At dawn the city may seem to be standing still, but just as the tide is almost certainly in motion even if you can’t see it, so are the stores, shops, and other commercial entities. But while for some enterprises the tide may be rising, for others it may already have gone out. When money is to be made, Venice stops for no one.
The pandemic is slowly retreating here and normal life has taken a few big summer-weekend bounces that give the city the sensation that the old days have returned. On June 2, a national holiday, there were 50,000 tourists in the city (21,000 from the Veneto, 19,000 from other Regions, 10,000 foreigners, half of which were German). However, it’s becoming clear that the old days could have used a lot of improvement.
All those months during lockdown, etc., when so many people hoped that the city could somehow benefit from the forced suspension of so many activities in order to reassess and resolve the problems of the mass tourism monoculture, was time blown away like so many soap bubbles. We’re pretty much right back to where we were in February, 2019.
For example, outdoor tables and chairs were permitted to occupy more space than strictly allowed during the Old Regime in order to accommodate the necessary social distancing; now they might just stay that way, filling up streets and campos, because now we’re used to it (though the owners won’t feel like paying an adjusted tax for occupying more public space). The aforementioned bars and restaurants and other touristic enterprises have been discovering, to their surprise, that manpower is missing. Bluntly, one out of five former employees isn’t coming back. A year and a half has passed, and waiters and chambermaids and many other toilers in the touristic fields have found other jobs. So let’s nab all the foreign workers we can for temporary (low-paid) summer work, even though they haven’t been vaccinated.
As for daily life, naturally I’m glad that people are working again, but this means we’re picking back up with motondoso and sometimes overcrowded vaporettos and cloddish tourists and pickpockets and seagulls ripping the food out of people’s hands in the Piazza San Marco and so forth, with more of the same coming up, no doubt, as restrictions continue to ease. The great forerunner is the Biennale of Architecture; it opened on May 22 and will run until November 21, B.T.U. (Barring The Unforeseen, not British thermal units.) The unforeseen has become a major player now in any undertaking, psychologically if not logistically.
So now that Venice Inc. is trying to get back underway, I paraphrase the famous remark of American President Calvin Coolidge and say that obviously the business of Venice is business. Or, as I put it, thisisvenicewheremoneyisking. And now that we can talk about business in the present tense again, I see the economic landscape, as illustrated by the shops, as divided into two basic categories. And both show the ways in which the Venetian economy has changed over the past two generations or so.
Category 1: Shops that have changed over the years. Category 2: Shops that have closed forever.
Category 1: Walking around the city, I can add my own version of what I call the Venetian litany: “I remember when that was…..”. When Lino would walk along Calle Larga San Barnaba and tell me, door by door, who used to be there, the coal seller or the fish fryer, it seemed exotic, as if change was so long ago. But now I too have seen it as it is happening.
It used to be, some 25 years ago, that when useful shops succumbed they were most often replaced by ones selling “Murano glass” or Carnival masks. Lately, though, when you see yet another useful shop disappear you can assume it will be replaced — well, certainly by supermarkets, they’re everywhere now — by bars/cafes/restaurants, or by hotels. Evidently people come to Venice to eat and sleep, as if it were a convalescent hospital.
Examples are everywhere. The best nursing home in the city is being converted to a hotel (and the worst nursing home appears to be on the same trajectory).
This was the “Ca’ di Dio” nursing home, not only a beautiful facility but a fantastic location on the Riva degli Schiavoni. Too bad those are the very aspects that exert a fatal fascination on hotel developers. It’s been several long and laggy years since the old people were evicted, and the restoration work has only recently picked up again with some seriousness. So yes, another hotel is on the way. There’s always room for one more.
When the skeletons of the two former gas holders near San Francesco de la Vigna were up for renovation not too long ago, scores of families formed a committee to implore the city to convert them to an urgently needed multi-purpose sports center for the students of the nearby high schools. For a while it seemed as if the city had yet to decide, and then the surprise. Renovation has continued, but the citizens are out of luck because this treasure of industrial archaeology is going to be a hotel. Those are only two examples of how a facility useful to Venetians is removed to make room for something that makes money.
