understand it enough to explain it.

Boatworld, Events, History, Tourism, Venetian-ness, Water

Another day, another Storica

September 7, 2010 1 Comment

The "bissone," the large decorative boats brought out for serious ceremony, are the centerpiece of the boat procession, and look just the way you want fancy boats to look in Venice.

Day before yesterday (Sunday, September 5, for the record) was the day of what is arguably the most important — certainly most spectacular — race of the Venetian rowing season: the Regata Storica, or “historic regatta.” Or, as I also think of it, the Race that Launched a Thousand Postcards — which depict, not the race(s) themselves, but the decorated boats loaded with rowers in costume. If you skrinch your eyes and don’t think, you could imagine you were seeing something from centuries ago. Sort of.

The commandant of the Morosini Naval School, Enrico Pacioni, and his wife are transported to the reviewing stand aboard an exact replica of the 18th-century gondola seen in paintings by Canaletto. — The commandant of the Morosini Naval School, Enrico Pacioni, and his wife are carried to the reviewing stand aboard an exact replica of the 18th-century gondola seen in paintings by Canaletto.

We were there, as usual: Lino in a boat (one of the red launches used by the judges, though which one depended on which race he drew), and me also in a boat (this year in the six-oar balotina, “Katia,” of the Remiera Casteo). Lino’s role was to administer justice; my role was to participate in the corteo, or boat procession, preceding the races, then to tie up somewhere convenient in a spot where we could get a good view of the races, then to scream our lungs out, if and when the spirit moved us. (It did.)

The balotina is essentially a largish gondola, but looks very fine from any angle.

Every year, obviously, is different, though there are equally obvious similarities. Boats of all types and persuasions, from tiny one-person s’ciopons to honking big motorized barges carrying entire clans and enough food and drink to support them till Christmas.

And of course there were the spectators — official estimates said 90,000 — massed together at certain key points: sitting on the steps in front of the church of the Salute, in temporary bleachers just beyond San Toma’, and in rows of chairs at the Rialto market. Maybe somewhere else further on that I didn’t discover. I’m not very clear on how 90,000 people fit into those very limited spaces, but I imagine the estimate includes all of us in the boats lining the Grand Canal, and the relatively few, those happy few, partying on the balconies of the palaces. In any case, there we all were. however many thousand we might have been.

IMG_0741 stor comp — I like the less grandiose boats better, like this mascareta belonging to the firemen.

I suppose it’s exciting to watch from the shore, wherever you find a space, but if you were ever to be in Venice on the first Sunday in September, I’d strongly urge you to smash the old piggybank and hire a gondola for two or three hours and watch it from the water. Don’t suppose you can just imagine how it would be. It’s not just the fact that you’re floating, it’s the fact that being in a boat makes you a participant in a way you can’t be if you’re merely pasted along the sidelines, waving.

Two things distinguished this year’s edition. One was the unexpected anarchy (I think it was unexpected, though murmurings a few days earlier may have been a sort of warning) that overwhelmed the corteo near the Rialto Bridge.

Or this pair, who I presume are father and son.

The Master Plan, as devised by tradition and the Comune (not always the same thing), was for the corteo to splash along all the way up to the train station, then return to the vicinity of the finish line at the “volta de Canal,” or “bend of the canal,” by Ca’ Foscari.

The first few years I engaged in the corteo, that’s what we did. Then the Comune, responding to the pressing programming needs of the RAI television wallahs, and who knows what other dark urges, decreed that we all stop on the return leg at the entrance to the Cannaregio canal to let the first one and a half races pass by. It was like shuffling a deck of cards, to get the corteo and the races organized in such a way as to leave not a second of the dreaded dead-air time in which people could, God forbid, get bored or something.

This was the mob in front of the church of the Salute. I'd have taken more pictures, but I had to pay attention to my rowing responsibilities.

So we did this for a few years, then increasing numbers of boats began to turn around and head back downstream before they got to the station. Then they began turning around even earlier, and so on, till we reached last Sunday, when suddenly it seemed as if some animal instinct urged the migrating boats to virtually all begin turning around just after the Rialto Bridge (which is where the last serious group of spectators are clustered, after which it’s just scattered random boats and who really cares who’s hanging around in front of the train station?). Or turning, as in our case, before the bridge, because the mass of confused retreating boats made forging ahead difficult, as well as pointless. The general atmosphere amid the boats could be summed up in the rude Venetian phrase, “Si ciava” (see CHA-vah, or “screw this/them/it”).

So that was entertaining. I’ve spent years here listening to rants from certain elements among the organizers about how it’s the Venetians’ festival and we should do it the way we want to, not how They tell us to, but this was the first time I’ve ever seen what “Take Back the Night” would look like in real life. It was kind of cool, actually. For anybody, of whatever race or clime, who is annoyed by being treated as a spear-carrier in somebody else’s drama, it was highly invigorating.

