Grand Canal | Venice: I am not making this up

fog much?

February 17, 2024 18 Comments

Yesterday morning around 10:00 AM. This is the bacino of San Marco, looking toward the Grand Canal.

During the past two weeks there has been fog: Some days on, then sunshine, then back the fog rolls again. It’s very poetic and romantic, looked at one way. But it’s highly inconvenient if you need to take the vaporetto to do something unpoetic, because some lines are suspended, and the rest are all sent up and down the Grand Canal. This means that you may well be walking farther to your destination than you had budgeted time and energy for. Maybe you yourself can manage that, but if you’re a very sick and frail old lady — looking at you, Maria from upstairs — who has to get to the hospital for her chemotherapy, the fact that your vaporetto doesn’t exist today means you’re forced to take a taxi to the hospital. That’ll be 50 euros please. Going, and then coming home. Not at all poetic if you’re living on 750 euros a month.

But let’s say you’re on one of the vaporettos, living a routine day. Don’t relax completely. Because even though the battelli (the big fat waterbuses) have radar, and so does the ferryboat trundling up and down the Giudecca Canal between Tronchetto and the Lido, that doesn’t guarantee that the drivers are looking at it, or if they are, are understanding what they are seeing. Radar, much like bras or penicillin, is intended to help you, but only if you actually use it.

Visibility was like this this morning, and also yesterday morning.

I mention this because yesterday the fog was pretty thick. And around 1:00 PM, the #2 that crosses the Giudecca Canal between the Zattere and the Giudecca itself collided with the ferry. At that point the two routes are operating at right angles to each other. Everybody knows this. I mean, one shouldn’t be even minimally surprised to find these two boats out there.

But find each other they did. In the collision nobody was hurt, but one passenger temporarily lost his mind and punched the marinaio, the person who ties up the boat at each stop, in the face. Why the marinaio? Because he was there, I suppose. He certainly wasn’t navigating. Nor was the captain, evidently.

This is roughly the area in which the accident occurred. There would have been very little traffic (this photo was not taken yesterday). Plenty of space to maneuver, if one wanted to.

To translate the phrase in the brief article in La Nuova Venezia, “Probably the incident was caused by the thick fog.” I don’t mean to be pedantic, but “The fog made me do it” doesn’t sound quite right. The fog had been out for hours; it hardly sneaked up on the boats from behind. The pedant further wonders why the fog gets all the blame. It didn’t grab the two boats and push them together, like two hapless hamsters. One might more reasonably say that the incident was caused by two individuals, one per boat, who were not paying attention either to the water ahead or to their radar. Footnote: These vehicles operate on schedules. I’m going to risk saying that one could easily predict when they would be, as they put it here, “in proximity to each other.” If one wanted to.

The ferryboat gives Wagnerian blasts of its warning horn when small boats are in its path. There aren’t foghorns anymore, but the ferry’s klaxon can be heard for miles. If it’s blown. (Il Gazzettino, uncredited)

This is one of the ferryboats, though maybe not the one involved yesterday. Clearly David met Goliath, but in this case it was David that took the hit. (photo uncredited ACTV)

But let’s return to the poetry.

Via Garibaldi. Life goes on, and so does the trash.

Rio de la Ca’ di Dio. The forecast is for more fog tomorrow. If I put on my gray coat, I’ll disappear.

Problems

surfing the Grand Canal

August 17, 2022 22 Comments

This image of one of the “surfisti” was published in La Nuova Venezia. Fun!

Here’s something I learned today: Electric surfboards exist. They don’t literally go in the surf, but are big rectangles of plastic with a battery-powered motor and a cord to hang onto, and you just zoom away having the water-skiing time of your life without having to bother with attaching yourself to a motorboat. I guess it could be compared to an electric scooter, but on the water. Or a jet-ski that you stand on. Or a turbo-charged paddle board without the paddle.

This much is news to me. What isn’t news is that somebody (two somebodies, actually) decided to bring their toys to Venice and try them out on the Grand Canal. It happened this morning (Wednesday, August 17). What also isn’t news is that imbeciles have some primitive instinct that compels them to come to Venice in the summer, like the wildebeest have to surge across the Serengeti in May. If you are an imbecile with money, you will get there before all the ordinary, common-garden-variety idiot tourists who do mundane little stupid things like jumping off the Rialto Bridge, or cooking your lunch hunkered down around your camp stove in the Piazza San Marco.