In 1969 it seemed perfectly fine that two gas holders had been built next to a 16th-century church designed by Jacopo Sansovino with a facade by Andrea Palladio. I can imagine that the Franciscan monks in their cloisters added the gas works to their daily prayers. (bonificagasometri.com)Work began in January to stabilize the site. Much concrete was seen passing from barges to land.Here is the architect’s rendering of the glorious new incarnation of the old structures. The kids will just have to keep on making do with whatever sports areas have been cobbled together for them around the city because we absolutely need another hotel. I make the futile observation that there are laws that prohibit any construction or alteration that is not in tune with its surroundings. To be fair, these weren’t in tune with their surroundings 50 years ago, either. (Il Gazzettino)
So much for hotels. Let there be restaurants!
This used to be a great family shoe store on via Garibaldi.
I don’t want to bore you to oblivion, but here’s a quick review of the transformation of via Garibaldi, still proudly promoted (not by us) as one of the few places where you can still find real Venetians. Yet many shops that were used every day by the aforementioned Venetians have gradually been removed, one by one. The excellent clothing store has undergone really ambitious renovation to become a restaurant (work appears to be stalled, but there are cartons of wine on the floor); the small deli/supermarket where Claudio reigned behind the case of cheese and butter is now a restaurant; a pork butcher shop dedicated to salame and other such products is a restaurant; the furniture and upholstery store became a bar and gaming salon (closed since the acqua alta of November 11, 2019); the fresh pasta and exotic ingredients shop is now Nevodi Pizzalab for takeaway pizza; a fruit and vegetable stand is now a restaurant.
On the non-comestible side, other stores have also been through various reincarnations that moved successively farther away from ordinary life. The bank became a hardware store (could have been useful except that somehow whatever you needed on Friday was expected to be delivered next Wednesday. This went on for at least two years until it folded) and now it’s a real estate agency. We miss the bank.
The name “Salumeria” (salame and similar pork products) is so wonderfully generic, like shops that still have “Latteria” (milk) carved on their lintels from long ago. Now it’s a bar/cafe’.Another salumeria just down the street from the one above is currently selling cheap clothing. The meat display case is still inside, loaded now with T-shirts and sweaters and shoes. At least these are everyday items, nothing fancy or touristic.This was a scene that stabbed my heart with an icicle. In late December 2019 the dry-goods store had to move out because the landlord raised the rent. This is the classic scenario. Stores keep closing, not because they have no customers, but because the landlord wakes up and thinks he or she would like to have more money. Up goes the rent, out go the tenants, and eight out of ten times (seems like) what comes in is a restaurant or bar. It’s obvious that you can’t sell enough pajamas and tablecloths to make thousands of euros a month more for rent.The shop went back quite a way and contained so many things you need if you lead a normal life: Pajamas. underwear, ribbon, zippers, socks, dishtowels, ordinary towels, sheets, bandanas… Naturally I expected to see a restaurant or bar take its place, because God knows we need more of those. But a year and a half later the shop is still closed, so whatever master plan the owner had devised that required throwing out the socks and underwear isn’t going quite as he or she expected, and meanwhile that’s a year and a half of rent that he/she didn’t receive. Sometimes you just roll snake eyes.Another stab was delivered to my heart when I discovered that the little deli by the church of San Martino had closed in October. In Venetian, the person owning this sort of all-purpose little grocery (prosciutto, cheese, bread, wine, oil, etc.) is called a “biavarol” (bee-yah-vah-ROL). The name comes from “biade” (bee-YAH-deh), meaning fodder. Centuries ago that was where you bought your horse feed because yes, there were horses in Venice; then the products increased to grain and seeds, and gradually other provisions. Like many such small shops, it was often run by a family — in this case, since 1985, although the shop itself was already active in 1907. But as is also often the case, the children took other paths, the parents retired, and so here we are. There was a biavarol, Lino recalls, at the Ponte Trevisan by San Trovaso, and the word “BIADE” was visible above the door until not many years ago. Then, when the biavarol retired, the new owners sold trendy clothes and the word “biade” disappeared. “That’s really a shame,” Lino says. “It was a wonderful relic.”“Seeking a biavarol to continue a century-long story.” As this article recounts, everybody in the neighborhood frequented the shop — there isn’t anything like it nearby — but after 35 years at work Elisabetta and Francesco wanted to retire and spend time with the grandchildren. They’re ready to rent it, though, to anyone who will pick up where they left off. No trendy clothes, thanks.