This dude had one of the best seats in the house, all by himself and his two oars. All that seems to be missing is a case of beer.

Not sure what the Comune has to say about it, though, because the Gazzettino was awash yesterday in the floods of rancor and glee from the four men contending for first place in the race of the gondolinos. Which brings me to the second thing that distinguished this year’s edition.

These “four men” would be cousins Igor and Rudi Vignotto, on the yellow (canarin) gondolino, and Ivo Redolfi-Tezzat and Giampaolo d’Este on the blue (celeste). To give you some perspective on this rivalry, the “Vignottini” have been rowing against d’Este and Tezzat since 2002, and against d’Este with other partners since 1995. And that’s just the big races; they all started this as kids. Speaking of being able to imagine things, I myself can’t imagine what fifteen years of battling in seven races each year adds up to when the crunch is on in the Grand Canal. But it could not, as the saying goes, be pretty.

Thirst, hunger, or loneliness were not problems facing the extended family on the barge behind us, who color-coded their loyalties.

So what happened was that the eternal triad (including the purple, or viola, gondolino of Andrea Bertoldini and Martino Vianello), entered the Grand Canal in a virtual dead heat, and remained so until the Rialto Bridge: celeste, canarin, and viola. And it’s not merely that they accomplished this feat, it’s that they did it for two miles (3.2 km). At top speed, or about 7 mph (12 km/h).

“When I saw those three entering the Grand Canal side by side like that,” Lino told me later, “I got a lump in my throat. It gave me goose bumps.” He and the judges in the other boats following the race literally could not hear each other through their walkie-talkies, even yelling, because however many thousands there were who could see the boats were all screaming their brains out. It was thrilling.

IMG_0802 stor comp — The three first gondolinos pass -- any ordinary mortals would long since have begun to fade, but not these titans.

This is a view of the race course. It's further than it looks, and all that twisting and turning means you've got all sorts of different tidal conditions to deal with, going and coming back.

Then, as usual, Something Happened. Last year it was Tezzat falling overboard and taking d’Este with him as their boat (celeste, as it happens — coincidence???) capsized. This year it was Something up toward the temporary piling in front of the station which marks the turnaround point.

The details are still coming out, and of course they’re as dissonant as a quartet by Charles Ives. The judges warned Tezzat more than once to alter something he was doing to the detriment of the “Vignottini,” which Tezzat evidently ignored. (I’m not taking sides here, I’m just trying to give the outline.)

When a racer does not obey the judge, after a certain number of calls the racer is disqualified. And that’s what happened. Three-quarters of the way through the race, suddenly one of its biggest stars was off the field, never to be seen again. At least not that day.

While down at the waterline, folks are chilling in their own special way.

One of the boys from the children's race consoles himself for losing at the last minute by eating several pieces of cake. It helps, at least for a while.

The next day the Rage of Tezzat reverberated through the pages of the Gazzettino; if this matter isn’t resolved (the “matter” being the injustice and infamy of the judge’s action), he says he’s going to hang up his oar, as they say, and quit racing. He won’t even show up to try for the final race of the year at Burano in two weeks.

To which one might reasonably reply, “Knock yourself out.” (“Fa di manco,” would be the closest Venetian equivalent, or “So don’t bother.”)

If there are any developments worth wasting electrons to report, I will do so.

Otherwise, I want to leave you with the joy of the bellowing, shrieking, hysterical crowds who got to see, if only briefly, one of the most dazzling moments in big-time racing anyone has witnessed for quite some time. That’s what I’m going to remember.

Events, History, Tourism

Let the Biennale begin

August 29, 2010 4 Comments

The Venice Biennale of Architecture is:

A) A great place to show off your new clothes

B) A great place to show off your new boyfriend/girlfriend/baby/dog

C) A great place to walk up and down various densely populated areas displaying your heartrending coolness, trendiness, disposable income

D) A great excuse to come to Venice for the weekend

E) A great place to look at new ideas in architectural design

Correct answer: All but E. If you want to learn something about architecture, read a book.

Yachts are the first intimation of the imminent onslaught of the glamorous people. Here, Roman Abramovich's "Luna," which could probably host the entire Biennale with room to spare. I mean the exhibitions as well as the people.ed, — Yachts are the first intimation of the imminent onslaught of the glamorous people. Here, Roman Abramovich's "Luna," which could probably host the entire Biennale with room to spare. I mean the exhibitions as well as the people.

Immediately followed by the classic vintage yacht, "Haida G." I'll take a fantail over a floating football field any day.

