Church of San Nicolò, Evening

20 February 2016

Hotel Excelsior, Lido

8 July 2016

 

Land's End, Lido Lighthouse

photo credit: Jen

Local Color (Green, Orange, Blue): Gran Viale, Lido

Summer Is Here, Ready or Not

In a couple of days we'll be leaving Venice to travel for about a month. While we're gone I'll generally be posting images of Venice I took during Junes past: for example, the one above was taken on Lido almost exactly five years ago but never posted.

In a couple of instances they may be images I posted more than four years ago, but which I've newly reprocessed and edited.

Any new images will be identified as such in the post.

Venice is a beautiful place to live; it's even more beautiful when one returns to it after being away for a while. 

Cleaning Mussels Beside the San Nicolò Lighthouse, Porto di Lido, This Afternoon

photo credit: Jen

San Nicolò al Lido at Sunset and Low Tide, This Evening

Venetian Glass

It recently occurred to me that some of the most beautiful glass in the lagoon is the lagoon itself as it appears along the edge of Lido south of the Armenian monastery island. It's the calmest area of the lagoon I've seen so far; even the wake of a speeding water taxi there appears in evening light not as rough broken water but as a smooth molten swell and roll.

The surface of the water can be so mesmerizing, in fact, that while keeping a constant lookout for other boats as you steer your own it's quite easy to forget all about the long long peninsula of land to one side of you. This lapse of land awareness is a mistake, however, as I learned from the angry shouts and gestures of an elderly fisherman seated on the bank after I'd inadvertently driven over--literally above, really--his line.

Of course if you simply take a walk along the lagoon edge of the Lido, as you easily can, this hazard is nothing you need worry about. Though I could imagine stumbling into a fisherman seated low in his canvas sling chair while walking with my eyes fixed on the water. But the view is worth that risk.

                                                                                                                                                                     photo credit: Jen

                                                                                                                                                                     photo credit: Jen

Verdure Preserved: Una Gran Vittoria on Lido's Gran Viale

Protesters march on July 11 down Lido's Gran Viale between the trees they are trying to preserve

A large protest on July 11 down Lido's Gran Viale that interrupted traffic for a time seems to have made its point. Il commisario straordinario del Comune di Venezia, Vittorio Zappalorto, announced yesterday that Insula (the public/private company responsible for infrastructure projects in the city) would not be allowed to cut down very nearly all of the trees on the Gran Viale as it had originally planned. (My original post on this issue and the protest march can be found here: http://veneziablog.blogspot.it/2014/07/marching-to-save-lidos-trees-yesterday.html)

Indeed, as Il Gazzettino sarcastically pointed out in today's paper (http://www.gazzettino.it/NORDEST/VENEZIA/venezia_lido_alberi_commissario_insula/notizie/822263.shtml), some 150 to 200 trees have miraculously returned to good health after suffering from what the city's environmental councilor, Gianfranco Bettin, had just last April diagnosed as terminal cases of "risalita salina" (rising saltwater).

And yesterday's press release on the Comune di Venezia's official website announcing the trees' reprieve (http://www.comune.venezia.it/flex/cm/pages/ServeBLOB.php/L/IT/IDPagina/75630) detailed a careful evaluation of the health of each tree that is drastically different from the wholesale hacking previously planned. The internal condition of even externally withered trees, it states, will be analyzed to determine the "real state of health" before a tree is removed. And Commissioner Zappalorto has, it continues, been assured by Insula that any trees felled will be replaced with others.

In a city in which many, if not most residents feel that their voices are typically drowned out by the insistent siren song of the tourist industry and the ever-present hum of cronyism and corruption, this is a significant achievement. 

Marching to Save Lido's Trees, Yesterday

A two-lanes-wide line of protesters stretches much of the length of Lido's Gran Viale

I've always thought that much of the charm of Lido's Gran Viale--the island's main commercial street of shops and restaurants running from its main vaporetto stop to the Adriatic--comes from the irregular greenery lining either side. But the redevelopment plans drawn up by the city and Insula (a half-public half-private company responsible for infrastructure projects in Venice) for the important thoroughfare calls for the removal of basically everything growing there. Some 280 trees and shrubs in all have been designated to be cut down this summer and a lot of Lido residents are not happy about it.

