Welcome, More or Less, to Venice

If you're renting an apartment in Venice for a few days (or longer) and happen upon one of the above posters that began showing up around the city a couple of weeks ago you might have good cause to be surprised. After all, you might ask (or at least think), "Aren't I one of the good tourists?!"

"Unlike 75% of the more than 20 million visitors who invade the city each year," you might say, "I'm not here for just a few hours, requiring much more in city expenditures (in terms of garbage collection, policing, etc) than I spend. I'm here for a span of days, buying food, perhaps going to restaurants, paying to go to cultural sites, putting money into the local economy. I'm one of the good guys!"

And you'd be right, for you are the type of tourist that Venice needs and should appreciate. But...

But nothing is simple in Venice, and that "but" which includes you also includes a lot of other people who are not only more culpable, but, even worse, knowingly and intentionally culpable.

Here's a quick bit of background, courtesy of last Wednesday's Il Gazzettino. In 1999 there were 12,000 beds available in the hotels of Venice. By last year that number had increased 50% to 18,000.

But the number of ex-alberghi letti, the number of beds provided someplace outside of hotels, went from 0 to (at least) 20,000.

Now this great increase was not due only to the rise of the internet and sites such as AirBnB, but, initially to a change in the laws which allowed people to start legally turning private homes into B&Bs. For in a city in which jobs were (and are) hard to come by, and where families tend to hold onto property, this change opened up an income source for residents who, upon the death of an elderly relative, for example, could convert that apartment that had once housed a local into tourist lodging--and thereby get a better rate of return than if they had rented it long-term to a city resident.

I know people who rent out part of their own home in this way as a source of income.

In some ways this change in law, one could argue, gave well-established Venetians who might otherwise have had to leave the city for lack of work new career opportunities: they could become tourist hosts.

But, unlike the family we know which rents out part of their own lodgings, not every Venetian who decided to do this did so legally: doing all the paperwork required (needless to say, it's a lot) and reporting their earnings and paying taxes. And as the growth of the internet made renting out tourist flats easier, the number of landlords doing so illegally only increased. 

So, if the official figure of "ex-alberghi letti" aimed exclusively at tourist traffic is placed at 20,000, the actual number could very be well twice that.

In last Monday's Gazzettino the head of the Guardia di Finanzia promised more tax audits to address this problem, and announced a renewed commitment to collecting funds owed to the city. One might be excused for asking, "What took you so long?"

(An account of some of their recent successes in uncovering dozens of illegal B&Bs right around Piazza San Marco is here: http://www.ansa.it/veneto/notizie/2016/05/18/scoperti-decine-di-bb-abusivi-a-venezia ).

But aside from unreported income and illegal lodgings, the law that allowed landlords to legally change their properties from residences to tourist lodgings has had a profound effect on the housing market. Speculators who would not have bothered buying up properties to rent to Venetians residents at less-than-inspiring rates were excited by the much higher returns promised by tourist-only flats. So that it was not merely a matter of a local family renting out their late grandma's old place for income, but of "entrepreneurs" (local and otherwise) buying up vast quantities of apartments that once would have been rented to residents and orienting them exclusively to tourists.

Not surprisingly in such a context--especially when added to the already-existing market for little-used second or vacation homes--the price of apartments has steadily gone up.

(Of course this kind of situation is not, unfortunately, limited to Venice. A line in small print at the bottom of the poster above acknowledges that its form and content is derived from one created in New Orleans, Louisiana--which explains the distinctly un-Venetian-sounding phrase "damn shame" that appears in it. And a recent live discussion on the Guardian UK website on the question "Should the government ban second home ownership?" [http://www.theguardian.com//2016/may/25/should-the-government-ban] considers the matter in British and northern European contexts.)

Additionally, as the price of Venetian apartments for sale has moved beyond the reach of most Venetians, the number of apartments for rent to residents has dwindled. You see, apartments here are designated either as transitorio (only to be rented to non-residents for no longer than a year) or for residents (usually in a contract of 4 years). As I've discovered first-hand, not only are the pickings quite slim for residents looking for an apartment, and quite pricey, but generally only the worst apartments are designated for residents. (see: http://veneziablog.blogspot.it/2015/03/renting-apartment-in-venice-part-1.html)

So that distinctly Venetian apartment you may find yourself day-dreaming about renting--with the view of the little canal and all the charming touches--will most likely be available to you (no matter how much you might be willing to spend) only if you are not Venetian and don't have Venetian residency and don't plan on really making a life here. 

