Venetian Curiosities | Venice: I am not making this up

Let’s lighten up

April 9, 2021 21 Comments

The big picture (of the world, life, etc.) is still being painted in various gradations of grim — we are in various gradations of lockdown till May, just to give an example — but all it takes is a walk (or a vaporetto ride) and two open eyes to discover a whole world of strange out there. Strange is refreshing, so have a look.

It all started a few weeks ago when I walked past this door. This arrangement makes no sense.

I could have stood there for an hour gazing at this but I wouldn’t have been any closer to understanding it. I realize that the flowers can’t be in front of the door, that’s obvious. But when did the railing come on the scene, and more to the point, why is it opposite the door? The door has always been on the right. I see that the door opens outward, so it might have blocked the hand reaching for support. Closest I can come is that Aunt Maria Rosa Addolorata died and it cost money to remove the railing, so the family left it, and so did the new tenants. Anyway, the railing and the plants seem to have decided that seeing as they’re in the majority, the door is going to have to adapt to them somehow. This stalemate appears permanent.

Rowing with a baguette? This entrancing vision is promoting, in a quintessentially Venetian way, the take-out services of the Rizzo chain of bakery and gastronomic shops. “Lunch at work?” the poster says. “We can think about it!” As in: Just leave it to us, we’ll be the ones to organize and plan and provide, all you have to do is eat and pay. Not in that order.

Continuing on the theme of food, these fresh tuna steaks are gorgeous. The sign uses all the important key words, no need for whole paragraphs: “Tuna. Red. Alive. Local.” Skipping “red” — one can see that — I stop to stare at “*vivo*.” Alive? This is pushing me into deep philosophical waters. Does this mean it’s so fresh it might as well be alive, an interesting concept if seen from the tuna’s point of view? Or is it the red that’s alive, which seems like a pointless remark to make when you can already see that this is a red that could give Venetian scarlet some serious competition. Vendors will often add “fished” to make clear that it was caught, and not farmed. But live slices of dead tuna, or dead slices of once-alive tuna — nope. We bought a piece and grilled it. It didn’t taste alive. Were we cheated?

This is primal polenta and I haven’t encountered anything that resembles its elemental perfection in any restaurant. This is home cooking straight from Lino’s childhood. First, you make real (not instant) polenta in his mother’s deep copper pan, stirring for 40 minutes. The result is soft but solid (out in the world, it’s either one or the other). Butter from the Alps, grated parmesan cheese — technically, its lowland twin, *grana padana*. Take a forkful of polenta, dip it in the well of melting butter, dab it into the cheese, to which it sticks, and eat. This could be dinner, as far as I’m concerned. No disrespect to the cook, but this is a very tough act to follow.

This poster is a dauntless relic of the shop it decorates, now extremely closed. As an advertisement for truffles, it obviously bounces off “A diamond is forever,” the famous advertising slogan for De Beers diamonds created by genius copywriter Mary Frances Gerety in 1948 and still in use today. She died in 1999, so she was spared this vision of creative sloth. Besides, what does it mean? Of course a truffle isn’t forever — you’re supposed to eat the dang thing. No food is forever, unless you count frozen mammoth wedged into the permafrost. They might as well have written “This is not a truffle” — homage to Rene’ Magritte: “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.”

Venice is just full of things that aren’t. First we have a truffle that wants to make sure you know it isn’t a diamond, and here we have the recycling set out on a Monday/Wednesday/Friday, obviously one of the days that paper is picked up. So is the paper in a paper bag? Of course not. It’s in a plastic bag carefully labeled “Carta e cartone” (paper and carton), just so you know. A trash collector told me that there are people (the same people?) who put plastic in paper bags. Someday I’m going to ask somebody what they’re doing.