At least a thousand residents of Lido took to the Gran Viale yesterday evening at 6 pm, tying up traffic in both directions, to protest the redevelopment plans that would leave just two trees standing. In April of this year the city environmental councilor, Gianfranco Bettin, claimed that the Gran Viale's trees and shrubs were fatally ill with "risalita salina" (rising saltwater) and would have to be removed. The protestors yesterday disputed this claim, asserting that if there were some sick trees on the Gran Viale--though nothing like 280 of them--they were suffering from being improperly planted and poorly maintained.

Protesters also questioned the other justification now offered by the city and Insula for the greenery's removal: that roots along the Gran Viale will interfere with the installation of a new sewer system. In a city where each day's paper seems to lay bare yet more of the extensive corruption of the MOSE water gates, residents are now demanding the kind of transparency notably absent from both that multi-billion euro project and from the plans for the Gran Viale. Their fear is that the city and Insula are--with no input from citizens nor significant oversight--pursuing a disastrous course of action on Lido at this time of acute fiscal crisis that is as unnecessary and counter-productive as it is costly.

Whether the protest will have any effect is anyone's guess at this point. The plans of the city and Insula call for the trees to fall to the ax this summer, while the protesters are asking the city commissioner to immediately block the removal of any and all trees and shrubs.

You can read objections to and concerns about the Gran Viale project at http://granviale.it/, and on the Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/granviale?fref=ts.

It's not easy being Green: two protesters symbolically chained to one of the trees due to be removed from the Gran Viale

Health, Wealth and a Happy New Year's Day on Lido

Boys chase giant soap bubbles made by a clown onstage: on a canvas by Chardin or 17th-century Dutch genre painters this would be an allegory of transience and folly, but on Lido it's just a good time

Yesterday was one of those bright New Year's Days that make the annual dip of the Lido Ibernisti club seem almost like a good bracing healthy idea. But only almost. It may indeed be all of those things (as the Ibernisti claim) but, like an annually-increasing number of others, I was there to enjoy the water only from the shore, and to eat the combination of lenticchie and soft moist pork musetto sausage (called cotechino in Italian) that's supposed to assure one of good fortune (in the monetary sense) in the forthcoming year.

While someone in the role of the doge still solemnly and symbolically weds the sea every spring, the annual Ibernisti encounter with her each January 1st is a festive dalliance. 

Avanti! The number of photographers now rivals the number of swimmers

Sunshine and blue skies and a refreshing dip

Some bathers were in no hurry to get out

And a Happy New Year, too, to all the ships at sea, as I believe they used to say: there were more than a half dozen massive ones waiting their turn to enter the lagoon.

A hint of endless summer at the start of January

Castaway Style on the Beach at Lido, or DIY Capanne

A hint of Robinson Crusoe, and perhaps Lina Wertmuller's Swept Away, on Lido

The summer season on Lido officially ended yesterday: le capanne, which people had rented from the end of May, had to be cleaned out and their keys returned. There were, however, still plenty of people on the beach late this afternoon when I visited and, well south of Hotel Excelsior where the jetties begin, a fair number of capanne, too--though of the DIY kind.

These appear regularly every June, made by many anonymous hands of driftwood and vegetation that grows along i murazzi (or sea walls) and other found objects, and occupied by whomever claims them first on any given summer day. I asked (in Italian) an older man I encountered if there was any particular name for these huts.

No, no, he replied in Italian, those structures are not native to Venice--as if I thought there might be a particular Venetian term for them. I actually would have settled for an Italian one, but he said there was none that he knew of. Then he emphasized again that they had nothing to do with Venetian tradition: they didn't originate from the huts of fishermen or anything like that.

"The kids make them each summer," he told me.

"Have they made them for a long time?" I asked.

He shrugged, then reminded me that the jetties themselves had not been there for all that long: only 20 or 30 years. And even the particular sea wall we stood beside had only gone up in the 1960s or '70s.

He thought that there were more huts built in recent years (I saw at least a dozen today, though got nowhere close to most of them because they were occupied and I didn't want to be the kind of guy who lurks around sunbathers with a camera). Then he added that if I wanted to see some really well-constructed ones I should visit Malamoco.