Two men aboard these entertaining vehicles suddenly appeared in the Grand Canal, as I said, and after zooming from Rialto to the Salute they somehow managed to disappear before anybody had means, money, or opportunity to nab them. Mayor Luigi Brugnaro was livid and posted this on Twitter (translated by me): “Here are two overbearing imbeciles who are making a joke of the city … I ask everybody to help us identify them and punish them even if our weapons are blunt … there is urgent need for mayors to have more power to ensure public safety! To whomever identifies them I offer dinner!”

Well, they got caught, and it didn’t take more than a few hours. Bulletins didn’t name who gets the credit — and the dinner — for tracking them down, but it may be a while before these two bright sparks will be feeling that rush of adrenaline and endorphins and serotonin and oxytocin and dopamine they were savoring this morning.

They are two Australians who now, at nightfall, have had their boards confiscated (total worth 25,000 euros, or 36,662 Australian dollars), and been fined 1,500 euros each (2,344 Australian dollars). It’s only money and they almost certainly can afford it, but the mayor has initiated legal proceedings against them for “damage to the city’s image.” I don’t know what that is likely to add up to, but I can see lots of lawyers’ fees and whole lots of time being spent on making an example of them.

Naturally I’m as glad as the next person to know that they have been hauled away in chains and leg shackles, but my gladness is curdled by the thought that if it seems incredible that somebody would do this, it is equally, if not more, incredible that they weren’t stopped in flagrante. Along the entire stretch of the Grand Canal (3,800 meters or half a mile) there was not one carabinere, state police, local police, lagoon police, firefighter, dogcatcher, anybody at all with a badge and a walkie-talkie who was on the scene, ready to intervene.

I know it’s an old joke to say that you never see one when you need one, but if I were the mayor I’d be spending less time dudgeoning about these two cretins, and instead be chairing a serious meeting to find out where the hell everybody was. It’s invigorating to want — what was his phrase? — “mayors to have more power,” but it seems to me that if people were on their assigned jobs at their assigned times and places, the mayor wouldn’t need more power. The mayor’s supposed to make the system work, not BE the system.

I can imagine scenarios more serious than electric surfboards that would have had urgent need for a rapid intervention (baby falling into the water comes to mind), and yet, nobody’s on hand. “Please leave a message at the tone….”

Oh wait. The shell-game shysters have returned to their traditional places to pluck the unwary tourists ready to gamble. Maybe that’s where the police were. If not there, they must have been out patrolling the myriad motorboats causing extreme motondoso this year, though the waves make me doubt it. If not there, maybe they’re going around checking store-owners’ certificates of fire inspection.

The Grand Canal is Fifth Avenue! It’s the Champs Elysees! You can’t have Fifth Avenue with no police officer in sight. Something goes wrong on the Champs Elysees — there must be at least one policeman patrolling. But here in Venice we have the Grand Canal with nitwits running wild in broad daylight and the mayor has to turn to Twitter to ask for help finding them. Am I wrong, or is that just a little bit dumber than speed-surfing on Main Street?

Boatworld

A stroll in the Grand Canal

April 27, 2021 12 Comments

Let me set the scene: Below is a glimpse of a typical high-season day in the Venice of yore. Till last year, high season had spread across most of the calendar.

Just a brief refresher on what “normal” used to look like on any summer morning.

A late-summer afternoon in 2016. When I made this photograph I was concentrating on the gondolino — I was so accustomed to the traffic that only later did I notice how much there was. Does it seem like there are more taxis every year? That’s because until 2020, there were more every year. An undated overview of unscheduled water transport (i.e., not vaporettos) listed 271 taxis and 158 tourist launches.

I’m not sure why Tony Catanzaro decided to give this student a rowing lesson in the maelstrom of the bacino of San Marco, and I’ll never know if she ever came back for another one. But if you’re going to row around here, you have to find a way to deal with all this. It’s like those jungle survival courses.

Enormous tracts of Venetian water are essentially off limits to anyone rowing, unless they know how to handle the waves. It may be counterintuitive, but summer is the worst season of all for going out in a boat with oars. One can certainly renounce rowing. But when one suddenly finds the city floating in what amounts to a millpond, the way it has been for a year or so, it’s like a paper-thin silver lining to the rest of life.

Let me state that there is nothing good about the pandemic, so don’t think what I’m about to say is to be taken as positive. Except that in its tiny little way, it is.

