Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot) was not only a rockstar navigator/explorer, he was also a Venetian citizen and lived in what I consider to be something of a rockstar house: Palazzo Caboto. You’ve seen it at the top of via Garibaldi, dividing that street from the Riva Sette Martiri. And I wouldn’t be writing anything about him or the riva if I hadn’t had the chance to go inside it not long ago, thanks to an exhibit that was part of the Biennale.
Some sources maintain that his family was originally from Gaeta, near Naples; another source says that “John Cabot’s son, Sebastian, said his father originally came from Genoa. Cabot was made a citizen of the Republic of Venice in 1476; as citizenship required a minimum of fifteen years’ residency in the city, he must have lived in Venice from at least 1461.”
So much for the basic background on the indomitable Caboto.
For the first two months or so of the Biennale this year the house was hosting an exhibition by Korean artist Shin Sung Hy. My interest in contemporary art is skittish, but it was my first chance to see the house itself. So I invited myself into what was designated Gallery Hyundai.
But I like the angles better.
Let’s have a look at the rooms. As you would expect, they are cut into small eccentric shapes.
I could stop here, but as we consider how many renovations and alterations the house has undoubtedly experienced since Sig. Caboto last quaffed here whatever his preferred quaff was, I think he’d be most amazed by what has happened outside his two or more streetward doors in the intervening 500 years or so. Actually, I mean the last 150 years.
On the lagoon side of Cabot’s house, though, yet bigger changes were on the way. Because until the 1930’s, water was still lapping at its wall.
But as thought Napoleon, so did Benito Mussolini. I don’t refer to politics, but to reshaping Venice. There is undoubtedly massive history behind these decisions, but in my own tiny mind I summarize the Duce’s thought as “Piffle! Away with the grotty shipyards, we want a promenade. Actually, what we want is a long stretch of pavement ideal for mooring ships. Preferably battleships, and many of them. It can also be a promenade, or whatever we want to call it, in its spare time.” And so it was.
I didn’t intend to reduce the invincible Giovanni Caboto to a mere bystander at a waterfront playground, yet that’s what happened. My apologies to his descendants, wherever they are. One could have made a good case to name the riva after him, but that didn’t happen. We’re going to pretend we did right by him via the two plaques and — bonus! — Calle Caboto, a small cross-street mortised into the maze between his wonderful house.
This is a simple tale composed of two parts. (A) What we need and (B) how hard it can be to obtain it because of (C) (my error, the tale has three parts) other people. To demonstrate I take the situation of the new experimental temporary chemical toilet (A) near the Arsenal and (C) the city of Venice, some city councillors of.
People need places to relieve themselves, we’ll start there. On the whole, visitors manage the situation by stopping at bars/cafe’s, buying something, and using the facilities. But sometimes bars/cafe’s are closed. Sometimes they are crowded. Sometimes the WC is mysteriously out of service. And sometimes the owners have to crack down on tourists who show up in groups of which one person buys a coffee and all the rest use the bathroom, as we call it in the US. Not made up. So one person is relieved, so to speak, and his or her nine friends have to start looking for a toilet somewhere else, or buy a coffee, which is clearly something they were hoping to avoid.
Impatient and drunk males at big gatherings at night have no problem at all: Find the nearest wall. Vertical structures exert an atavistic allure to men. Ladies, you’re on your own, as usual. But there are small side streets — I’m thinking of offshoots of Campo Santa Margherita — whose residents have been driven to install a gate to prevent revelers from using the street to resolve the situation.
But the choice is not kiosks or nothing. There are permanent public loos in Venice. But there aren’t very many, their hours vary WIDELY — 8:00 AM to 8:30 PM is rational, so is 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM, but 11:00 AM to 4:30 PM or 10 AM – 7:30 PM is not. And they aren’t always open. The WC by the Piazza San Marco is scheduled to open at 9:30 AM, and when I passed by at a very reasonable 10:45 AM it was shut up tight. These hours undoubtedly reflect the convenience of the staff, and not the public. Or whether the Comune has paid the water bill?