Having grown up in California where huts of this sort wouldn't be allowed to stand for more than a day on one of that state's beaches, much less the entire summer--and well aware of all the regulations on ordinary construction in Venice--I struggled to figure out how to ask in Italian if there were authorities of any sort that objected to these temporary structures. Is there anyone who tears them down at the end of the season? I asked. The police, for example?

No, he said with a slight smile, the sea and winter weather usually take care of that.   

A reservation for the above capanna is perhaps optimistically written on the long plank at the right foreground of the photo: "Capanna prenotata x merc 11 Sett dalle 11 a 21:30 (grigliata)"

This young couple were kind enough to let me photograph the small hut they occupied at the end of a jetty, but not so kind as to vacate it for a couple of minutes while I did so

In addition to sea air and a great view of the Adriatic, this capanna also includes a swing

The plastic ties that bind

Teatro Marinoni Revisited, Part 2

Green fiberglass roof panels cast a subaqueous light over the upper flights of Teatro Marinoni's stairwell

Regardless of the improvements that those who occupy Teatro Marinoni have made to the grounds around the building (visible in Part 1 of this post), or to the inside (in this post), their basic situation remains unaltered. As one told me last week, "[Mayor Giorgio] Orsoni pretends not to know a thing about the situation. As far as he's concerned, the question of whether the city had a right to sell a property designated for public use by the man who gifted it has never even been asked, and we, and the events we put on, and the people who attend them don't exist."

Moreover, no matter how many children may attend, for example, a Saturday workshop on germinating seeds, Teatro Marinoni's occupants know that Lido itself is notoriously conservative, with traditionally little interest in more "utopian" or "artistic" projects--in spite of its famous film festival which, after all, is all about glamor and big money. This is not the Santa Marta section of Venice, nor the neighborhood of San Francesco della Vigna: two areas proud of their traditional leftist inclination which might embrace the occupants' aim of converting the building into the cultural center they say Dr Mario Marinoni intended it always to be. Indeed, I get the feeling that the bulk of the project's supporters come from Venice proper, not Lido.    

What difference a year makes: a first floor room above the auditorium of Teatro Marinoni last week and...

But just after I posted Part 1 on Teatro Marinoni, with the feeling that this occupation of the building would almost certainly be a Utopian interlude before the entire complex was transmogrified into the kind of private tourist-oriented resort that Venice actually has little need of and which would do absolutely nothing to address the emptying out of Venetians from Venice--its hospitality-industry wages likely to be enough to allow its employees to live in Mestre, not in Venice or in Lido--I ran into a friend who told me that Est Capital, the corporation that purchased the old Ospedale al Mare complex in 2010, was having serious financial problems.

How serious? I asked.

Serious enough, he said, that it was trying to sell off parts of the Ospedale al Mare complex.

...the same room as it appeared in January 2012

Now, when I first visited Teatro Marinoni in January of 2012, its occupants were older than those I encountered last week: closer to 40 (and over 40), than to 20, like those who now live there. The older members of the group are still involved, but it seems to be only 20-somethings who are there full time. Last year this older group spoke of converting the entire complex into an international arts center, with a community center at its core. 

Perhaps this big vision still exists, but the younger occupants I spoke to last week gave me the impression of trying to save the Teatro Marinoni building alone from any eventual private commercial development. After more than a year of making little progress with the city, they seemed to know that it would be a miracle if they could pull off just this. 

"We have no money," a young man told me. "We can scavenge building materials from the other abandoned buildings in the complex, we have a gas generator, and we are trying to build a wind-powered generator system, but it's all very hard. " Then he asked me, "Do you know people?" As we were speaking Italian I wasn't sure I understood his question correctly. I took it in its most general sense, and said I did. I said I knew people in Venice, if that's what he was asking, and of course also from the US....

But what he wanted to know is if I knew anyone with money who might help develop their project. That was a harder question to answer--and is of course, the question, as the city of Venice has no money, nor any interest in developing Teatro Marinoni into a cultural center. Of course a small fraction of the billions of dollars in public funds that have been poured into what has just been uncovered as the MOSE swindle run by the Consorzio Nuova Venezia would probably have been enough to work wonders with the Teatro Marinoni building itself, but that's not the kind of project that is going to get funding these days in Venice. And if it did, the contract for doing so would most certainly be put into the hands of a well-connected private contractor (some Venetians would simply say "mafia" at this point) who would milk it for everything it was worth.