It’s 856 meters (2,808 feet) from the vaporetto stop at San Pietro di Castello to the far end of via Garibaldi, and in this stretch of city not only do many people pass, but they are often carrying bits of things they need to throw away. There is not one trash can. Not that I’m excusing whoever it was who decided his/her plastic cup had become a hindrance, though I have to say I feel that they deserve points for creativity and willingness to take risks to have disposed of it by jamming it into the space atop this bricola. These pilings must be three meters (nine feet) high and they’re too far from the bridge to make it likely that anybody could have leaned out to get rid of the pesky plastic.

Similar problem outside the Crosara bakery on via Garibaldi. Also a similar solution, the old just-jam-it-anywhere move. Like the bricola, it’s fairly high up. Somebody brought a ladder? They think if it’s up high nobody will see it? Because I can promise that the trash collector isn’t going to see it.

It’s a plastic drinking glass containing tea of some sort. It appears that the brand is Estathe’. Must check from time to time to see if swallows are nesting in it or something.

I see that the house-number painter did not consider the space at the center of the arch to be sufficient. I myself wouldn’t have drawn that conclusion, but I failed geometry. In any case, even if it was done decades or centuries apart, I admire the artistic sensibility that made the numbers lean toward each other. It could so easily have gone the other way.

I can’t explain the fascination of this little scene. Of course I was curious to discover what she was perusing so very carefully; something about her clothes, or the battered condition of the tiny book, gave me a strange impression of an immigrant arriving at Ellis Island 150 years ago. Naturally I tried to make out what was written as I passed by, but no. The pages have kept their secret for a long time, by the look of it; I hope she found whatever or whoever she was looking for.

On another day, another vaporetto, I discovered a brand of shoes I’d never heard of before: “Scarpa.” This is a very common Venetian last name (actually comes from Pellestrina). Kayak champion Daniele Scarpa won an Olympic gold medal. architect Carlo Scarpa is world-famous. That’s all fine till you stick it on a shoe. It means “shoe.”

I thought it was runny paint and was going to file this in the “You had one job” folder. But it’s not paint; it’s soot from the coal fires of yesteryear that dribbled out with the condensation of humidity inside the chimney. Lino recognized it immediately. His father was a train driver for the state railway, back when the trains were still steam-powered, and one of his perks was an allowance of anthracite each month for their home. But people used many different grades of coal or charcoal.

Everybody’s chimney looked like this, to one degree or another.

Street of the Chimneysweeps. (Sorry I didn’t have time to wait for the sun to move; the word is *scoacamini*.) Lino remembers that they worked in pairs, and walked along the neighborhood streets carrying a ladder and calling out; if you needed them, you just nabbed them then. None of this making appointments. Many people walked around crying their wares; the *gua*, or knife-grinder, for example, or the old man who called out “*Strasse, ossa o fero vecio da vender*” (rags, bones or old iron to sell). You’d bring out a newspaper full of bones you’d saved, or some old nails you’d scavenged, and so forth, and he’d weigh them and pay you.

I saved the best for last. I noticed this girl as we waited for the vaporetto. What struck me at first wasn’t her Anouk Aimee/Amal Clooney vibe but her legs. Was she tattooed? Scarred? I got up to look closer. No, it’s some design on the tights themselves. It’s … words?

Words indeed: It’s Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116. Written on her legs. First-rate gams that don’t need sonnetry to make you look at them, but I have to say that anybody who walks around with Shakespeare on her stems has reached a level of panache I can only dream of. For the record, she is a German university student who bought them somewhere here, and she shot my day into an entirely new orbit.

Venetian Curiosities

Hidden well in plain sight

July 2, 2018 2 Comments

And before I leave the subject of water in Venice……

If one is compelled to cross the Piazza San Marco — and from Easter till the first hard frost one crosses only under compulsion — one doesn’t expect to see anything beyond the daily disarray. On a recent afternoon Lino and I (under compulsion) were crossing, and because the crowds were swarming momentarily in another part of the piazza, we discovered something new. Old, of course, but new to us.