In an attractive gesture of collaboration, the city has an app to guide you to the nearest public toilet. Perhaps it will be open, perhaps not, but at least you can say you found it.
I decided to experiment and went looking for one of the city’s toilets last Saturday afternoon around 5:00 PM. I was near the Arsenal, and wondered where the large sign indicating a nearby loo might lead me. I didn’t need it, and what a good thing that turned out to be.
So to review: The options for needy travelers are: Resort to one of the numberless bars/cafes, when available either geographically or according to time of day; or public toilet, when available either geographically or according to time of day. Or wall. Or canal.
Let’s return to the kiosk. The Comune opened the public-toilet project for bids in 2019, with a budget of 5 million euros, and only one company submitted a proposal. Hygien Venezia was prepared to proceed, then the pandemic intervened. So now, three years later, the company has finally installed its creation for a two-week trial. Then all the reports and analyses and opinions and pros and cons will be thrown into a box and shaken (I’m making that up), and some decision will be made on installing the 20 more that the company is ready to place strategically around town.
Don’t assume that decision will inevitably be in the positive. This being Venice, some people have complained. From shops and hotels and other enterprises, some people have objected. The Nuova Venezia only referred to the protesters as “the categories.” What category? The Worshipful Company of Environmental Cleaners? (It exists, but not in Italy.)
Whatever the “categories” might be, eight city councilors have spoken up, expressing a desire to inquire of the mayor “on the basis of what information is it considered that Venice possessed the characteristics to manage the cleaning (removal of waste) of 28 chemical toilets.” It occurs to me that Hygien Venezia probably has foreseen the problem and the solution, and described the plan on the bid itself. I’ll bet that they will be able to provide answers as needed, without bothering the mayor.
Perhaps the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) phenomenon has arrived in Venice. There may well be those who do not wish to see one of these kiosks near their homes or places of business. I will grant you that the general lack of space here means that there is a risk that a new structure, however modest, could make the immediate area even more crowded. However, there are also campos and fondamentas that can boast of space. But let’s not quibble. Essentially, there seems to be an innate propensity to assume something new won’t work rather than consider ways in which in might perhaps be configured to work.
In my view, this is another of the many situations in which Venice’s perplexity as to how to manage the city comes to the fore. Lots of real cities have public toilets in the streets. Paris comes to mind, obviously — if there’s a city with bars/cafe’s at every turn, that would be Paris, and yet there are 420 cubicles on the streets of the City of Light, used 3 million times a year. I grant that Parisian streets tend to be more spacious than your average calle. But the port of Piraeus has concise public toilets, as do Madrid, and Oslo, and Berlin, and so on. Or at the very least, reorganize the public toilets in Venice with rational hours and doors that can be opened.
“The categories” want tourists, and then people grumble at how demanding those tourists can be. It seems to me that Venice might occasionally consider dismounting from its high horse on certain issues. Give the horse a rest.
The classic foot race known as a marathon is generally predictable, from the distance (26 miles/385 yards or 42 km/195 meters) to the winner (so often an athlete from Kenya or Ethiopia or Eritrea). And why should the 32nd Venice Marathon, which was run last Sunday, October 22, have been any different?
Why indeed? That’s what people would really like to know.
Because in 31 years here no competitors in the lead have ever somehow taken the wrong road at the 16-mile point. And yet on Sunday there was a little peloton of East Africans who were some distance ahead of the 5,962 other runners. Abdulahl Dawud, Gilbert Kipleting Chumba, Kipkemei Mutai and David Kiprono Metto were following the motorcycle at the head of the race, as per normal, and when it turned right, going up the ramp onto the overpass leading to Venice, naturally they followed. Except that they were supposed to be on the highway below the overpass.
