Tourists want beautiful glass, so this shopowner sometimes has to dust everything, or wash it with Windex, or whatever she’s doing. The visitors I’m talking about aren’t interested in glass, though.
The story about making money off tourists has taken a few turns since my recent post. It would probably be more accurate to call the following characters “short-term visitors” rather than tourists, because their purpose in being here does not resemble in any way whatever the typical tourists are seeking.
First, there are what journalist Elisio Trevisan, in his report for the Gazzettino, calls “beggar-commuters.” We are now learning that an increasing number come to Venice from various Eastern European points on what you might call, not a vacation, really, but a sort of brief work-abroad project. They come on the cheap Flixbus (which is great, by the way), set themselves up as beggars, eat at the community soup-kitchens, sleep in doorways, and can make as much as 100 euros per day. They manage to wash up at some public source of water before the return trip (the bus driver won’t let them board otherwise) and go home to their families with enough to live on till the next trip becomes necessary.
Then there are the regular thieves. They too are coming from elsewhere; they also are not exactly tourists, but tastes on vacations vary. Some people take a break and go surfing, or look at the Mona Lisa, or run with a batch of bulls, while these intrepid pilferers come to Venice to steal for a while. According to Carlo Mion writing in La Nuova Venezia, they come over from Lombardy, the region next door, and are usually organized by family or clan.
This egret, who seems to have adopted our riva, is also on the hunt, but not for money. He’s looking for anguele (ang-WEY), the Mediterranean sand smelt (Atherinus hepterus). I imagine that anguela mothers are warning their spawn about him the same way I’m warning you, though I suppose their main advice would be “Dive! Dive!”
The Carabinieri have been studying them and their systems. They are basically from the Balkans and eastward (Romania, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and also a contingent of Roma). They dress in a credible way; the women wear panama hats and big scarves (to cover their faces from surveillance cameras), daypack hoisted on their chests and with a city map in hand (to cover their busy hands). Also, they look very touristy this way. Favorite targets: Americans, Koreans, Japanese. During one brief shining period there were also cash-laden Russians. In any case, a clever faux-tourist can gather as much as 300 euros in a day.
In one recent case, it was 700 euros. Two Bulgarian women lifted the wallet (that also included her documents such as passport, I assume, and perhaps also credit cards) of an 80-year-old American woman. The victim wasn’t aware of anything amiss, so I don’t know who raised the hue and cry. In any case, the filchers were taken away by whichever uniformed officer was on duty. The hearing is scheduled for the end of July — “in theory.” That doesn’t sound encouraging. In any case, whatever happens, they will be back. Or their friends and relatives.
Years ago there was a spate of street gamblers playing the shell game around the city, especially on the Accademia Bridge. (This sort of thief has not reappeared so far.) I read in the newspaper that one day lightning-fingers managed to milk a gullible player of $5,000. It’s not funny in any way, but I have to admit that, at least in this case, that the victim, as well as his trickster, must have become a LEGEND in that Serbian family. Every couple of months somebody will want to hear uncle tell the story again of that time in Venice he peeled the money off the tourist and that’s how come they’re living in such a nice house, with a garden and two cars. A boisterous toast to uncle and tourist.
I hope this is the last time I’ll be droning on about the situation. So just take every precaution, and then take some more.
Venice: Worth seeing. Your valuables: Worth keeping.
Newspaper headlines have to do two things: Be short, and make you want to buy the paper. You’ve got to have emotions about whatever it is, and Lord knows there’s no lack of emotions around here.
Be careful, though, not to draw the wrong conclusions or make wild assumptions when you have more feelings than information.
Case in point: This simple but fraught headline on today’s announcement board at the newsstand.
It contains nothing but emotional words: “Moto ondoso gondola capsized two boys saved.” Anyone here has only to read the words “moto ondoso” to brace themselves for the worst. This term refers to the chaotic waves caused by the ever-increasing motorboat traffic, and obviously is never good. Moto ondoso has recently reappeared — yet again — in the forefront of Venetian minds as the clearest and most present danger to waterborne vehicles and their passengers. The city itself is being victimized, too, pounded all day by the impact of the thrashing water. So we see “moto ondoso” and instantly we intuit danger, and knowing nothing more we assume that the gondola had people in it (tourists, probably). Perhaps the passengers were the two boys? Boat overturns, people being “saved” = nearly avoided drowning, is my quick assumption. What other danger would they need to have been saved from? All this is what the telegraphic headline implies.
The very brief story in La Nuova Venezia basically said that two 18-year-old boys were towing a gondola between the Bacini and San Pietro di Castello on a wide canal known as the Canale delle Navi, known also as a stretch of water becoming increasingly wild with the wakes of every motorized vehicle known to Venice. They were bringing the boat to the squero for repairs.