Lines on the stones. Significant lines bearing a message to somebody somewhere in the future, if anybody were to notice. Or care. That would be me.

These two concentric circles don’t exactly leap out at you.

They’re not tremendously more obvious from this angle, either.

But whoever incised those lines left a clue. More than a clue, positive identification. I couldn’t fit the entire very helpful inscription into one frame and make it readable at the same time, so here’s the first panel. It says “POZZO INTERRATO NEL…” “Well filled with earth in…”

“XVII,” or “17th.” Note that here the “17th century” doesn’t mean the 1600s, but the 1700’s.

I haven’t succeeded in finding much more information than that, so kudos to Walter Fano on his blog L’altra Venezia for supplying at least the following bits (translated by me): “In the ancient Piazza San Marco there were wellheads, but how many isn’t very clear. In 1283 one was located at the entrance to the Mercerie (N.B., under the clock tower), while in 1494 the historian Marin Sanudo speaks of two wellheads. In successive epochs, anyway, all the histories speak of only one well located at the bottom of the piazza, near the church of San Geminiano (a church which Napoleon wanted demolished at the beginning of the 1800’s, who caused the so-called “Ala Napoleonica” (Napoleonic Wing) to be built in its place which today closes the piazza at the side opposite the basilica).”

Paintings by Giovanni Canaletto, Francesco Guardi, Antonio Vicentini, all working in the late 1600’s/early 1700’s do not reveal anything resembling a wellhead in the Piazza San Marco, and considering their mania for accuracy, I’m going to accept that it was already gone when they began sketching. I had hopes of glimpsing a well in Gentile Bellini’s “Procession in Piazza San Marco” (1496), but he cleverly composed the scene to as to obscure the area in question. I give up.

This is the Piazza San Marco in 1500, delineated by Jacopo de’ Barbari with his customary insane attention to detail in the “View of Venice.” I don’t know what the numbers indicate, but I can’t say there’s a well there.

But there is this: An undated image of the uncovering of an earthed-in well in the Piazza San Marco, essentially where the concentric circles are now drawn. Why it would have been closed — and why in the 17th century — will have to remain in the “I’ll get to the bottom of this someday” file.

Venetian Curiosities

Daniela Ghezzo dresses your feet

September 25, 2015 9 Comments

It’s remotely conceivable that I might attempt what Daniela is doing (actually, it’s not), but I can promise I wouldn’t be smiling.

Several readers were kind enough to inquire as to what could possibly be so big and impressive (or time-consuming, or distracting, or whatever) to keep me off my blog for so long.

Now it can be revealed that I was writing a rather big article about Daniela Ghezzo, a Venetian custom shoemaker, for an excellent new online magazine called “Craftsmanship.” And if I have not yet bombarded you with the news via the social networks, let me bombard you here.

http://craftsmanship.net/the-soul-of-the-italian-shoe/

The point of mentioning it isn’t so much to display my amazing creative abilities, but to bring forward a person with even more amazing creative abilities, not to mention skill, not to mention manual dexterity and fabulous imagination. Why do I know how hard it is to do what she does? Because she makes it look so easy. Zwingle’s Third Law: The harder something is to do, the more the ignorant onlooker thinks “Hey! I could do that!” Fred Astaire always looked as if he didn’t even have sweat glands.

I hope if any of you finds yourself in her street that you will pause to imbibe the beauty, but that you will manage not to let your pause interfere too much with whatever she’s doing. Being open to the public is a great thing for her business, of course, but can be a drawback to her work, and if it turns out you’re the tenth person to stop to ask her what she’s doing– which of course, you won’t know — it means she will probably have donated more than an hour of her day to friendly questions, and when you’re working it’s not so easy to start and stop and start again. Some shoemakers work only by appointment for that reason, and some beleaguered artisans in Venice now charge money for stopping long enough to talk to people. Just saying.

Of course, if you intend to ask her to make a pair of shoes for you, your encounter obviously will not qualify as time wasted.

