Regata Storica | Venice: I am not making this up

Boatworld, Events, History, Tourism, Venetian-ness, Water

Another day, another Storica

September 7, 2010 1 Comment

The "bissone," the large decorative boats brought out for serious ceremony, are the centerpiece of the boat procession, and look just the way you want fancy boats to look in Venice.

Day before yesterday (Sunday, September 5, for the record) was the day of what is arguably the most important — certainly most spectacular — race of the Venetian rowing season: the Regata Storica, or “historic regatta.” Or, as I also think of it, the Race that Launched a Thousand Postcards — which depict, not the race(s) themselves, but the decorated boats loaded with rowers in costume. If you skrinch your eyes and don’t think, you could imagine you were seeing something from centuries ago. Sort of.

The commandant of the Morosini Naval School, Enrico Pacioni, and his wife are transported to the reviewing stand aboard an exact replica of the 18th-century gondola seen in paintings by Canaletto. — The commandant of the Morosini Naval School, Enrico Pacioni, and his wife are carried to the reviewing stand aboard an exact replica of the 18th-century gondola seen in paintings by Canaletto.

We were there, as usual: Lino in a boat (one of the red launches used by the judges, though which one depended on which race he drew), and me also in a boat (this year in the six-oar balotina, “Katia,” of the Remiera Casteo). Lino’s role was to administer justice; my role was to participate in the corteo, or boat procession, preceding the races, then to tie up somewhere convenient in a spot where we could get a good view of the races, then to scream our lungs out, if and when the spirit moved us. (It did.)

The balotina is essentially a largish gondola, but looks very fine from any angle.

Every year, obviously, is different, though there are equally obvious similarities. Boats of all types and persuasions, from tiny one-person s’ciopons to honking big motorized barges carrying entire clans and enough food and drink to support them till Christmas.

And of course there were the spectators — official estimates said 90,000 — massed together at certain key points: sitting on the steps in front of the church of the Salute, in temporary bleachers just beyond San Toma’, and in rows of chairs at the Rialto market. Maybe somewhere else further on that I didn’t discover. I’m not very clear on how 90,000 people fit into those very limited spaces, but I imagine the estimate includes all of us in the boats lining the Grand Canal, and the relatively few, those happy few, partying on the balconies of the palaces. In any case, there we all were. however many thousand we might have been.

IMG_0741 stor comp — I like the less grandiose boats better, like this mascareta belonging to the firemen.

I suppose it’s exciting to watch from the shore, wherever you find a space, but if you were ever to be in Venice on the first Sunday in September, I’d strongly urge you to smash the old piggybank and hire a gondola for two or three hours and watch it from the water. Don’t suppose you can just imagine how it would be. It’s not just the fact that you’re floating, it’s the fact that being in a boat makes you a participant in a way you can’t be if you’re merely pasted along the sidelines, waving.

Two things distinguished this year’s edition. One was the unexpected anarchy (I think it was unexpected, though murmurings a few days earlier may have been a sort of warning) that overwhelmed the corteo near the Rialto Bridge.

Or this pair, who I presume are father and son.

The Master Plan, as devised by tradition and the Comune (not always the same thing), was for the corteo to splash along all the way up to the train station, then return to the vicinity of the finish line at the “volta de Canal,” or “bend of the canal,” by Ca’ Foscari.

The first few years I engaged in the corteo, that’s what we did. Then the Comune, responding to the pressing programming needs of the RAI television wallahs, and who knows what other dark urges, decreed that we all stop on the return leg at the entrance to the Cannaregio canal to let the first one and a half races pass by. It was like shuffling a deck of cards, to get the corteo and the races organized in such a way as to leave not a second of the dreaded dead-air time in which people could, God forbid, get bored or something.

This was the mob in front of the church of the Salute. I'd have taken more pictures, but I had to pay attention to my rowing responsibilities.

So we did this for a few years, then increasing numbers of boats began to turn around and head back downstream before they got to the station. Then they began turning around even earlier, and so on, till we reached last Sunday, when suddenly it seemed as if some animal instinct urged the migrating boats to virtually all begin turning around just after the Rialto Bridge (which is where the last serious group of spectators are clustered, after which it’s just scattered random boats and who really cares who’s hanging around in front of the train station?). Or turning, as in our case, before the bridge, because the mass of confused retreating boats made forging ahead difficult, as well as pointless. The general atmosphere amid the boats could be summed up in the rude Venetian phrase, “Si ciava” (see CHA-vah, or “screw this/them/it”).

So that was entertaining. I’ve spent years here listening to rants from certain elements among the organizers about how it’s the Venetians’ festival and we should do it the way we want to, not how They tell us to, but this was the first time I’ve ever seen what “Take Back the Night” would look like in real life. It was kind of cool, actually. For anybody, of whatever race or clime, who is annoyed by being treated as a spear-carrier in somebody else’s drama, it was highly invigorating.

This dude had one of the best seats in the house, all by himself and his two oars. All that seems to be missing is a case of beer.

