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T H I S+W E E K > Veritable Venice
Australia by horseback
D E P A R T M E N T S Road Warrior
The Surreal Gourmet
Mondo Weirdo
Readers' Tips and Tales
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - LA S T+W E E K Tuesday, Sept. 16, 1997
Lost in the Sahara
A full list of all
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veritable
_______C O N T I N U E D now a landlord, I must come in the season when no one rents -- late July, when mosquitoes and an Arabic swelter cloak the lagoon and Venice becomes Mexico with Tintorettos, hell with the world's best gelato (passing Nico's on the Zattere, I can never resist its Gianduiotto, a block of frozen chocolate-hazelnut slathered with whipped cream). As I write, shirtless with all the wooden shutters flung back, the only sounds are water sloshing, birds chirping -- not the noxious pigeons of San Marco, but tiny sparrows that survive amid the tiled roofs somehow -- the swish of a weekend oarsman in his rowboat, the occasional hot rodding of a teen speedboat captain, the toot of an ocean liner steaming off for the Levant, the gossip of neighbors shouted across balconies like storm warnings from ships' bows. Aside from the backpacker trudging his way to Venice's main youth hostel, our curved sand bar could be a thousand miles, rather than two boat stops, away from San Marco. When forced to shop for a new toilet seat or an airline ticket on the "other side," I see how cautionary a spectacle Venice can be -- especially for a sometimes travel writer. Along the Riva dei Schiavoni, once named for the slaves to Venice's sea dominance and now named for those slaves to the two-day, four-star stopover, there's a display of the worst that modern mass travel has bred. Fighting my way to the tune of blaring Italian rock through the tacky souvenir stands, portraitists, ice cream vendors and mad snapshot posers on the Bridge of Sighs, I can't help wondering if the jet plane and the package tour are such great forces for "world understanding" after all. Yet, except for an increase in graffiti on the columns of the Doges' Palace and the number of kids who plunk themselves down in Apache circles to play cards and sip gallons of beer in the midst of the Piazza, even this Venice seems immune to radical breaks from the past. The house bands still play the world's corniest music; the gondoliers croon out the old Neapolitan ballads that have long lent an air of romance to the world's loveliest sewer drains, now surveyed largely by flotillas of Japanese; pizza makers still serve up crusts made by steamroller, toppings visible solely with microscope; another "traditional artisan" in mask-making, paper-coloring or glass-blowing puts out his shingle every day. There is something very touching about the loyalty to old ways, the lack of local imagination that continues most obligingly to give visitors the vision of Venice they want. Of course, the worst of modernity does eventually make its way across the causeway from terra firma and out onto this lagoon refuge. Up until last summer, and thanks largely to local tramezzini, those triangular sandwich squares made of everything from roast pork to grilled radicchio to melted gorgonzola that must be the world's best on-the-run snack, Venice may have been the world's largest city without a single fast-food outlet (with one Wendy's and several local imitators having failed miserably). Now the Republic has fallen, as once to Napoleon, to McDonald's -- with four branches already and plenty of golden-arched handouts everywhere urging tourists to "take a break from their giro around Venice." The Mac's at one end of the Rialto makes a perfect backdrop for the nightly knee-skinning, hyper-active leaps of roller-bladers down steps once strode by mournful merchants of Venice. Local yuppies look thrilled to finally be carrying their portable telefonino phones. Skin-headed kids with earrings -- a mixed message to me, half-fem and half-dom -- add a slight air of menace to the stage-set alleys of the best site on earth for safe and solitary night meanderings. The city fathers have jammed jazzy, glassed-in "information points" into several baroque squares, offering computer terminals that probably do little to help tourists who can't find the way back to their hotels. A vast, modern awning has been erected against the side of the Frari, the medieval church at the center of the real, not fake, Venice, trying to lead more visitors toward the Scuola San Rocco, that neglected horde of frescoes by Titian and the rest of the airily excessive Venetian school. The Fenice Opera House, recently destroyed by fire, is rising like the Phoenix of its name. The brick fortress of the Stucky flour mill, once the largest in Europe, is slowly being transformed into shops and a convention center. Along the Giudecca's narrow embankment, there are many façades covered with new scaffolding, too. Signs announce elaborate restorations that will take decades. But instead of studios, galleries and restaurants that some have proposed to make our outlying sand bar the "Soho of Italy," we are getting the usual bureaucrats' favorites: more low-cost housing, more boatyards. And a shocking number of factory buildings lie wrecked and abandoned, despite their million-dollar views. In fact, despite the energetic efforts of the bearded leftist mayor-philosopher Massimo Cacciari, the local economy grows weaker. For tourists, Venice continues to be priced through the nose ever more outlandishly, while for the natives, employment opportunities and property values continue to drop. Perhaps that is all for the best, at least when it comes to keeping things in my neighborhood exactly as they are. The moments when I find Venice most lovely and tranquil happen to be when I'm in the midst of some casa popolare, or low-rent housing project. So it has come to this. The only trouble is that Giudecca's colorful populace may not be as contented as they appear to my postmodern vision. Intelligent, politically committed men like Roberto the bar owner and Fabio the tobacconist, who must surely bridle at a lifetime of menial tasks, view themselves as bearers of a great civilization forced to mix "schpritzes" and cash lottery tickets. Yet their irrepressible if resigned cheer says much about the trade-off they receive in community, belonging, rootedness. How I, ever in the midst of my supersonic tizzy, my latest life crisis, my outsider's swipes at random meaning, envy their sure place in the world, their space at the center of so many genteel rituals and daily obligations, their inability to be anything but Venetian and to look upon anything but their gilded prison. Like me, these folks are linked by fate to a watery mirage. But unlike me, they don't get nauseous from the sloshing anguish shot back at them by the thin mirror of the lagoon. Somehow, they have mastered the trick of making up for the small drama of their lives with their sweeping, magnificent backdrop. They have learned a great lesson from their native city, which must be one of the world's best teachers at the art of remaining true to one's self.
Back in the strident '70s, there was an awful lot of agitation and
fund-raising over rescuing an "endangered Venice." The city fathers had to
mount elaborate photo displays outside the train station to convince visitors
that they wouldn't drown by the time they got their first tiramisu. But
Venice has outlasted its hordes of self-appointed protectors and gone its
merry, mercantile way. The more I come to know this curious set of money
exchanges and pasta parlors set on soggy pilings, the more I see it as a
pugnacious, semi-nasty survivor rather than some fair and swooning "fragile
outpost." In the end, we needn't worry about saving Venice for the world. I'd
keep a cocked eye instead on saving the world from too much Venice.
John Krich's most recent book is "Won Ton Lust," published by Kodansha. ________- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Want to make your own Venetian getaway? Read all about the city -- and book your tickets -- in Wanderlust Marketplace. How do you feel about Venice? Share your tales and read others' in Table Talk. ________- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
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