So this is where things stand at this point: perhaps Teatro Marinoni could be bought back from the financially-troubled Est Capital and turned into a cultural center, but those who would do so have no money for it, and those who might have the money have not the least interest in things like cultural centers.

Does this mark a significant change in the situation from where things stood a year ago? Is it cause for any hope? I don't know. Perhaps it's a little like asking whether you'd say that the stairwell at the top of this post is half-light or half-dark; whether you think of its stairs as going up or down.

A million-euro view of the Adriatic from a make-shift music room

A room with a little privacy...

...and another with none

Much of building has come to resemble an art school facility...

...or a Biennale pavilion

"An apple a day...": this may have been intended as a comment on youth drug culture, but I can't help but think of those older people I know whose various conditions necessitate their taking an array of prescriptions each day "to keep the doctor away"

Trompe l'oeil: A photo of a vintage image of Teatro Marinoni (in its old tuberculosis sanitarium days) upon a peeling wall attached to an actual peeling wall

Those who would have been pushed in the pram when the publications inside it first came out are now old enough for the heavier-duty chair beside it

Some of the many derelict buildings of the ex-Ospedale al Mare complex seen from the roof of Teatro Marinoni

 

Teatro Marinoni Revisited, Part 1

A view of Teatro Marinoni from its balcony

A lot has changed at Teatro Marinoni on Lido since I first wrote a post about it in January 2012 (http://veneziablog.blogspot.it/2012/01/teatro-marinoni-on-lido-introduction.html--and nothing has changed.

Teatro Marinoni is a part of the large Ospedale al Mare medical complex on the northeastern end of Lido. Devoted to the treatment of tubercular patients for most of the 20th Century, a very few of the buildings were still in use--my son saw an optometrist there just over a year ago--when the city of Venice sold the whole property to Est Capital in 2010 for 94 million euro.  Est Capital had previously bought the famous Hotel Des Bains (the setting of Mann's Death in Venice) in order to convert it into luxury condos (still in process), and has similarly "exclusive" beach-front development plans for the ex-Ospedale.

The problem with these plans, and the sale, is that the hospital complex includes Teatro Marinoni, pictured above, which was funded by Dr Mario Marinoni and designated as a gift to the residents of Venice to be used in the interests of the public good. Therefore, a group of Venetians has argued since the fall of 2011, Teatro Marinoni cannot be sold to a private developer without expressly violating the terms of Dr Marinoni's bequest.

Late in 2011 some Venetians began occupying Teatro Marinoni, not only living in it as "squatters," but developing an entire program of free public events--musical performances, dance, theater, and workshops of every kind for both adults and children--that would be in keeping with Marinoni's original vision of the space as dedicated to public well-being and community building. These events continue and the group's commitment to them is unchanged.

One of the things that has changed since I first wrote of the place is those few buildings that were still in use at the time of my original post have now been abandoned as well. And I mean abandoned as people are wont to abandon buildings when a tidal wave is heading their way, or a zombie apocalypse, with all kinds of personal and medical materials left behind (including x-rays and records), as you can see in the recently-taken photos on the following Polish blog:
http://koralinatropiprzygody.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/wenecji-czesc-ostatnia-czyli-lido-ospedale-al-mare/

The western exterior of Teatro Marinoni at high noon, with its recently boarded-up windows

Another thing that has changed is that the large garden courtyard and driveway to the west of Teatro Marinoni was torn up last spring, as you can see in the photos above and below. Depending upon whom you talk to, this was done either because there was a legitimate concern that the area might be contaminated with asbestos, or because the premise of such contamination was an excellent way of funneling a huge contract for the job to a well-connected company. Either way, no contamination was discovered and the area now serves as a sunken campground.

Tent, beach chair, and a salvaged massage table in the middle of what was once a garden courtyard

A third thing that has changed is that the windows on the ground floor of the building where the theater is situated were boarded up by il comune for reasons of "security." I'm not sure exactly how city officials would have defined this "security," but a young woman I spoke to who lives in Teatro Marinoni said that if all those boards ruined the view from the theater, they at least gave the squatters a sense of privacy and even of protection.