Over the past months, the daily armies of motorized boats of all shapes and purposes and horsepowerage roaring around everywhere — particularly in the Grand Canal — have made a forced retreat. This is bad (see above), but the side effect has been a Grand Canal liberated from the appalling turmoil that had long since become normal.

Note: Barges and their cousins are still at work, but what are missing are the approximately 39,210,443 taxis and tourist launches that had claimed the waterways as their own.

Result: Space, tranquility, and calm water for Venetian boats to return to their native habitat, which they have been doing on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Perhaps also at other times, but I’m not there to see them.

So for anyone who might want to breathe the atmosphere of a watercourse that has been unintentionally restored to many Venetians who had been effectively banished for years, here are some views of our Sunday morning row in our own little boat a week ago. There were even more on Saturday, because boaty people like to go to the Rialto market, but Sundays had long since been taken over by herds of taxis thundering along one of the world’s most beautiful streets like the migration of the wildebeest in the Serengeti.

Here are some glimpses of what the Grand Canal looks like when there are more Venetians than anybody else. Enjoy it, because yesterday the Great Reopening began here, and we may have seen the last of this.

Hark! Is that a boat I see on the horizon?

Yes indeed it is, a sandolo rowed by three friends from the DLF Sport Mare rowing club. Odd numbers of rowers are not ideal in Venetian rowing, but maybe somebody couldn’t make it. Or wasn’t invited. Or maybe they just like it this way, because we saw them two days ago as well.

Approaching on the left is a pupparino from the Remiera Canottieri Cannaregio rowing club, while lurking along the right side of the canal is a sandolo from the Associazione Canottieri Giudecca. Surprising how many clubs have chosen red and white as their colors, though the reds vary. Even from this distance you’d never confuse the bordeaux tint here with the fire-engine red (not shown here) of the Unione Sportiva Remiera Francescana (full disclosure: we’re members).

Slipping up behind us is a mascareta from the Reale Societa Canottieri Francesco Querini.

I don’t exactly know the man in the bow, but I have had a little run-in with him and it appears that almost every boating person in Venice has encountered him at some point. Let’s just say he can be difficult. (Also, he likes to video his excursions; note the video cameras set up on the bow and stern of the boat.) Still, he was in a great mood and not only said hello as they went past, but called his partner to execute an alzaremi for us. Too bad their oars weren’t synchronized, and neither was I in time with my camera. But the intention was very nice.

Hark! We meet again. It’s the three from the DLF Sport Mare, heading upstream on their way back to their boathouse.

DLF Sport Mare was previously known simply as the “DLF,” Dopo Lavoro Ferroviario, the Railway Workers After-Work club. Their boathouse is up behind the railway station, of course.

A private s’ciopon being rowed “a la valesana,” with two oars per rower. The man astern is the former president of the Reale Societa’ Canottieri Bucintoro rowing club.

Coming up fast on the inside rail, so to speak, is a gondolino, also from the Bucintoro.

This is a hard boat to row in the throes of the usual Cape Horn waves around Venice, but with water like this it’s really fun.

Another mascareta, this time from the Remiera Ponte dei Sartori, has slid down the Cannaregio Canal and has turned left into the Grand Canal. Seems like everybody had the same idea this morning and I felt somehow that everyone belonged, because of course they do.

The compatriots again. Usually people row to the end of the Grand Canal and back up it again, or go home another way. It just depends on many factors ranging from the weather, the tide, how much time you’ve got for this, maybe what’s for lunch (rush home, or take the long way back….).

Querini club again. Great to see so many people out today.

Two mascaretas from the Gruppo Sportivo Voga Veneta Mestre club, on the edge of the lagoon at the end of the bridge to the mainland. They are indefatigable, especially on Saturday when batches of them row to the Rialto to check out the fish.

We went home by the back roads, so to speak, and found that some gondoliers were making the most of the lack of traffic to help their aspiring students practice rowing. On the gondola hiding just behind the corner was another gondolier with beginner aboard.

So we have swung between two extremes — the old days entailed lots of work and craziness and also hugely damaging motondoso, then the pandemic period was marked by no work, no craziness, lots of people with no money. But I will whisper this: I never would have thought I’d have the chance to feel that the city returned somehow to its origins, and it has been beyond wonderful. Whether some middle ground between the two extremes can be found will be clear only when the pandemic is well and truly over.