Actually, there are plenty of places that change that don’t turn into restaurants.
This used to be a huge store selling glass. Now it’s a huge store selling pet supplies. Supply follows demand, as Adam Smith probably said. This is one case where the dog- and cat-mad locals got the benefit of a change, as nobody here needs “Murano glass.”Butcher shops just can’t seem to keep going. The kids want to do something else in life and anyway, with the population shrinking by the month, jewelry clearly has a better chance at survival than pork chops. I’m glad the new people left that marvelous relief carving of the beef.Further along the street near the Rialto Market is yet another defunct butcher shop. Fun fact: Venice was the home of one of Europe’s largest slaughterhouses in the mid-1800’s, just after Padova, Vienna and Rome. If you think the streets are unpleasant when jammed with people, try to imagine the calle de la Beccaria near San Giobbe when it was time to drive the cows, horses, sheep, and pigs to their doom. In the summer. Not made up.I don’t know what this shop originally sold, but at least it’s not a restaurant. As you see, some bright sparks have made it into a social-message emporium. Half-hidden by the condensation is a large tote bag proclaiming that “Plants are better than people.” This is original, if a bit antisocial, but I assume they’re thinking of popcorn and peonies and not kudzu, Venus flytraps, killer algae, purple loosestrife, water hyacinth, castor beans, deadly nightshade, wolfsbane, poison hemlock, rosary pea, or your neighborhood oleander tree.
Apartments for rent: Of course this is a business too, and by now a very big one. The pandemic across Europe pretty much obliterated last year’s crop of tourists, but they are coming back. Collectively calumniated in the popular mind as “Airbnb,” apartments for tourists are offered by scores of other companies.
The continuing depopulation of Venice has left ever-more apartments empty, so of course they’ve become another commodity. Venice is far from unique in this, as we all know, but the sheer quantity has distorted (or is the result of the distortion) of Venetian life. Now that the apartments are being registered and regulated, virtually all of Venice’s some 3,000 streets (calle, calesela, ruga, salizada, ramo, etc.) has at least one door with an official tag indicating a touristic apartment within. We knew there were lots, but now that we can see them it’s a bit unnerving. Still, all those people who rail against Airbnb as the destroyer of Venetian life need to recognize that nobody has forced the apartment owner to do this, and otherwise the apartment would most likely sit empty, which isn’t a positive thing at all.
“Touristic location” and license number.
I could add a thousand more of these images, but you get the idea.
So much for Category 1, shops (and apartments) changing. Before I go to Category 2 (shops disappearing), here are some thoughts on the economics of bread.
Every morning at 6:30 a ponderous barge briskly backs up along the rio de Sant’Ana, with huge roaring, till it reaches an open space to park. One of the two men aboard jumps ashore, loads a few plastic boxes containing variously shaped bread onto his handtruck, and rolls it rapidly toward the Coop supermarket on via Garibaldi.
Exactly five minutes later he has returned with the empty boxes and the barge is roaring its way forward (there is no space to turn around) out of the canal.
This phenomenon interests me because the barge is enormous, yet by the time it gets to us it is carrying a load that would qualify as almost nothing. Seems like a heck of a boat to use for that small a cargo, but let’s say that this is the last stop, and that the run started at 4:00 AM with ten stops and eight tons of bread. That’s not exactly my point. It seems like a huge expenditure for a small return, but clearly the formula is working fine.
