War and Peace on Riva degli Schiavoni, This Morning

Forward, march!

Head over to the Riva degli Schiavoni on any morning of the week and you can watch wave after wave of an invading army come ashore.

Actually, what you'll be seeing is boatload after boatload of tourists arriving on lancioni granturismo, the large boats that ferry 60, 70 or 100 passengers from various points around the edges of the lagoon to the historic center. But the number of boats and the hundreds or even thousands(?) of passengers they disgorge over the course of the morning give it the air of a military operation.

The statue of Vittorio Emanuele II on the Riva degli Schiavoni

An impression not helped by the fact that upon arrival the visitors rarely split up into pairs or trios or even a group of a half dozen people--into smaller groups within which each member is clearly distinguishable, individualized, and approachable. No, instead, the large groups tend to stick together, waiting in one great undifferentiated mass of as many as 70 people, until a single tourist guide summons them to attention, then leads them, with flag or pennant or closed umbrella lifted high over head, en masse into the narrow calli of the city center--which they cannot help but clog.

Such groups are considered a royal nuisance by residents, whose paths to work or school or appointments--to all the destinations of an ordinary life--are inevitably blocked. But I can't imagine that the visitors themselves are well-served by such large groups either.

I don't know the economics of such tours, how putting a limit on the number of tourists behind any single guide would impact the pocketbook of either the guide or the tourist. But given the number of independent studies that have been done on tourism and the economy in Venice, I suspect the information has long been available to the city's decision makers. Just as so much other information regarding the well-being of the city and the quality of the tourist experience has long been available to decision makers, who have, for the most part, diligently ignored it.

A growing frustration among the city's residents about their ever-more harried and circumscribed lives, and the no less substantial frustration among many tourists about the quality of their tourist experience are the results of this inaction.

When Venetian residents complain about the "bite-and-run" tourists who come only for a few hours and cost the city more to clean up after and protect than the visitors contribute to the local economy it's easy enough to warn them not to "bite the hands that feed them." But one point is that a majority of these hands are not actually feeding residents--though some would argue they are feeding off the residents.

The other point is that, however much some individual residents may complain about such mass tourism, it is the city's decision makers who are biting the hands of their tourist "feeders," by treating visitors as simply the indistinguishable and insignificant elements of what they haughtily assume will be an endless revenue stream passing through the city. One that will never diminish, nor dry up, regardless of how bad or degraded the tourist experience becomes. As bad as the experience may be or get for the tourist, such decision makers trust in the infinite appeal of the Venice "brand."

In any case, things are getting rather ugly. Just a couple of days ago, my wife, Jen, was walking home from school along the Riva with our eight-year-old son, talking to another parent, when she noticed that our son and his two friends, who were some yards ahead of her, were actually insulting groups of tourists as they passed.

The kids were doing so in Italian, which the tourists didn't seem to understand--fortunately--but Jen caught up with them and told them to stop. She began talking to the other parent again, the three boys appeared chastened, the walk home continued. Then the boys, as they usually do, ran off ahead again to walk by themselves.

And a few minutes later, Jen noticed they were back at it, calling tourists names--in Italian, and not at all quietly. They wanted to be heard by their targets. Jen called to our son, he came back with his two friends to where she waited, all of them in high spirits, and unrepentant.

"What did we just talk about?" she asked.

"But a signora heard what we were saying to the tourists and she said we were right!" they exclaimed. "She said we should be mayor!"

At this point the three boys had to be reminded that regardless of what the Venetian signora might have said, all of them were in fact "foreigners" themselves: one was half-Swiss, the second was half-German, and Sandro, of course, is an immigrant from America, even if he is also an Italian citizen.

This reminder dampened their animosity toward tourists a bit, but didn't entirely dispel it. Indulging it was too much fun to immediately let it go, and for the rest of the walk home it was just barely contained.

And so the conflict between residents and mass tourism is played out, too, among elementary school students. And not at all helped, I suspect, by the legions of visitors trooping in great masses into the city each day behind tour guides bearing, as you can see, more than a passing resemblance to the idealized militaristic ardor of Vittorio Emanuele II atop his horse on the Riva.