As is the case with too much about the city, the housing market, too, is oriented toward idle, barren and unsustainable fantasy, profitable to a few, rather than to actual, generative living.

To loosely paraphrase George Carlin about another place, the "Dream of Venice" is too often predicated upon being fast asleep, with eyes shut tight.   

Now, if those who control Venice actually cared about preserving what little actual life remains in it, they might do things such as create tax incentives that would reward landlords for renting to residents rather than tourists, and change any tendency in the current regulations on renting to residents that make landlords fear that they will never be able to rid themselves of even non-paying resident tenants.

And they might also immediately place a moratorium on all transformations of residential apartments into tourist ones (called "i cambi d'uso" in Italian).

This is exactly what is called for in a petition which you--yes, you Dear Reader--can sign, whether you are a resident or not: https://gruppo25aprile.org/2016/05/20/to-our-foreign-friends-would-you-please-sign-this-petition/

And if you are planning to rent an apartment in Venice--which really does put you among the best visitors to Venice (which also includes people who stay in hotels)--you might ask your potential landlord if the apartment you're interested in is "un'affitacamera regolare" (a legal rental rather than a black market one). Then you'll not only be doing your part to contribute to the continuing existence of the city, but you'll know that your landlord is doing his or hers, too. 

San Marco Between Storms, This Evening

Fifteen minutes passed between the image above and the last one below. At the time I took the one above I thought I was capturing the clearing skies, just around 6 pm, after a prior late afternoon storm. But as the third image below indicates, it was just an intermission between storms: the next one--at least the third of the day--rolled in so emphatically with such a black sky and heavy rain and thunder that it seemed sure to last well into the night. But it, too, was gone in well less than an hour, and now the day is drawing to a close with tranquil blue skies. 

Hurrying toward port, and not a minute too soon

Clammers, North Lagoon, This Evening

Rainfall in the Sunshine, Late This Afternoon

The dogs seem to know what's on its way, even if the people are too busy talking to notice

It's marzo that's supposed to be pazzo here, but this year March was really quite restrained, while it's been April and May that have been rather erratic, bounding in a single day from deep showery gloom to sunny high spirits and then back to black skies and hard rain; from temperate placidity to gales to dead calm.

Today looked sure to be a long gray washout this morning, but the sun mounted an attack, was overrun by clouds, re-emerged convincingly, was once more outflanked on all sides, battled free of the darkness once more, looking to have established a stronghold at last, only to be utterly routed by a lightning brigade and chased from the field.

The image above was taken at the start of the final battle, when it seemed that sunshine had won the day, in spite of the rain beginning to fall.

The Colors, and Some Curiosities, of the 42nd Vogalonga

This being Italy, it's not surprising that more than a few participants in the Vogolonga should concern themselves with making an impression, or cutting a bella figura--or, often enough, in truth, a gaudy or intentionally humorous one. But this year no one pulled it off quite so well as the crew of six rowers from the Canottieri Treporti (seen above and below), with their all white outfits, pale yellow scarves, beautiful flower-laden boat, and onboard pianist.

If you look closely at the image above, though, you'll see that their boat also carried fresh strawberries and artichokes just behind its prow, and on the upright above them, a bunch of radishes (all representative, I suspect, of Treporti's agricultural abundance).

But one of my favorite details of this boat overflowing with panache can be seen in the image below: that cigar in the mouth of the rower just in front of the piano.  

Otherwise, this year's Vogalonga featured its usual variety of oar-powered watercraft of both Venetian and foreign origins, as you can see in the three images below.

Though you don't often see the large old work boat--half the size of a contemporary mototopo--being rowed in the third image below by the Associazione Culturale Galleggiante "Il Caicio" (a local group devoted to promoting and reinvigorating water-borne local traditions, as well as restoring the boats traditionally used in them: http://www.ilcaicio.it).

Along with never having seen a piano and its player in a traditional Venetian-style boat setting out on the 32-km-long route, I'd also never seen a participants' boat without oars, like the one below. The Vogalonga is often described as a "celebration of the oar"--and, in fact, the regulations state that "rowing crafts of any weight and size can take part in the race." But the two guys in the peddle boat seem not to have gotten that message.

