Due to a small technical tangle, I couldn’t add much illustration to my post about the America’s Cup.
Now that the tangle has been untied, here goes:
The American contender on the left strolls past the Italian contender on the right. It’s nice to see where some of those millions earned from software and handbags has turned up, in case you ever wondered.Possibly the first time the Cup has been displayed in a gondola, but it was excellent to see it in the flesh, so to speak.Two fans at the finals. Boats? Don't bother us.More excitement in the stands.The only participants who had more fun than the winner were the police. I’m imagining they had to draw lots to choose the men who got this assignment, otherwise there’d have been violence.They totally loved doing this. All this white water was only a tiny fraction of the waveage created by all the official boats from every branch of every conceivable service, often going very fast. Which brought to mind the oddness of using so many motors at an event devoted to sailing -- though no odder, I suppose, than the motors required to conduct horse racing and skiing.It was a good day for selling flags of the competing countries.The window of “Alice in Wonderland” was loaded with a flotilla of vitreous craft in full sail, not to mention assorted marine mosaics. The stationery and school-supplies store got in the groove.The dancing-gear emporium did what it could, but the idea of rope and toe shoes makes me feel strangely apprehensive.The boutique-soap-and-mystic-lamp store did a neat job of mystically floating the boat on a mystic pool of vapor.A rusty anchor is always appropriate.Even cooler is the pair of ancient diving boots. I could use some of these on the vaporetto.The funky-clothing store made AmCup garb out of I'm not really sure what.The lady who makes wedding favors sailed far into the past with this baby. Stand by to repel boarders.Her best touch was the silver-coated shells. The globe was nice, too, lest we forget that before fiber-optic catamarans there were real ships that did real things.Fireboats hurling water are extremely entertaining when they're not actually facing a fire. And as several wags on the shore remarked, if the crews got soaked, well, they're used to it.The schooner that started it all: "America" in 1887. Of course, she also sang all the verses and the chorus of "You could never afford this, and even if you could, you probably wouldn't know what to do with it." But she sang it in a very different key.