Between the basin of San Marco, crowded with boat traffic, and the crowded Riva, this trio finds a bit of peace

Marina di Sant'Elena, This Evening

Sunday Afternoon, Venice, 2

"Watch Your Legs, Here Comes the Shopping Cart!": Venetian Residents Assert Themselves

With varying degrees of accuracy nearly every tour company or guide here promises a rare, authentic experience of Venice. But yesterday tourists in certain parts of the historic center experienced a truly rare occurrence that hasn't been typical of the city for many years, though it was once (and for many centuries) the norm: For about an hour yesterday morning, along a route running from Rio Terà San Leonardo (near the church of San Marcuola) to the Rialto Mercato, some lucky tourists got to find out what it's like to be outnumbered by actual Venetian residents.

The occasion was a march organized by a group of twenty-something activists called Generazione 90 to assert the simple but all-too-often-ignored fact that, yes, indeed, Venetian residents do still in fact exist. And that, moreover, a good many of them are determined to resist the various forces in the city which, for the sake of profit, would prefer to scrub the calli and campi and even the canals themselves clean of everything except tourist accommodations, restaurants, shops, and transportation.

This was the message of the banner carried at the head of the procession, which read "R-ESISTIAMO": that is, both "we resist" and "we exist."

The official theme of the event was shopping. But as the title of the event--Ocio ae gambe, che go el careo!--made clear, it wasn't about the kind of shopping done by tourists at one of the "poles of luxury" the current mayor loves to talk about and is intent on developing more of, or at one of the city's ubiquitous cheap mask shops. Rather, the title means, in Venetian, "Watch your legs, here comes the [shopping] cart!" and was meant to evoke the kind of quotidian shopping that locals here do for produce, fish and meat--and which has long been symbolized in this pedestrian city by the careo (carrello, in Italian), or shopping cart. Everyone was encouraged to bring such a cart--or one of those other wheeled symbols of resident domesticity, a baby stroller--and process en masse from the western end of Strada Nova to the Rialto Mercato, which for all its picturesque charm, still functions as an important part of daily life for many residents.

The turnout for the event was, as you can see in the images, substantial--and enthusiastic. In fact, it really was a strange experience to see the usual ratio of tourists to residents in Venice inverted. 
 
In a good many other cities one might visit as a tourist it's common to find oneself not only puzzled by local customs or language, but overwhelmed by the sheer number of residents. In Venice, however, you may as a tourist be puzzled by something you see, but it's a good bet that, looking around you in most cases and most places, you'll find yourself among a good number of other tourists, perhaps equally puzzled.

And as a resident here, used to having your path to your child's school or some other appointment clogged with great masses of tourists, it was funny to observe how tourists reacted to finding their own free movement through calli or across bridges impeded by great masses of residents.

Not that the point of the procession was in any way to discomfit tourists, nor to be anti-tourism, nor anti-big ships, nor anti-anything. There were no particular policies or people opposed, nor positions taken, beyond the simple, positive assertion that Venetian residents are here and have no plans to clear out.

I know of one Venetian who stayed away from the event because of his concern that such pro-Venetian fervor might in part manifest itself, at least among some people, as what might be called a worrisome kind of insularity, of the sort that appeals in equal measure to nationalistic nostalgia and racism (a dismayingly popular combination these days in many places around the world, including my native country). But I got no impression that the young organizers of the event intended it to be anything other than as inclusive as possible, and I saw no signs of such troubling sentiments or behavior.

After all, the greatness of Venetian culture, and commerce, originated in the city's position as a meeting place of East and West, North and South. And as moronic as Lega Nord-style fantasies about cultural or ethnic/racial purity are in general, they stand out as even more so (if that's possible) in a place like Venice. 

"Come together citizens or they'll cook us up"

Sunday Afternoon, Venice, 1

6 Views of Sunday's Regata Storica

The final results for all of the races--including the extremely close the six-man caorlina (first and third images above)--are here: http://www.lavocedivenezia.it/regata-storica-venezia-risultati-2016

The Promised Fall of Fort Sant'Andrea

Last Monday Venice's Mayor Luigi Brugnaro announced that, as part of his plan to "revive the island of Lido", the old Fort of Sant'Andrea (pictured above) would become a "grande polo del lusso" ("a great pole of luxury"). Because, after all, if there's one thing the city is desperately lacking it's luxury hotels and shopping experiences for its ever-growing number of day-tripping mass tourists and its ever-shrinking resident population.

The old fort, with its waterline battery, was situated to protect the city and its inhabitants from foreign enemies approaching through the mouth of the Lido from the Adriatic.

Now it can't even protect itself from the destruction that threatens from the mainland, in the shape of Venice's very own "first citizen'"--who actually lives in the province of Treviso.