Venetian Curiosities | Venice: I am not making this up

the girls on the bench

April 24, 2025 3 Comments

Remember the mysterious girls on the vaporetto and their extraordinary hair? I’ll remind you:

They seemed not even to know each other, but the odds on their all meeting up on the morning school vaporetto run are incalculable.

But not many days later, we came upon extravagant tresses again. Who are these people?

The similarities between these damsels are too obvious to need comment, but I’m fascinated by the rebel in the middle. Not dressed in black! Short hair! She is clearly impervious to whatever strange force is directing the other girls. Lino, on the other hand, can’t stop marveling at the fact that they didn’t move over to make room for everybody to sit comfortably. Four people obviously together who *all* are fine with one of them just perching on the corner?

By all means, come to Venice to look at palaces and canals. But occasional glimpses of people here are sometimes more extraordinary than almost everything else.

Venetian Curiosities

Menegazzo in Los Angeles

April 16, 2025 6 Comments

A friend has sent this image of Marino Menegazzo’s gold leaf in Los Angeles.

The caption in Wikipedia (public domain) explains that the original 1939 building was home to the May company department store. For the curious, the style is Art Deco and Streamline Moderne. Formerly part of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art campus, since 2021 it houses The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, located on Wilshire Boulevard at the western end of the “Miracle Mile.”

Lest you think, as I did at first, that the cylinder’s surface itself is covered with gold leaf (I tip my hat to the legendary Ca’ d’Oro on the Grand Canal), let me clarify that it is made of more than 350,000 glass and gold-leaf mosaic tiles. Some of the original tiles were so deteriorated that they had to be replaced, so preservation specialist John Fidler turned to the original producer, Orsoni, in Venice. Not for the first time, Orsoni turned to Menegazzo for the required leaves of gold to be placed within the new glass tiles.

That’s all I know but it made my day.

Venetian Curiosities

always looking

October 4, 2024 16 Comments

As you know by now, just looking around can be hugely entertaining in Venice. If you don’t come often, everything is worth looking at. For lifers, though, looking really closely as you plod along the same old streets really relieves the monotony. If you keep your eyes and brain coordinated, all sorts of diverting little details jump out. Fun fact: Even Venetians are surprised to suddenly notice something new, even after a lifetime here.

This isn’t what anybody would call a LITTLE detail — you could see this with one eye closed and the other squinting. It’s one of my favorite lions, including his little starter kit of wings. I have no idea what this structure is. I could ask somebody sometime…. Meanwhile, whatever materials the artist “Manu Invisible#” used have held up amazingly well. Still looks as fresh as it did when I first saw it at least 20 years ago.

Speaking of felines, one almost imagine this one is sipping through a straw. Impressive eyes. Is he winking?

I detect the hand of a different artist here (or at least a different species of cat).

To remain in the feline, not to say leonine, mode for another moment, here is a very brave exemplar on the church of the Salute. He’s got the hang of appearing fierce yet dignified, but the teeth perplex me slightly — they must have called in the doge’s dentist to give the sculptor some advice. Evidently the first advice was to extract the fangs.

Over the adjacent doorway was this wreck. Either this is the same lion many years later, or after one brief but violent visit to the aforementioned dentist. And who among us has not left the dentist’s office looking, or at least feeling, like this? “Your dentures will be in by next week…..”

A national election was held some time ago and the local polling place was bedecked with the requisite signage for the “sections” assigned to this school for voting. They did their best.

There are so many reasons to feel sorry for tourists here (I know, we hate them, but we can also feel sorry for them at the same time). They discover all too quickly that what passes for normal here is usually something tiring, confusing, or just generally hard. The fact that you have to walk, sometimes kilometers (and over bridges), means that your feet are the ones who decide what you can and can’t do. It was 5:00 AM that morning on the vaporetto trundling toward the train station, and this woman’s feet were already so unhappy.

I really felt for her. First, these are boudoir shoes, not for the granite pavements of the most beautiful city etc. Equally first, even if she were in her boudoir, these shoes are too small. Every woman recognizes that your brain can try every trick to make you ignore the fact that the shoes you couldn’t live without are too small, but that struggle comes at a price charged to your feet and the rest of your body. As you see here, she’s trying to maintain a truce with her feet. I imagine that these shoes were acquired because her boyfriend said he liked them. (Refrain from commenting on latent sexism in that theory. Maybe she got them because she knew he’d like them. Maybe he tried to discourage her and now she regretfully realizes he had her best interest at heart. I’ll never know.) Anyway, he’s the one you can’t see, wearing the comfortable white flat walking shoes. Just looking at this picture hurts me as much as it did to look at the pair of them (the two people, but also I mean feet) all the way up the Grand Canal.

There are shutters on thousands of Venetian windows, and while opening them is universal, there’s a choice of gizmos made to keep them open. A friend revealed one type that is as fabulous as it is common. I’d give anything to know who thought it up, but I love the fact that so many people decided that’s how they wanted to control their shutters.

A very common sight at street level. I’d never given them a thought till their secret was revealed to me.

She’s down. She’s resting. Waiting for the day to start and the shutters to need holding. Look closely at her arms. As soon as she is lifted upward on her hidden linchpin they will turn out to be…

…this guy’s turban. He is up and she is facing the wall upside down.

Okay fine, so the person who opened the shutters couldn’t be bothered to put this couple to work. And yet, he is up, in holding-shutter position. So many questions.

And yet, we know that if something can go wrong, it will. One day the gizmo had to be installed but the installer was — let’s say disoriented. Perhaps it was a Monday morning. Yep, I installed it, boss. Yes, the male figure is supposed to be in the up position. BUT LOOKING OUTWARD, ya nugget!

Venetian Curiosities, Venetian-ness

hedge gone wild

August 27, 2024 9 Comments

Well, I waited six months to get a haircut, so I suppose I’m not one to criticize a hedge. But I’m confused. Wouldn’t you think that the so-called most beautiful city in the world would do a little more to keep itself presentable? I know my mother would.

Granted, we all know how you just go along thinking everything is fine… you’ll fix your hair/mop the floor/write that thank-you note just any day now…and then suddenly something snaps and you realize that your hair is a freaking mess, etc. etc. The jig is up.

In the case of this hedge, nobody seems to be responding to the jig. Maybe wild-haired hedges are just the latest trend, or something related to the Biennale which is just through the park ahead. But company’s coming to town (and some is already here — I’ve seen the yachts). Tomorrow is the first day of the Venice Film Festival, and if there were ever a time to trim that hedge, I’d think the time would be now. Actually, yesterday. ACTUALLY, a week ago.

But what, as I often ask myself, do I know? I never trimmed my bangs to suit my mother, so it’s clearly just as well I was never responsible for a hedge.