Not sure what the Comune has to say about it, though, because the Gazzettino was awash yesterday in the floods of rancor and glee from the four men contending for first place in the race of the gondolinos. Which brings me to the second thing that distinguished this year’s edition.

These “four men” would be cousins Igor and Rudi Vignotto, on the yellow (canarin) gondolino, and Ivo Redolfi-Tezzat and Giampaolo d’Este on the blue (celeste). To give you some perspective on this rivalry, the “Vignottini” have been rowing against d’Este and Tezzat since 2002, and against d’Este with other partners since 1995. And that’s just the big races; they all started this as kids. Speaking of being able to imagine things, I myself can’t imagine what fifteen years of battling in seven races each year adds up to when the crunch is on in the Grand Canal. But it could not, as the saying goes, be pretty.

Thirst, hunger, or loneliness were not problems facing the extended family on the barge behind us, who color-coded their loyalties.

So what happened was that the eternal triad (including the purple, or viola, gondolino of Andrea Bertoldini and Martino Vianello), entered the Grand Canal in a virtual dead heat, and remained so until the Rialto Bridge: celeste, canarin, and viola. And it’s not merely that they accomplished this feat, it’s that they did it for two miles (3.2 km). At top speed, or about 7 mph (12 km/h).

“When I saw those three entering the Grand Canal side by side like that,” Lino told me later, “I got a lump in my throat. It gave me goose bumps.” He and the judges in the other boats following the race literally could not hear each other through their walkie-talkies, even yelling, because however many thousands there were who could see the boats were all screaming their brains out. It was thrilling.

IMG_0802 stor comp — The three first gondolinos pass -- any ordinary mortals would long since have begun to fade, but not these titans.

This is a view of the race course. It's further than it looks, and all that twisting and turning means you've got all sorts of different tidal conditions to deal with, going and coming back.

Then, as usual, Something Happened. Last year it was Tezzat falling overboard and taking d’Este with him as their boat (celeste, as it happens — coincidence???) capsized. This year it was Something up toward the temporary piling in front of the station which marks the turnaround point.

The details are still coming out, and of course they’re as dissonant as a quartet by Charles Ives. The judges warned Tezzat more than once to alter something he was doing to the detriment of the “Vignottini,” which Tezzat evidently ignored. (I’m not taking sides here, I’m just trying to give the outline.)

When a racer does not obey the judge, after a certain number of calls the racer is disqualified. And that’s what happened. Three-quarters of the way through the race, suddenly one of its biggest stars was off the field, never to be seen again. At least not that day.

While down at the waterline, folks are chilling in their own special way.

One of the boys from the children's race consoles himself for losing at the last minute by eating several pieces of cake. It helps, at least for a while.

The next day the Rage of Tezzat reverberated through the pages of the Gazzettino; if this matter isn’t resolved (the “matter” being the injustice and infamy of the judge’s action), he says he’s going to hang up his oar, as they say, and quit racing. He won’t even show up to try for the final race of the year at Burano in two weeks.

To which one might reasonably reply, “Knock yourself out.” (“Fa di manco,” would be the closest Venetian equivalent, or “So don’t bother.”)

If there are any developments worth wasting electrons to report, I will do so.

Otherwise, I want to leave you with the joy of the bellowing, shrieking, hysterical crowds who got to see, if only briefly, one of the most dazzling moments in big-time racing anyone has witnessed for quite some time. That’s what I’m going to remember.

Boatworld, Tourism, Venetian-ness

August: May I have this trance?

August 13, 2010 No Comments

August in Venice is remarkably similar to August in many other cities — European ones, anyway. The urb seems to go into a sort of trance. There aren’t any major festivals, though modest local events continue to be scattered around, the kind that you can mostly take or leave alone. It’s a desultory sort of month just lollygagging along the line, if there is one, between languor and lethargy.

Mid-afternoon in the lagoon. It feels as if it's going to be 3:00 forever.

Yes, there is still heat, sometimes too much of it, but the heat doesn’t quite match that hellish torridity of July. For us city-dwellers (as opposed to farmers, or families on beach vacations), the occasional thunder- or hailstorm serves mainly as entertainment, a little break in the estival monotony. I love watching the hail crashing into the canal outside, cosmic handfuls of ice hurled earthward making the water jump and bounce and froth. I wish it would happen more often. And then, after the storm passes, the limitless space of sky over the lagoon can be covered with enormous, dense clouds that look as if they must have been squeezed out of some colossal can of Cloud-Whip.

Fine — I hear you thinking — but what about All Those Tourists? No need to ask; tourists, like the poor, shall never cease from the earth. Of course there are tourists. And while there are always more visitors than residents, most Venetians, few as there may be anymore, are even fewer now. They’re on vacation, and that means they’ve mostly gone to the mountains. If you want to see some Venetians, you’re going to have to head for Baselga di Pine’ or San Martino di Castrozza.