Some water entered the gondola, courtesy of a wave, and more followed. The boat became yet more unstable, and before long the combination of internal and external liquid pushed the boat overboard, so to speak. The article says that the boys fell in the water, but didn’t explain how. Waves and some variety of panic could have done the trick.
A passing boat rendered immediate aid, the firemen were called, as were the local police. The story will undoubtedly develop with claims and counterclaims (there seems to be some talk of a big tourist launch that was speeding). Allow me to shake my two raised fists and bellow “Curse you, moto ondoso!”
But I thought I’d reflect for a moment on the fact that towing a boat here isn’t as simple as you might think. I have participated in numerous transfers of rowing boats under tow, and you quickly discover that, even without waves, you need to pay attention. It’s not unusual to see motorboats towing some Venetian boat from the area of the race eliminations at very high speed, and some of those boats flip over too.
This was Lino a few years ago towing an eight-oar gondola and two normal gondolas. We were returning from a big event in Nafpaktos, Greece in which Venetian boats were major participants. Each boat here has some people aboard, which may well not have been the case of the unfortunate boys.
We know nothing about how this operation was being carried out. Was the gondola tied by the bow or the stern? How fast were they going? How long was the rope linking the two boats? Was there wind? In the early afternoon they would have been going against the tide; was that a factor? Don’t think I’m trying to defend the waves, I am just saying that this is a tricky undertaking for anyone who may not yet know some of the fine points. If one of the boys had been sitting in the gondola, using the oar as a sort of rudder to keep the boat from slewing around, that would have been a huge help. Or you can usefully tie a length of chain, or some deadweight object, to the stern to act as a sort of sea anchor keeping the boat from skidding around. The boat wants to fishtail because it is already riding on the swervy crest of two waves that are the wake created by the motorboat itself.
Here the foreground gondola has been allowed to skew to the right; the people aboard weren’t paying attention. As you can see in the gondola behind it, each of the two men aboard are holding oars to use as a sort of rudder. The right pressure just before the boat begins to wander off course keeps it in line. If there were more waves here, it would be clearer how vulnerable the already-low left side of the gondola is to taking on water.Here I am with a friend, each of us working with our oars to keep this caorlina on the straight and narrow. It’s not just the gondola; any Venetian boat wants to wander off course when it’s being towed.
Of course we don’t want waves, and we don’t want boys falling in the water all of a sudden. I’m certainly ready to blame moto ondoso for every bad thing on earth. But towing a boat is like driving in the snow. Things can happen.
Another view of the boats moving around. You really need to anticipate the boat’s tendency to slither out of line, otherwise you’ll wear yourself out hauling on your oar way too hard. Lino has towed as many as nine boats by himself. Naturally that’s the Expert Level, because the person driving the motorboat has to be extremely sensitive to the motion of the boats behind him or her. When the towed boat pulls in one direction, it exerts pressure on the motorboat to veer off in the opposite direction. There are just any number of factors to keep track of, and everything is moving all the time. At least here there weren’t any waves.
Too many corners? This street will take you somewhere. It might be the “where” you want to be, or maybe not.
I had an interesting dream last night, set in Venice; nothing particular happened but I did awaken with this thought: It’s not the canals that make Venice so particular (special, different, beautiful, strange, etc.), it’s the corners.
Why is that? Because there are so incredibly many of them, and when you turn one, or two, or more, you either move ahead or you somehow find yourself pretty much back where you started.
That’s my new metaphor for Venice. As far as I can tell, after the enormous difficulties and turmoil caused by two years of Covid, somehow it seems that we’re back where we started. You might think that could be a good thing (“Back to normal!”) except that it’s not (“Back to normal!”). Things keep happening, but almost nothing really changes. Names change occasionally, but the headlines seem to be set on “replay.”
There are now fewer than 50,000 Venetians living in the historic center of Venice. (In 2021, there were 50,434). This is a threshold many people dreaded crossing, but it has been crossed nonetheless. I have no idea what this means in real life, because supermarkets continue to open. Who are their customers?
This place was a furniture and upholstery shop when we moved here. Then it became a bar/cafe/slot machine parlor. Then the “acqua granda” decimated it in 2019 and it has remained this way till now.Then, just a week or so ago, suddenly there was activity.It’s going to be a very large supermarket dedicated to shampoo, detergent, cosmetics, also potato chips and beer. Just what we few who live here were needing? We already have two supermarkets and a shampoo/detergent shop. Stand by for the struggle for survival of the smaller, family-run detergent emporium and this megalodon.This store is already separating itself from the family-run shop several doors down: It will be open continually (no mid-day closing for lunch or a nap or anything like that), and it will be open on Sunday, when the family is at home taking a break like normal people. I am not happy.Here’s a wonderful sight, though: Imagine my delight at seeing a truly useful shop open up. A barber named Mohammed took over the space of the defunct laundromat, victim of the acqua granda. The space sat empty for two years, then suddenly the classic rotating barber-pole appeared. I really hope Mohammed makes it. There must be at least one tourist who’ll need a haircut between spritzes.