As two precious minutes ticked by, somebody else on a motorcycle caught up with them, yelling (I imagine) “What the hell, you guys? You’re supposed to be down there!” I imagine this because Lino and I were watching the live broadcast and you could easily see the men begin to turn around and trot back the way they came, no longer in the lead although still all by themselves, race essentially over. In fact, it was literally over; they withdrew immediately. One doesn’t run 26 miles/385 yards, or at that point one hour and 15 minutes, for the sheer euphoric joy of it. Who was responsible for that wrong turn? If you know, the world would like to hear from you. And so would the four runners.
As if we needed another problem, here it is: The winner, Eyob Faniel — who finished with an amazing two-minute lead over the rest of the pack — was born in Eritrea but is a naturalized Italian citizen and runs for the Venicemarathon Club. Fun fact: It has been 22 years since an Italian won the Venice Marathon. About time, you say? Somebody else might have been thinking the same thought. I’m not usually one for conspiracy theories, but the optics here, as the current expression has it, are not attractive.
Here is what Lorenzo Cortesi, general secretary of the Venice Marathon, has said (translated by me): “We need to evaluate if this was an error by the vigili urbani (a sort of local police), or by us. The service autos exited the barriers and the local police didn’t close the street. The motorcycles, then, weren’t able to transit the underpass.” (I totally do not understand this last bit. You want the people to run on a road that the motorcycle is forbidden to take?) “But I wouldn’t want the significance of this race to be limited only to this.” Of course you wouldn’t. Neither would I, if I were in charge.
But enough unpleasantness! Backpats generously administered by Signor Cortesi to the 2,000 volunteers involved, not to mention to everyone involved in the successful completion of all the unusual elements which the Venice Marathon requires: “Just think of the fact that we have to transport from the mainland to the arrival area, with 12 big trucks and 12 boats, the sacks of all the personal effects of the athletes.”
I can confirm that the organization was impressive as seen from ground level, from the chemical toilets to the bags of snacks to the massage tables with massagers waiting for massaggees.
But although the scaffolding and some bridges and the bleachers have all been removed, the questions refuse to go away. It used to be that everybody would be talking about how people ran. Now the only thing they’re talking about is where.
Seasonal migrations (is that redundant? Sorry) are an excellent way to keep track of the year’s divisions, especially here, where you need a keen eye to discern that there is anything more than one season anymore, which is Tourists.
But at this moment, if you’re paying attention (and if you know, and if you care) you can detect a few important signs of autumn. I don’t mean the drying, yellowing, falling leaves — anybody can notice them, and besides, the drought began drying them before their normal time to drop. So leaves are out.
Torbolino — the first draw-off of the new wine. That’s an excellent indicator, though again, this year it’s somewhat early due to the unusually early harvest (see: “drought,” above).
Ducks are also useful heralds of the season — I saw my first one paddling around two weeks ago, This always makes me happy, except that I had seen my first duck hunter even earlier: The ducks began hitting the water on September 3. So much for enjoying their winter haven.
Seppioline — sepoine (seh-poh-EE-neh) in Venetian — are baby seppie, or cuttlefish. If “baby” anything on your plate upsets you, skip this paragraph. We are now in the period of the fraima, which is the annual passage of the fish which have spent all summer fooling around in the lagoon moving out into the Adriatic (or beyond) for the winter. The cuttlefish spawned months ago, and their small offspring are now in the process of making their first trip out into the world where they will become big, grown-up cuttlefish. Unless they get snagged before they reach the exit, in which case they will be sold at an outrageous price (there I go, being redundant again), grilled and eaten. Short migration.
But the ramps are back. I saw my first one two days ago and it was like hearing a small, clear trumpet announcing autumn, winter, and early spring. The ramps are set up for the Venice Marathon (this year scheduled for October 23), and they stay up till the end of March. That’s practically half the year. Then they migrate back to hibernate in whatever warehouse keeps them till next October.
They’re only installed on the race route — logically — which conveniently passes the Piazza San Marco and other heavily traveled tourist routes. I bet the people up in Cannaregio and along the northern edge of the city really envy us. I know they don’t envy us the tourists, but we get the ramps.