She'd probably make a superb guitarist -- she knows exactly what each finger has to do, and she makes them do it. — She’d probably make a fine guitarist — she knows exactly what each finger has to do, and she makes them do it.

Which is not to say everything always goes smoothly.

Zwingle's TK Law, illustration #1: The simpler it looks, the harder it was to accomplish. — Zwingle’s Third Law, illustration #1: The simpler it looks, the harder it was to accomplish. Each millimeter has been calculated with implacable precision.

But there are also shoes that make me smile, like these sandals.

Especially the heels. It takes a certain turn of mind to enjoy putting the best bit where nobody can see it.

An artist making shoes will eventually do a little painting on them.

It’s the border that makes this shoe, though the thought of folding and stitching it makes me grind my teeth. Her logo is the symbol that was used by the Venetian shoemakers’ “scuola,” or guild.

Sure, I'll just fold this piece of leather into the narrowest conceivable border. — Sure, I’ll just fold this piece of leather into the narrowest conceivable border.

This relief sculpture over the main door of the Scoletta dei Calegheri in Campo San Toma' shows the miracle of San Marco healing the injry suffered by Aniano while repairing his sandals. Saint Aniano became the patron saint of the guild. — This relief sculpture over the main door of the Scoletta dei Calegheri in Campo San Toma’ shows the miracle of San Marco healing the injury suffered by Aniano while repairing his (Marco’s) sandals. Aniano became the patron saint of the guild. Meaning no disrespect, their encounter does sort of look like Androcles and the lion.

On the other side of the city, near Campo Santo Stefano, is what remains of the scuola of the calegheri tedeschi, or German shoemakers. No mingling, no fraternizing. Here the scene is the classic depiction of the Annunciation, the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Annunciation being the guild’s patron saint.

The corner of the building has more shoes, just to make sure we know it belongs to the Germans. The hammer and sickle graffito at no extra charge. — The corner of the building has yet more shoes, just to make sure we understand its significance. The hammer and sickle graffito at no extra charge.

Tracing the shoe's pattern onto a sheet of ostrich-skin is careful work, what with the bumps and all. — Tracing the shoe’s pattern onto a sheet of ostrich-skin is careful work, what with the bumps and all.

This pin-up has been in the shop since the last Ice Age, and she has no intention of removing it.

Every step requires some sort of exertion -- here she is pulling the last out of a nearly finished man's oxford. Talk about a perfect fit: The only way to pull the last out is to hook a long metal rod into a special hole in the plastic form, brace with foot, pull with might and, if necessary, also main. — Every step requires some sort of exertion — here she is pulling the last out of a nearly finished man’s oxford. Talk about a perfect fit: The only way to pull the last out is to hook a long metal rod into a special hole in the plastic form, brace with foot, pull with might and, if necessary, also main.

Speaking of exertion, consider this 70-yeer-old boot from Switzerland. I'd never given much thought to what hobnails really were, but this object looks like it could double as the murder weapon. — Speaking of exertion, consider this 70-yeer-old boot from Switzerland. I’d never given much thought to what hobnails really were, but this object looks like it could double as the murder weapon.

These nails are all over the sole, too. This shoe's in better shape than I am, but then, I'm not studded with hobnails. — These nails are all over the sole, too. This shoe’s in better shape than I am, but then, I’m not studded with hobnails.

When you think of Venetian art, you usually think of paintings and, occasionally, sculpture. Please add this to your artistic considerations: the outer edge of the heel protrudes infinitesimally further than the inner side of the heel. This refinement is to resist the wear which inevitably occurs on the outer edge of the heel -- you know, the part that finally forces you to take the shoe to the shop and have the thing repaired. — When you think of Venetian art, you usually think of paintings and, occasionally, sculpture. Please add this to your artistic considerations: the outer edge of the heel protrudes infinitesimally further from the vamp than does the inner side of the heel. This refinement is to resist the wear which inevitably occurs on the outer edge of the heel — you know, the part that finally forces you to take the shoe to the shop and have the thing repaired.