But what’s different in August is that the tourists seem to fade, in a curious way, and crowded onto the vaporettos, many of them look as if they’ve been thwacked by a two by four. In fact, the whole city seems as if it has faded. Shops shut. Restaurants close. Pharmacies are reduced to a skeleton supply, thoughtfully displaying a sign on their barred doors with the name and address of the nearest open drugstore, which will not be near. The market at Rialto retains only a few, seemingly symbolic, vendors. The sea may be teeming with fish, but the fishmongers don’t care. Pastry-makers go hiking in the Alps, I guess, because they’re not interested in making delicacies containing cream and butter in this heat, nor are there any customers interested in buying them. The only dairy product anybody cares about is ice cream.

Even this houseboat seems slightly stupefied.

So a sensation of scarcity and torpor suffuses the city. If you need some object or service (the lab report on your biopsy, a replacement door to your front-loading washing machine) you can just make up your mind to wait, because factories or warehouses will close. Delivery people will disappear, and that includes letter-carriers. (Not made up.) The post office hardly even hires substitutes. Everything just gets left where you dropped it until September.

I was wrong -- something seems to be moving. A little girl, looking at or for or because of something. She'll never last till sundown at this rate. — I was wrong -- something seems to be moving. A little girl, looking at or for or because of something. She'll never last till sundown if she doesn't slow down.

Tourists will continue to find what they need. Ice-cream shops (I did mention ice cream, didn’t I?), souvenir vendors, and museums will all be lolling in the shade, waiting for you. But many places that you would assume would be panting for floods of customers just pull the grate across the door and a tape hand-lettered sign to it. There.

There are only two events that make the smallest indentation in the rich layer of silence that has been smoothed over the city. The first is August 15, or Ferragosto. It dates from antiquity to mark, among other things, the end of the harvest, and was recognized officially by the emperor Augustus in the year 18 A.D. Many Catholic countries, since Pope Pius XII’s edict of November 1, 1950, observe it as a religious festival as well as a picnic-at-the-beach festival. (It’s especially beloved in the years when it falls outside a weekend, thereby requiring you to extend your vacation.)

Even after all this time, Ferragosto still doesn’t make much of an impression on me. It’s kind of like observing your second cousin’s mother-in-law’s wedding anniversary. But once you’ve experienced the desolation of most big cities on this day, you can really get how funny the moment is in a little movie whose name escapes me, in which the only son’s elderly mother, living in the center of Rome, begs him to get her fresh fish for lunch on Ferragosto. It would be like asking someone to go out and bring you a fresh piece of moon rock on New Year’s Day.

The tide seems not to have found the strength to come in. It's doing what it can, but don't be in a hurry about it. — The tide seems not to have found the strength to come in. It's doing what it can, but don't rush it.

The only other noticeable August event — for me, at least — are the time trials to winnow out the racers for the Regata Storica (Historic Regatta), which is always held on the first Sunday in September. Not that anybody notices or cares about the eliminations except for the 126 aspiring racers, who have to stay here to continue training up to and, if they pass, after. And of course the judges, such as Lino, care, because they have to organize their hanging-out time around eliminatorie duty, spending endless hours out on the lagoon by Malamocco watching the boats go by at two-minute intervals for what feels like five forevers.

You wouldn’t think anybody had the energy to be strange, but still I’ve noticed little slivers of slightly puzzling behavior. Such as the man sitting on the bench at Malamocco one meaningless afternoon, looking out at the water. Well, the bench itself is odd enough, even without the man, because someone decided to place a lamppost right in front of it, so close that it seems to be a direct challenge to you to decide which is really more important, rest or light. But this man had decided he wanted rest and shade, of all things, and even though there were ample dark patches under the trees where he could have been slightly cooler, he had sat down in the center of the bench in such a way as to benefit from the one narrow strip of shadow it cast. He was sprawled there, straddling the shadow, sun baking him on each side, with a strip of shade going straight up his middle.

Or there was another man (sorry, so far I’ve only noticed the XY chromosome category) who was sitting on the vaporetto in front of us one morning, heading toward the Lido. He looked like a local, well into retirement age, with a hefty little paunch. It was a rare cool morning with little spits of rain and breeze. I was wearing a sweater.

He, on the other hand, was wearing beach flipflops, denim shorts, and a tank top — three-quarters of him was skin. But the rain hadn’t caught him by surprise, because he was wearing a rain hat, a neat little classic made of some form of plastic, and it looked very new. Almost as if he had just bought it.

I sat there looking at him, trying to grasp what instinct could have prompted him to protect his head when the rest of him was destined to be drenched. Let’s assume he was taken by surprise by the sudden turn of meteorological events. Wouldn’t a cheap umbrella have made slightly more sense?

I can’t explain how I find the strength to dwell on these things. Me, I’ve been trying for four days now to decide if I want to polish my toenails and I still can’t make up my mind. It’s just too much to think about.

Not only does this little guy have enough energy to play peekaboo with his grandmother, the Band-Aids on his legs tell you the rest about his approach to life.e beach with his grand — Not only does this little guy have enough energy to play peekaboo with his grandmother, the Band-Aids on his legs tell you the rest about his approach to life.