When the mayor uses the term “Venice,” he is referring to the general metropolitan entity, the preponderance of which is on the mainland. Everybody knows he really only cares about the mainland: “The future of Venice,” he said openly, “is Mestre.” Take that, Venice-lovers! The future of Milwaukee may well be Sheboygan, but to someone who thinks of the Piazza San Marco when he/she hears “Venice,” Mestre is a bit much. Still, this is how it’s going. Eight of the ten city councilors are from the mainland. The ninth is in Venice itself, the tenth lives on the Lido. And of course the mayor too is from the mainland, where he has business interests. So voices speaking up for the dwindling historic center are faint and few.
Meanwhile, daily life is made up of stores closing, stores opening. Unpredictable transit strikes and all-too-predictable wailing by ACTV, we have no money we have no money. Tourists: We want them, but they’re making us crazy. The sudden drought of Russian tourists has torn a new hole in the city’s financial fabric.
Cruises: Big ships are banished from the Bacino of San Marco. The cruise ships will enter the lagoon at Malamocco, toiling like container ships up to the raggedy docks in the commercial port zone of Marghera.
The MSC “Sinfonia” opened the season by docking at Marghera on April 9, the first of the 200 cruises scheduled for this year. Sound good? Not when you compare it to the 565 cruises that stopped (or started) in Venice in 2019. But those days are gone.
MOSE: There will never be anything new to say about this. Work stopped, problems found, money gone, problems found, money arrives, work starts again, problems found, date of completion always on the horizon.
The thing is that headlines blurt out news that any Venetian already knew years ago. Example: Barnacles. Lino mentioned the inevitability of barnacle encrustation to me back in 1994. It would be impossible to astonish anybody who has kept a boat in the water here. This is as much a fact as that water is wet.
Still, somebody finally noticed the problem. In 2018, an article announced the discovery by an underwater drone that the MOSE barriers were rusting and encrusted with barnacles. Time passes, nothing is done. In 2022, another headline: Barnacles!! Or to be even more precise: Mussels.
The Guardia di Finanza disseminated a brief video showing this little voyage of discovery a few days ago. I can’t estimate how many tons of mollusks have attached themselves to the gates, but I can tell you that their weight is going to have a very serious effect on the gates’ functioning.
Turns out that the gates that have been lying in their assigned position underwater awaiting the call to block the tide have not been receiving the required and agreed-upon maintenance. The money for maintenance was allotted some time back, but it seems to have not been spent on maintenance. If the crud was predictable, so was the fate of the maintenance money.
Years ago, the cost of annual maintenance was forecast to be some 15 million euros. Then estimates of maintenance costs rose to 80 million euros, and now they’re projected to be 200 million euros per year. Where do these numbers come from? Are they breeding in dark corners, like wire hangers? In any case, vast amounts of money can’t ever sit still long enough to be spent on what they’re supposed to be spent on. When you actually need the money, somehow it’s just not there anymore.
There’s no need to read headlines, this has been going on for generations now. The big hold-back-the-tide project began in 1973, when the Special Law for Venice allotted money for a competition for designs (held in 1975). When the first stone was laid in 2003, the end was promised for 2010. We were all so young, so innocent… Then the 2014 deadline came and went, then the middle of 2018, then the beginning of 2019. The “acqua granda” of November 2019 broke several financial logjams, and work picked up with the promise of concluding in 2021. Sorry, I meant 2023. Endless years pass of “We’ll get there! Give us more money!” Lack of funds closed the works for the entire year of 2021. Rome sends millions, then more millions. And yet, somehow there is never enough.
Tourism: They’re baaaaack. Intermittently, and more often on weekends, still more often just during the day. There were a few Carnival crush-fests in the San Marco area, but nothing noteworthy. I suppose it just wouldn’t be Venice without 100,000 or more visitors in a day. And just now, on the cusp of the Easter weekend, we are back under siege again.
This is supposed to be good (even as we see the interminable lines at the vaporetto stops for boats to Murano and Burano). Venice has got to get back in the game, seeing as it’s the only game there is.
Venice isn’t the only Italian city to take a major hit from the pandemic, but I am not seeking comparisons. There were 8,800,000 visits in 2019; 2,500,000 in 2020, and a little more than 3,200,000 in 2021. Between May and August of 2021 (peak summer season) the arrivals were 54 percent fewer than in 2019.