You're not looking at a mere shoe, but at years of someone's life -- the same sort of years that Vladimir Horowitz spent learning to play an arpeggio that floats itself off the keyboard. This shoe is another of those "nothing to it" feats that lure civilians into dark jungles of unsuspected struggle. — You’re not looking at a mere shoe, but at years of someone’s life — the same sort of years that Vladimir Horowitz spent learning to play an arpeggio that floats itself off the keyboard. This shoe is another of those deceptively “nothing to it” feats that lure civilians into dark jungles of unsuspected labor and toil.

Venetian Curiosities

Situation Normal, you know what that means (Part 1)

November 7, 2013 1 Comment

Happily, via Garibaldi absorbs an amazing amount of foolishness. This is what looks like normal here, as banal and predictable as anything. — This is a glimpse of what passes for normal here, as banal and predictable as anything. Yet even here, folly is germinating, flowering, and being harvested every day.

In the simplest terms, Situation Normal translates as “deranged.” Sometimes in big ways, sometimes in small, but normalcy here will never resemble normalcy in Normal, Illinois.

I suppose the town we’re most closely related to would be Eek, Alaska.

Starting with the disappearing snail who traversed Lino’s wool sweater, which was spread to dry yesterday on the portable scaffolding which serves as clothesline. I washed the sweater, I put it outside, I brought it inside when the rain started, I left it on the scaffolding in the living room/library/office/parlor/game room/music room/mud room/orangery all night. I took it outside this morning, and saw the gleaming little strands of the snail’s wake festooning the navy-blue surface.

What impelled it to work its way up the metal tube of the frame? (I can imagine what impelled it to work its way down: There was absolutely nothing to do on the laundry after the fun of streaking slime across the clothes had worn off). And where was the scaffolding when the creature began its epic adventure? Which means: Did he come in from the rain along with the underwear and dishtowels? If not, where did he join my textiles? And where did he go when he left? Or is he still here?

What drew him to the dripping garment? (Well, maybe it wasn’t still dripping at that point.) Do I now have to add “snail repellent” to the fatal products aimed at mosquitoes, ants and flies?

I pondered all those things as I washed the sweater again, put it out on a higher level than before, and left it to go through the dripping stage yet again. I’m not so annoyed about the snail himself, but he made me lose 18 hours of precious drying time. This is unpardonable.

Speaking of drying, we are living a period of extreme and widespread humidity. We’ve had fog, rain, and mist, plus indeterminate watery vectors for weeks and weeks. Even when the sun is shining, the air is humid. We have to do hand-to-hand combat with the front door to open and close it, the wood is so swollen with damp. But I refuse to turn on the heat until driven to do so; the gas company sucks out what little blood and lymph are left in our bank account with a voracity even a vampire can’t match. Vampires are thirsty only at night, while the gas company is slurping away night and day, even when all the gas is turned off.

I’m finished with that now.

This curious creature looks just as home here as all the rest of the other odd bipeds. I like the two dragontails, and the oak-leaf underwing is a nice touch, but I'm concerned about his feet. Somebody couldn't decide if he should have claws or the dactyls of a hippopotamus. — This curious creature looks just as home here as all the rest of the other odd bipeds. I like the two dragontails, and the oak leaves are a nice touch, but I’m concerned about his feet. Somebody couldn’t decide if he should have claws or the dactyls of a hippopotamus.

Let’s talk about other craziness. Today’s newspaper contains an article about the discovery of a barber in the town of Rovigo who has been working for 23 years without a license, and without paying any taxes. No license? No problem! No taxes? Big, multifarious, expensive problems! But it’s just another example of Zwingle’s Eighth Law, which states “Everything is fine until it’s not.” He had a fantastic run, after all. Five days a week times 52 weeks (I’m not giving him a vacation) times 23 years comes to 5,980 tax-free days. He must have been known as the Smiling Barber.