Some of the derelict buildings of the ex-Ospedale al Mare

Meanwhile, the inhabitants of Teatro Marinoni have been busy themselves. When I first visited, their focus was, understandably enough, on fixing up the inside of the building, but in recent months they've cultivated the eastern side, or sea side, of the property. With neither running water nor electricity inside the building, all food preparation and cooking is done outside, near a kitchen sink constructed beside the property's only water spigot, and a vegetable garden. The photos below show the outdoor accommodations, constructed in an area I remember as being an inhospitable mess of scrub. 

But for all of the changes I've mentioned, nothing about the status of Teatro Marinoni has changed since I first wrote of it in January 2012. The property remains in private hands and the residents occupy it illegally, tolerated by the police--who regularly pass by the property at night--and by city officials. But more about that, along with photos of the inside of the building, in the next post, Part 2.

The view east, toward the Adriatic

The outdoor kitchen sink

The outdoor dining room, which includes a gas stove

"Banano, Banano," the sign says, "qui cresci forte e sano." [Banano, Banano, here you grow strong and healthy]

Three Images of Springtime on Lido

From the last afternoon (May 12) of the 6-day Festival internazionale del aquilone

Last Burst of Summer

This weekend marks the official end of the summer season in Venice: Sunday is the last day for people to clean our their capanne, those little huts along the shore where many families spent most of their daylight summer hours during June and July.

Reluctant to quite let summer go, I thought I'd post this last burst of it, recorded one recent evening on Lido, with music by the great Nino Rota. 

Venice Film Festival Exclusive Pics: Madonna, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Kate Winslet...

Continuing the Lido theme of the last few posts, today we head down the beach a ways to the Venice Film Festival with some exclusive photos--available only on this site!--by photographer Federico Roiter, who was previously kind enough to provide photos of the the Spettacolo dei Burattini (or traditional Italian puppet show) from the Festa di San Pietro di Castello (http://veneziablog.blogspot.com/2011/07/festa-di-san-pietro-di-castello.html).

photo credit: Federico Roiter

I'm no expert on film, but I think Madonna is one of the worst actors I have ever seen. Thankfully, she's at this year's festival as a director--of a story based upon the romance of Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII. The film itself hasn't gotten very good reviews, but the woman does know how to make an entrance. 

photo credit: Federico Roiter

I don't know if Federico was in a tree to get the above shot of the director with two of her stars (Andrea Riseborough, Abbie Cornish) behind the scenes, but I find it an interesting contrast to the photo below, as she approaches the press conference stage with the determination of General Patton.

photo credit: Federico Roiter

Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow co-star in Steven Soderbergh's Contagion, which, like the Madonna film W.E., is being shown "Out of Competition" at the festival. That is, as an "important work by a director already established in previous editions of the festival." If anyone has any ideas about what Mr. Damon may be showing to Ms. Paltrow on his iPhone I'd love to hear them.

photo credit: Federico Roiter

George Clooney is at the festival this year as the director and co-star of the in-competition film Ides of March, in which a young campaign press secretary played by Ryan Gosling finds out just how nasty American presidential campaigns can be. Evan Rachel Wood, pictured above, also stars.

photo credit: Federico Roiter

Kate Winslet stars in no less than three films being screened at this year's festival: Todd Haynes' Mildred Pierce, Steven Soderbergh's Contagion, and Roman Polanski's Carnage, set amid the "mean streets" of our old neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn. Actually, Carnage involves a meeting between two pairs of parents who get together to discuss what should be done about a playground act of bullying perpetrated by one couple's son against the other couple's son. In such gentrified surroundings and with such civilized intentions everything should work out just fine--but this is a Polanski film... And one that I'm eager to see.

photo credit: Federico Roiter

Finally, who is this man? He looks so very familiar, I'm fairly sure he's a director, but Federico did not label the photo and I haven't gotten in touch with him yet to find out. Help...

P.S. For even more candid--much much more candid--glimpses of three major Hollywood leading men (and lovers of Venice), I refer you to one of the early posts of this blog: http://veneziablog.blogspot.com/2011/02/il-sputinato-di-venezia.html