My point, however clumsily expressed, is that this is a proverbial coal-to-Newcastle situation. Within the area of about two city blocks, there are three full-time bakeries turning out bread every morning as the handtruck from who knows where rolls by. So in my primitive lizard brain, anybody who’s in favor of keeping local businesses alive ought to consider the possibility of the local bakeries supplying the supermarket, though I realize that’s slightly nuts because people could just go buy the bread straight from the baker.
So why do people buy bread at the Coop when they could buy it up the street at Crosara? Because it’s cheaper, of course. But it isn’t as good. So at the intersection of price, quality and convenience (bakeries close in the middle of the day), we see the bread on the truck at dawn a mere half hour before the first bakery opens.
Hence the eternal decision is ever-present on via Garibaldi: Save 5 cents per kilo on my daily bread even though it tastes like styrofoam, or spend the 5 cents more on something divine just out of the oven. Venice will be making money somehow in any case, because that’s the way it is.
Speaking of little shops, we come to Category 2, the most poignant witness to how Venice has changed: Shops that have closed forever. In your wanderings around the city you may have seen, but not observed, them. They are everywhere, mute witnesses to crafts and businesses and livelihoods and families that made Venice a place where life was vivid and intimate and dense.
Campo Ruga was bound together by shops; almost all the doors at street level led to some sort of business. A friend of mine who was born here could tell me, door by door, what used to be there. “The milk shop…the shoe repair…the fish seller…” Now they are apartments, or storerooms, or small offices, or nothing.This small corner shop at #128 brings new meaning to the word “closed.”
Adjacent streets were one shop after another, on both sides of the street, as you see.
One of the best hardware stores in the city, in my opinion. Gone.Campo Do Pozzi is a monument to the way almost every campo was when Lino was a boy. Literally every door and window around the campo belonged to a shop of some sort. This is the north side.Campo Do Pozzi looking east. Gaze at this and populate it with everybody who lived here and did the shopping here every day, throw 20 or 30 kids outside to play, and you might get a faint sense of how, as the saying goes, “Stavamo meglio quando stavamo peggio” (We were better off when we were worse off).South. This was a butcher shop. The street on the right, Calle del Forno, was obviously the location of a bakery.West side.
Whatever this shop was, it closed before the last Ice Age.
Take your pick, you’ve got a whole street of defunct shops. These are long since deceased, but the lockdown of March-June 2020 and the few tourists who came during the summer forced many businesses to close.“Do you have a shop?? You have to die!!” So begins this cri de coeur from one merchant, reminding us of the crushing expenses even your little enterprise has to face. “Income: 500 euros per day, 120,000 euros per year. Annual expenses: IVA on sales (value-added tax, since 1968) 20,000; buying stock 60,000; rent 12,000; INPS-INAIL (Social Security) 4,000; accountant 1,500; electricity 2,000; store sign and cash register 2,000; trash collection 1,200; telephone 500; IRAP Regional impost for productive activity and local taxes 2,000; 5% perishability of merchandise 3,000. Total expenses 108,200. Gross income 11,800. IRPEF income tax 4,000. Annual net profit 7,800. Work 12 hours per day for six days of the week to earn, if things go well, 650 euros a month. And you hope you don’t get sick.”
So whenever you see a dead store, remember that it, and all the others, kept Venice alive until basically yesterday. Lino says it repeatedly: “Every time you go over a bridge you’re going from one island to another, and every island had everything it needed, right there.”This dry-goods store near Sant’ Aponal was the only place in Venice where I could find the socks that Lino likes. It was obviously a neighborhood fixture, but it couldn’t last forever. I don’t know which factors determined their decision (rent? grandchildren?). At least the owners left a farewell note that might have applied just as well to every closed shop in Venice, if the owners had the heart to write anything. I translate: “The shop’s voyage has now reached its end. Here, at the end of the line, we want first of all to thank our clients who believed in us, who appreciated the work and the products, who have chosen at the shop items for special days of their lives, but also for the daily routine which has offered us friendships, esteem, gave us smiles and satisfaction, company, laughs, the grapevine, gossip, coffee, words of comfort and compliments. Have a good life and smiles and joy always to all of you! Angela, Raffaella, and Flavia.”