But that’s also a lot of days for no Finance Police-person, or local police-person, or firefighter or exterminator or anyone in any kind of uniform to EVER have asked, even once, to see his books or his diploma. That’s more disturbing than the thought of an unlicensed person wielding razor and shears, even though we know that there are plenty of licensed people who aren’t very handy with sharp objects either.

Unlicensed practitioners, even tax-paying ones, keep turning up. Every so often there’s a story about a gynecologist or dentist or surgeon (not made up) who is discovered to have been working peacefully and lucratively for years thanks to innate genius, sheer luck, or whatever he could pick up via some YouTube video clips.

So far, these stories have concerned only men. I’m not being sexist, I’m just reporting. Women are usually too busy being beaten, abused, and killed by their so-called loved ones to have any time left over to cheat on their taxes.

Speaking of love, a man in Cavarzere, a small town just over there, had been ignoring the restraining order imposed on him for his persistent persecution of his wife; she moved out and even changed towns, but he followed her, and the other night he swerved in front of her car and stopped, but she fled into a bar and called the carabinieri. When they went to his house, they discovered a homemade casket sitting there, all ready for her.

No point feeling sorry for the little mullet when he's already cooked. But I do. — No point feeling sorry for the little mullet when he’s already cooked. But I do. He’s the ichthyological version of “The Scream.”

Since today’s cadenza is in the key of Crazy, you’re probably wondering why I haven’t mentioned the vaporettos. The moment has arrived.

We know that there aren’t enough of them and that most of the year has passed to the soundtrack of the suffering groans of infinite numbers of people trying to get from here to there on a vehicle that is approximately 1/2,948th of the space needed.

But the right hook-left uppercut which the ACTV dealt to the traveling public in the past four days has finally inspired enraged calls for Ugo Bergamo, the Assessore (City Council-member) for Mobility, to resign and go far away to somewhere in South Asia and cultivate ylang-ylang. (Made up.) (The rage isn’t made up, though.)

First it was the long holiday weekend (Nov. 1-4) which gave untold thousands the great idea to come to Venice and spend the day looking at bridges and canals. According to what I could hear just listening to the people shuffling past on the Strada Nuova, many were Italians who probably didn’t have far to travel and were going home that night. But there was a honking great lot of them.

Yet even more people weren’t shuffling; they were trying to take the waterbus. When the terrifyingly overloaded vehicles arrived and tied up at certain stops for the exchange of prisoners, hundreds of exasperated people were still trying to get aboard even when there was no space left even for a hiccup.When they were left on the dock, at least at the Rialto stop, they began pushing and yelling and coming to blows.

Mr. Bergamo acknowledged the drama, but said that nobody, including himself, had ever imagined there would be that many people coming to Venice. If I were a judge, I’d make that defense qualify as contempt of court. You’re living in one of the major tourist cities of the globe, but you can’t imagine that untold thousands of people will come on a holiday weekend? Can he imagine water running downhill? Can he imagine beans giving him gas?

Second, on Monday it was the students and commuters who took the hit. On November 3, the transport schedule changes. Except that this year, all the distress about there being too much traffic in the Grand Canal (think: August 17) has led to the cutting of some runs. Good idea, except that cutting to solve one problem has created another.

Because the ACTVmade a major cut in the slice of time with the heaviest traffic. If you wanted to go to school or work last Monday (unlikely that you wanted to go, I know), you were inevitably traveling between 7:00 and 9:00 AM. But the new schedule for that time period suddenly didn’t offer 11 vaporettos. There were five.

Mr. Bergamo says that’s going to be fixed. I guess he suddenly imagined that there weren’t enough vaporettos between 7:00 and 9:00.

I don’t understand fixing problems you could have avoided creating. Zwingle is going to have to formulate a Law that covers that.

This is what I think normal ought to look like.

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