Boatworld

“Vogada de la Rinascita”

June 25, 2020 13 Comments

Reports written the day after said there were 150 (or even 200) boats in this gathering. It was really fun to see everybody out again, not to mention the doctors, etc. on the fondamenta in front of the hospital.

Last Sunday morning there was quite the boating event, after three months without either boats or events. Everybody was more than ready for it.

Seeing that the city is on the verge of complete reopening after the three-month lockdown, the moment was right for the “Vogada de la Rinascita” (Row of the Rebirth). The morning afloat was emotional (the worst is over, we hope; the day is glorious; finally we’re all out rowing again) and a tangible way of expressing group gratitude to the medical personnel of the hospital, as well as a gesture of respect to the victims.

The event was organized by the Panathlon Club, Venice chapter (fun fact: Panathlon International, now numbering some 300 chapters scattered across 30 countries, was founded in Venice in 1951), with the collaboration of the Comune.

We were there with two sandolos from the F. Morosini Naval Military School, where Lino teaches Venetian rowing. Cadets and passengers are looking good on the way from the school to the Arsenal (Lino astern, a friend on the bow). Going with the tide just added to that happy feeling. (I was on the other boat, obviously.)

The boats began slowly to assemble in the Great Basin of the Arsenal. Allow me to draw your admiring attention away from the boats for a moment to the enormous Armstrong Mitchell hydraulic crane, installed here in 1883. At the end of the 19th century there were nine of these behemoths in the world, but this is the only one left and is designated a historic monument by the Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape. It could lift up to 160 tons of weight, primarily naval artillery and sheets of steel for the cladding of battleships.

At the head of the procession, departing from the Arsenal, was a gondola carrying Luigi Brugnaro, the mayor, in the bow, and making a video amidships is Giovanni Giusto, president of the Coordinating Association of Rowing Clubs as well as the municipal delegate tasked with keeping up with Venetian rowing. Be cynical if you want to, but seeing the mayor rowing (and he did the whole thing) was unusually cool.

The “local police,” otherwise known as the “vigili,” have their own sandolo Buranello. There was an effort a while ago to reinstate their once-normal patrols of the canals by oar-power, but I think that rapidly faded away.

The corteo departed the Arsenal at 11:00 AM, and we all wended our way toward the hospital, where we stopped and gave the traditional “alzaremi” salute to the assembled doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel gathered on the fondamenta. Much clapping, many smiles. Much noontime sun scorching our skulls.

We weren’t practicing social distancing, but it just so happened that we were in an open space at that moment.

After executing the “alzaremi” twice, people just sort of hung around for a minute or so before the corteo got moving again. I’m seated astern with what looks like an oar in my lap. Of course it’s an oar, but I don’t remember it being that close.

Down the Cannaregio Canal, and the Grand Canal, to a pause in front of the basilica of the Salute (dedicated to Our Lady of Health, appropriate in this case), where members of the chorus of La Fenice and musicians of the Benedetto Marcello conservatory performed assorted wonderful pieces. We didn’t linger — by that point it was almost 1:00 PM and the heat and the hunger were singing their own little duet in our brains: “Shade…food…water…food…shade…”.

Considering how lavishly this was reported in the foreign press — and we were hugely photogenic, it’s true — not only was the corteo lovely to look at, but it conveyed the message that Venice is alive and has come out of its pharmacological coma. Translation: Get traveling, people. We’re ready for you.

Gathering at the bottom of the Grand Canal, me still astern, me still dreaming of glaciers and permafrost.

Yes, the row was open to anyone with a boat with oars. So yes, a yellow kayak with a pink inflatable — is that a dinosaur? — had a perfect right to join in. The gondolas were not carrying tourists, as I thought at first. Each carried a guest of honor: The ambassadors to Italy from the USA, Japan, and France, The American ambassador reciprocated via an article in the Gazzettino the next day by enthusing about Venice and recommending that all Americans come here forthwith. It’s not clear when that might be, considering that at the moment Americans aren’t permitted to enter Italy because of the virus. But let’s be hopeful.

The “people of the oar,” as we are called in a sort of Paleolithic clan nomenclature, come in every sort of shape and size. Tradition dictates that women wear a white skirt on special boating occasions though, as you see, the definition of “skirt” is open to interpretation. But whatever you were wearing (or rowing) it was a splendid occasion in every way.

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