When the sunlight looks like this, it's time for the party to start.
The dust has now settled on the festa of San Piero de Casteo and everyone is recovering (or not) from the toil, excitement, racket, and nearly suffocating odors of frying fish and charring ribs.
Fine as all this may be, it used to be, in many ways, even better. Lino Penzo, president of the Remiera Casteo (our very local rowing club), was born in the next campo over, an open space named Campo Ruga. And he remembers it the old way.
“There wasn’t anything here,” he said, looking at the stretch of grass in front of the church. The party was in Campo Ruga where, to hear him tell it, as many people lived as in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Families everywhere. Kids everywhere. Drama without any pause for station identification. “We used to put cushions on the windowsill,” Lino said, “and just watch what was going on outside. It was like the theatre, it never stopped.”
There was the day a certain man went across to the osteria to drink some wine. Evidently his wife expressed the opinion that he was doing this far too often, so he locked her in the house and went anyway. So she fixed up a bedsheet and let herself down through the window. I don’t know if she chased him around the campo brandishing a rolling pin, but I can imagine it.
And there was a woman whose nerves would give out whenever there was a fight in the family (evidently she preferred the “flight” option of the famous pair of possibilities), and she’d suddenly go into a swoon. Everybody knew this, so when anybody heard the sound of nearby strife the men in the cafe would put out a chair for her. They knew she’d be needing it to fall onto, sooner or later, so they got ready.
And there were shops everywhere. The series of doors we see today, many of them shut forever, belonged to a collection of every enterprise necessary for human life. Two (two!) bakeries, fruit and vegetable vendors, a butcher, a cheese and milk shop, a cobbler, probably also an undertaker, though he didn’t mention it. I don’t remember the rest, but they were all there. You didn’t have to go more than 20 steps from home to buy everything you needed. As in most Venetian neighborhoods, going to San Marco was unknown, mainly because it was pointless. This was the world.
This is Campo Ruga on a typical morning. True, there are usually people traversing it on their way to hither and to yon, but the lone trattoria is now the only reason to stop. We just have to imagine this with a few thousand people in it, night and day, like every other campo used to be.
As for the festa, it was celebrated in the campo, and involved mostly eating. Long tables were set up, where everyone sat and ate tons — “tons” — of bovoleti, and sarde in saor, and other traditional Venetian food.
Eventually one day somebody suggested moving over to the big empty grassy area in front of the church, and put up a little stand with some food. From there, the festa just got bigger and bigger, and ultimately never went back to Campo Ruga.
So now we have live music and big balloons and grilled animals and gondola rides, and a big mass with the patriarch, and even a cake competition. It’s like the county fair, without quilts.
I wish I could know what she was telling him. Whatever it was, he was paying attention. Obviously he hadn't yet been crazed by sugar, fat, and all the stuff the other kids had.Greta was creating with the concentration of an icon-painter. Evidently knowing her creation was going to be gone tomorrow had no importance whatever. She's obviously destined for greatness.
There was a lot of this going on. It was great.
One man was producing these tumuli of french fries, but it took four people to study the numbered bits of paper to figure out which desperate customer got the next boxful.
This lone woman stood over vats of boiling spaghetti like the Delphic oracle, and after five nights of this she could probably have made a few prophecies herself.The last ray of light in a dying universe will be the gleam of the cell phone of a teenage girl.
This useful sign may look completely at home here, except for one thing. Why isn't it in Italian? If they'd wanted to look really cool, they ought to have written it in Latvian. DARBINIEKIEM TIKAI. That certainly would have gotten people's attention..