Nor had I ever before seen a--well, whatever it is that appears in the images below. But there were three of them in the Vogalonga this year so it must be great fun if you know how to do it.

It did not, however, look like great fun. It looked about as pleasant as going for a hike in the Sahara wearing snow skis. Or trying to escape from an expanse of quicksand with each of your feet stuck in a large plastic bucket. It was as if all the pleasant, graceful rhythmic glide of nordic skiing and kayaking, all the deft, swift sweep of water- and snow-skiing were utterly removed, and you were left--for 32 very long km--to the clumsy ineffectual effort common to the rank beginner in any one of those four sports, but all rolled into one cruel form of mockery.

And, finally, a few more images of some boats not native to the lagoon but, in at least a couple of cases, common enough here year round.

And So It Begins: Preparing to Take to the Lagoon for the 42nd Vogalonga, This Morning

I'll post images of the festive start of this year's Vogalonga tomorrow. Among them, at least a couple of things I've never seen before: like the local crew of rowers whose tempo was set not by the shouts of a coxswain or the beat of a drum, but by the upright piano and its player situated among them on board.
 

The Often Forgotten Oasis, and Picnic Site, Just Behind Piazza San Marco

If you're a visitor to Venice who really wants to be featured in the local papers all you need to do is spread out a picnic blanket in Piazza San Marco--either in the shade of a colonnade or the open sunlight--and settle down to enjoy a meal.

You won't be getting good press, as this really infuriates locals, but perhaps like certain celebrities you're one of those people who roll beneath the banner of "there's no such thing as bad publicity." If you really want to distinguish yourself as the ugliest of tourists you can even bring along a portable barbecue and grill up one of your favorite hometown dishes.

You won't be the first to do this kind of thing, but the locals react with fresh indignation to each new instance. 

If you're not that kind of visitor, however--and as that kind of visitor is not the sort to do much research into a place before visiting you almost certainly are not if you're reading this or any similar site--then the only option you really have if you want to eat in Piazza San Marco is to plump for a seat at one of the various cafes there.

Indeed, the number of spots in which you can simply sit down gratis are extremely few--on the benches and ledges at the base of the campanile, for instance--and if the city has come up with any funds to pay the guardians of the Piazza you'll be shooed like pigeons from the low stairs surrounding the Piazza if you try to sit down on them.

However, a very, very short distance from the Piazza is a green, sometimes flowering space with no lack of actual benches, where you can sit down to a picnic without being bothered in the least. I mention it here because in a historic center almost entirely lacking in just benches--much less greenery--I'm always a bit surprised by how few people take advantage of this space, I Giardini Reali, or the Royal Gardens, created during Napoleon's rule over the city.

In those days it was the private garden for the foreign rulers of the city--first French, then Austrian:  inaccessible except across a drawbridge from the palace (now the Mueso Correr) that borders it, and cut off from the populace by water on every other side.

Everyone can now reach it easily by foot from two directions, but it's still rather little used.*

Perhaps it's the long row of small stalls generally selling the gaudiest of trinkets and Chinese-made masks that stretch on either side of its entrance that put people off. Rolling your eyes at the crush of so much of what you've probably already seen elsewhere in the city center you could very well miss that there's a park behind those stalls.  

To reach the park's entrance from the Piazza, you simply walk to the two massive columns looking out over the Bacino di San Marco, then turn and walk along the water front in the direction of the mouth of the Grand Canal. You cross a hardly-noticeable bridge and a short distance on your right is the entrance. If you come to the vaporetto stop for the number 2 line, you've missed it and gone too far.

Now, this is hardly a secret destination, and I hope all those who know it well already will forgive me for belaboring it, but I'm surprised by how little used it typically is. On the one hand, this is a pleasant thing for anyone who lives here and is looking for a break from the crowds of the centro storico. But on the other, it seems a real shame that those visitors looking only for a place to sit down and eat seem to know nothing about it and so, instead, try to settle down somewhere in Piazza San Marco and find themselves chased off--or the objects of local scorn.

The grounds aren't always kept as nicely as they could be--there's a dense arbor in its center whose entrances are blocked off as if it's a construction site--but whether you've been to Venice a number of times, or are here for the first time, it can provide a welcome respite.


*Though I can't recall at the moment the book from which I learned this fact--perhaps Jan Morris?--at one time in the 20th century it was a popular cruising site. I don't think it still is.