The Biennale has an impressive history, pockmarked with names ranging from famous to immortal in the worlds of art, and, with the passage of years, in dance, music, theater, and architecture as well. Let me not belittle it, nor its aspirations, nor its useful toil nor homely joys nor anything else about it. If I were the owner of a bar, cafe, or restaurant, I would have been counting the minutes till its opening on one hand, and my estimated daily take on the other. Oops, not enough fingers.

What it looks like to me — looking at it without any architecture, or painting or dance or whatever — is the biannual gathering of hundreds of people who have just landed from the famous Planet Look at Me, Look at Me. I can’t take it as seriously as it wants to be taken — I’m not sure anybody can –precisely because of the people from London and Berlin and Paris and all sorts of other places in order to A, B, C and D. Judging by the characters I see around, it is not something to be taken seriously. It’s probably wrong to evaluate an exhibition using the old ad hominem approach, but it’s almost inevitable.

Friday evening the vaporetto docks by the Giardini looked like this. This is the world of people without yachts. Depressing.

The end of August is always like that scene in the horror movie when the monster, which is supposed to be dead, suddenly rears up in his coffin and lunges at you. The stupefying heat and the fact that nine-tenths of Venice is empty of Venetians would lead you to think that all the city needed right now was for somebody to place the coins on its closed eyelids and tiptoe away.

Getting off the vaporetto is an interesting challenge, especially for people like the Venetians who are invisible to tourists. That must be why the tourists are all blocking the way.

But no. In the space of two weeks we have: The Biennale, the Venice Film Festival, the Campiello Prize, and the Regata Storica. This weekend is the Biennale’s opening frenzy, and Friday was the inauguration of two new exhibition spaces.

I enjoy all this, it’s better than TV. Except for the hell of traveling on the vaporettos, which suddenly turn into Third World ferries loaded with fabulous people being fabulous with each other and with themselves — I’m here in Venice, look upon me, ye Mighty, and despair — it’s pretty entertaining.

Platoons of people with bags and badges and cameras and laptops and accessories such as shoes clearly not made for walking, and scary jewelry and clothes.

In fact, it’s better than Carnival. In Carnival, you have people dressing up and pretending to be something or somebody else, but everybody knows they’re pretending. The thing that makes the Biennale so diverting is that the people dressing up and behaving oddly aren’t pretending.

And what does all this mean to me? Not much, except between 1:00 and 2:30 in the afternoon, when I could really use a nap. As I may have mentioned (many times), our bedroom windows open onto the street, a street which is a major thoroughfare connecting Sector A (via Garibaldi) with Sector B (the last little lobe of Castello). Unfortunately, the Biennale has installed some exhibitions in said lobe, which means that groups of people stream past the window all day, talking loudly and excitedly in English and French and German and some Slavic languages, maybe Slovenian or Croatian. Excellent languages all, except in Venice, where they cannot be spoken at any level below a shout.

Somewhat compensated for by these shoes.

Come to think of it, they could just as easily be passing one by one, each one talking loudly and excitedly on his or her cell phone. In any case, loud and excited talking does not conduce to my after-lunch slumber party. I apologize for reducing the magnitude and splendor of this cultural pageant to my insignificant personal needs, but my apology is not sincere.

When the exhibitions close, everybody migrates to another display area.

He's got the music, the stage, and the audience for what appeared to be a dance based on tai chi. The performance wasn't any odder than people sitting in the middle of the street. — He's got the music, the stage, and the audience for what appeared to be a dance based on tai chi. The performance wasn't any odder than having people sitting in the middle of the street.

I really hope she’s going to dinner.

Yes, the hair is unpleasant, but so is the fact that his friend feels perfectly fine folding herself up barefoot in public like some lost village tribeswoman.

Now that I've made this picture, we can all gaze upon him forever. He would be so happy.

Even the kids come loaded with attitude.

This toddler hasn't yet learned that attitude is what you use to fill the place currently being occupied by spectacular boredom. A plastic rake is going to help him for only about five more minutes. Then I guess he'll have to start smoking or something. — This toddler hasn't yet learned that attitude is what you use to fill the space currently being occupied by spectacular boredom. A plastic rake is going to divert him for only about five more minutes. Then I guess he'll have to start smoking or something.

And this little girl is still too young to be thinking of anything except how pointless it is to be standing around outside doing nothing, far past her bedtime, with strangers who are more interested in her than her mother is.

Meanwhile, restaurant and cafe owners all along via Garibaldi are working like crazy, stretching their premises far, far beyond the space they are permitted to occupy. A table for 54? Right away, sir.

And some people aren't thinking about architecture at all, but how very charming this portrait will be of her holding a bouquet of red peppers on one of those cunning little bridges.