Every two years the city of Venice is supposed to hold a lottery for its resident boat owners to assign any new mooring places (ormeggi) around the city that have opened up since the prior lottery (something I've written about both here: "Adrift in Venice" and here: "Moorings Found and Lost"). The latest statistics show no less than 180 ormeggi are now free. However, it's been a full five years since the last lottery and the calls of local politicians, such as Monica Sambo, and resident activists for another lottery have fallen on deaf ears.
Embroiled in the corruption charges that would ultimately lead to his removal from office, perhaps it's understandable that ormeggi were the last thing on the mind of the city's previous mayor, Giorgio Orsoni. But what about the current one, the one who likes to present himself as Mayor Can-Do?
Some harbored the suspicion that as Mayor Brugnaro was born and raised on the mainland, and continues to live on the mainland, near Treviso, he was unfamiliar with the boat culture of Venice, and the importance of ormeggi to residents. These people tried to alert him to the fact that this was not just a matter of leisure boats--as a terraferma-dweller (the less-polite term would be campagnolo) such as himself might imagine--but that having access to one's own boat, for work and for other everyday needs, was a defining feature of Venetian life.
Once again, this fell on deaf ears. It seems difficult to get the attention of Venice's "First Citizen" when it comes to issues affecting the lives of those residents who might very well be his neighbors if he deigned to actually live in Venice. Brugnaro's focus is almost invariably on developments (in all senses of that term) related to tourism: whether he's very publicly insulting four British tourists who wrote to him with their concerns that they'd been ripped off by a Venice restaurant or supporting the continued sell-off of public properties to be turned into hotels.
Which means that more than a few Venice residents, my family among them, find themselves renting space to keep their boat in one of the private marinas at the edges of the city or in a cantiere (or boat workshop and warehouse) of the sort you see pictured in this post--and of which most visitors are completely unaware, concealed as they are behind walls and stretching through neighborhoods that appear simply residential.
This is a fascinating insight which I enjoyed reading, disturbing as it is. It would certainly appear that Mayor Brugnano is far more concerned about turning Venice into a luxury shopping centre as I said on my Twitter feed this week. A Neiman Marcus or Harvey Nichols of the Adriatic with luxury hotels for the super rich to stay before and after making their purchases. The fact that he does not even live on the lagoon makes it even more shocking.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for bringing it to my attention.
Thanks for your comment, Stephen, and I think your thoughts on Brugnaro are on target. Indeed, so obsessed is he with a certain (bumpkin's) idea of "lusso" that it was actually the theme of the Venice Pavilion at the last Biennale, if you can believe that. Alas, as some developers have found out, the super rich don't want to necessarily live above calli flooded with (and degraded by) mass tourism--which is why Brugnaro and his ilk have set their sights on cheaply snapping up islands in the lagoon that were formerly used for state institutions (military or hospitals, for example). So the historic center can be destroyed by the masses while the rich are pampered on islands reachable only by private transportation. In other words, a lose-lose situation for actual residents.
DeleteA fascinating glimpse of Venetian everyday life. In other cities we struggle for a parking spot for the car but in Venice the need for an ormeggio is even more essential since it in a way defines the lifestyle of the city. My friends in Casteło had the sheer luck of getting the use of the ormeggio of an elderly neighbor but I couldn’t imagine it was so impossible to get one, at least not without the (im)proper connections.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, Andreas, like so much else, it comes down to whom you know--or whether you're willing to tolerate the risks of certain unofficial spots, which leave you open to the possibility of being towed.
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