Last January I glimpsed that a return to normal tourist business was imminent when I passed the dry cleaning shop and saw piles of hotel-room drapes.Now vaporettos are back to being jammed with people and luggage. True, this is a holiday weekend, but the crush has become more noticeable over the past two months.Fancy bags from fancy stores show that some of the tourists with money are returning. Too bad the Russians are gone; they’d been increasing over the years to be among the top spenders in the tourist cavalcade (fourth after Japanese, Chinese, and Canadians), spending an average of 145 euros per person per day in 2018. And they loved the many-starred hotels; almost 40 per cent of Russians stayed in the fancy hostelries.Italian tourists are forecast to increase by 35 percent over last year, and foreign tourists will be up 43 percent. If they all went to Dior, how great would that be.Maybe these bottles were prepared for the now-missing Russians? Stunned by a wine that costs 900 euros ($972), I discover that Solaia is produced in the Chianti Classico area and is considered “among the most influential wines in the history of Italian viticulture.” The other two bottles suddenly seem so much more approachable. Yet if there is one thing — or three — that say “tourist,” it has to be these. Have them delivered to my yacht.And speaking of bottles, there are these little containers of unknown substances. Of course there ought to be something on sale for everybody, but the city is promising to clamp down on the shops selling the cheap tchotchkes aimed at the average yobbo. I doubt that this item will make it onto their radar, though. They’re on the lookout for cheap masks and little bobbing battery-run gondolas for your bookshelf.Gondoliers are back at work.So are taxi drivers.Suddenly the now-reopening businesses and hotels are scrambling to find staff. The Bar Torino in Campo San Luca is looking for a woman or man to work the bar — experience required.Waiters!! “We are seeking personnel for the (dining) room. Send your CV via email….or leave it inside! Age between 20 and 30 years old.” Evidently age requirements aren’t forbidden by law; if they were, I don’t suppose the proprietor would be so upfront about how much he prefers people in their 20s.“Lacking chambermaids, war breaks out between hotels.” I say “chambermaid,” though maybe there are men who also clean and set up hotel rooms. But 70 percent of workers associated with tourism are women.Unloading bags of flour at the bread bakery is another sign of the touristic return. People buy bread, sure, but restaurants and bars buy more.
Last year sometime there was a brief quiver of excitement over the resurrected idea of installing turnstiles to control the flow of tourists entering the city at certain points. That idea has been mothballed. I think we don’t want to slow them down. The eternal subject of the selling a ticket to enter Venice has also been put aside. But these ideas will be back. They’re like the swallows going to Capistrano.
One huge drawback to the renting of apartments to tourists is their garbage. Many owners leave instructions about when to leave it out for collection (on our street, the trashmen come by between 8:10 and 8:25 AM). But if for some reason you put it out much earlier, even the night before, this is what greets the dawn. Seagulls can smell your pizza box and coffee grounds and they will rip the plastic bag to shreds.Pigeons are also fans but they don’t get a chance till the seagulls have finished.There are two tourist-rental apartments on our tiny stretch of street. I understand that if you have a flight that leaves at 6:30 AM, you’re going to put it out when you go. Then again, there are people who put it out at 9:00 because they want to sleep late. The trashmen are not amused but they can’t leave it there.
Biennale: Yes, it is opening this year — April 23 to November 27 — and the vibrations are palpable. The small park on the Riva dei Sette Martiri tends to host more light-hearted works. I’ll just call them “works,” because I can’t bring myself to say “art.” I honestly don’t know what they are.
No, THIS is art.
So here we are, caught in the endless cycle of everything. Maybe there will be something new around the next corner (or ten), but I’m not counting on it.
My vision of a perfect world: Nothing fancy, everybody getting along, nobody trying to get anywhere.
A few readers have written to me from time to time telling me that they are not seeing the photographs in whichever post had just come out.
This is distressing, of course; I spend a lot of time working on the text, but just as much time on the images. I never thought I’d reach the point where I’d even hint that without pictures my writing is meaningless, but here we are.
I thought the problem might be caused by the reader perhaps reading the post as an email, without clicking on the post’s title and being mysteriously transported to the realm of the real blog (on what I refer to as my glamor site). But that may not be the reason at all.
I asked my blog tech wizard, and he wrote a very simple reply: “It could be that the email service provider they are using does not allow large images to be received. Some email service providers have odd restrictions.”
If I were to optimize the photograph, the problem might very well be solved. But this is a process that requires several steps and considering how many images I sometimes include, I honestly can’t see myself optimizing them all to resolve a problem affecting so few people.
So I apologize to anyone who can’t see the pictures. If there’s something you can do at your end to resolve it, I’ll be grateful.
