Veniceblog

Leo: The Magazine about Venice

Venice's tourist organization, La Azienda Di Promozione Turistica,  publishes an interesting quarterly magazine called Leo, which, rather than the usual species of unsanded commerical boosterism one might expect from a tourist board publication, can be smart and surprising. Check it out.   It's available here online in .pdf format, in both English and Italian.

Sure, there are the standard "things to do" articles, but hunt around and you'll find stories like this one about Tomaso Filippi, a postcard photographer who set up shop near Caffe' Florian near the turn of the century. Or a section called "Letters From The Past", which contains centuries-old missives on topics like the introduction of coffee  or galley slaves.

The links to the .pdf files appear at the bottom of every (inelegant) on-line story summary, so be sure to click through. The .pdf is a snapshot of the actual magazine, which is well designed and lushly illustrated.

Note  to Leo editor: please make the whole mag available on-line in one download, instead of making us click for every story.

Rendering of the Future Venetian Soccer Stadium

Sometime ago, I wrote about a new Venetian soccer stadium that was in the works, designed by Sydney-based architect Lawrence Nield. Following up, I found this rendering on his site (click it to enlarge it). Still says "Completion 2006", but you know how that goes.

Linguini Filipini

In the 1970’s, industrial pollution took a big chunk out of the fishing and aquaculture economy of the Venetian lagoon, throwing fishermen and fish farmers into crisis. In response, in 1983, the Italian National Research Council experimentally introduced a variety of Philippine clam into the lagoon, near Chioggia. Mission: find a clam that both reproduced like rabbits and was able to tolerate the chemical poisons dripping into the veins of the lagoon from places like Porto Marghera.

It worked – not just in Venice, as it turns out, but in virtually all of Italy. Today, says Italian news agency ANSA, the “Manila clam” has all but pushed the native Italian clam into permanent retirement.  There was an unexpected bonus, too. Unlike its Italian cugino, the Manila is resistant to a nasty strain of oxygen-hogging, clam-choking algae -- C. taxifolia  -- that was accidentally introduced into the Mediterranean in the 1980’s, and has spread to become a major menace to this day. (There was an entire episode of PBS’ Nova dedicated to C. taxifolia: follow this link.)

In Venice, the Manila clam been particularly successful. According to a fascinating paper by Alberto Longo, of the University of Venice :

more and more fishermen have left traditional fishing activities in order to harvest the [Manila clam], which also guarantees high incomes (it has been estimated that a clam fisherman earns about €500 a day). These clams are not particularly influenced by seasons and can therefore be fished all year long. The capital required to set about clam fishing is also very low; only a small two-three person boat and a dump rake (called “rusca”) are necessary for the harvest. All these elements have fostered clam fishing, which has  … become very popular among the young.

Of course, there’s a rub. All that bivalve booty has brought out pirates. All kinds of illegal harvesting methods are being used, and it is sucking the precious sediment out of the lagoon, severely damaging its health. Especially harmful is the use of marine turbo-vacuum cleaners to hoover the mud.

I remember how a friend once warned me to securely chain my outboard to my boat when I docked it, because he had heard that a group of fisherman from Chioggia often snuck into the canals of Giudecca at night to steal motors for use in churning up the clam beds. This may have been paranoia, but the local newspapers are rife with stories of the arrests of illegal clammers. As recently as last September 16th, the Gazzettino reported that 9 fisherman (including a 72-year-old)  from Burano were popped for using high-powered outboards to stir up over a ton of clams.

According to Patrizia Torricelli, professor of ecology at the University of Venice, even if these abuses stopped cold today, it would still take 6 years to restore the lagoon to health.

But I wouldn’t count on that happening too soon. The lure of the Philippino gold is too strong.

I’m trying to get an interview with Patrizia, so stay tuned on this story.

The Manila Clam (Tapes Philippinarum)

Venice from Google Earth

Google Earth is a free downloadable application that gives you an omnispheric photographic view of practically any spot on the planet. You start with the Gods-eye-perspective, slowly, smoothly zooming in from the outer atmosphere right down to a full-res 1000 foot vista, where you can hover and drift like a hawk. You can even tilt the axes toward the horizon for the looking-out-the-window-of-a-plane effect.

You can easily program it to fly to/from any two points on the globe. This morning, I skipped Alitalia and flew from Laguna Niguel, California to Venice --  a 20-second journey that sends one skittering across the US, skimming over the Atlantic, and ultimately, homing in on La Serenissima like some kind of next generation intercontinental ballastic missile.

So here are some snapshots from my mental mini-vaykay. Click on them for an enlargement.

Piazza San Marco, from a little more than 1000 feet ... close enough to see the throngs fighting their way into the Basilica. If you squint, you can see customers at the tables of Caffe' Florian.

This is a tilt-down view that sort of gives the illusion of relief, though of course the image is actually flat.(The closer in you zoom, the more obvious the flatness). On the right you see the Rialto.

The lagoon is well-documented for the most part, too. Here's the seminary island of San Francesco del Deserto, with Burano in the background. At the blurry horizon, you can see Torcello.

Here are water-taxis on their way to the airport, which you can just make out at the top of the image.

Thanks to Michael W. (who always has great ideas) for reminding me about Google Earth. I had zoomed around Venice using its predecessor, a program called Keyhole, before Google gobbled it up. (I had a long, interesting conversation with Keyhole's brainy, and now unspeakably rich author when I was at the TED conference last February. Genius.)

More Venice map fun coming shortly. I've been steered toward two other cool, free programs you'll love.

On Being Handicapped In Venice

I got an email this morning from a  woman in the UK who is suffering from Multiple Sclerosis, and who is trying to jam in as many trips as possible to her "favourite place on earth" before the disease no longer makes this possible. She'll go for the third time this year in November.

I wrote her the response below, but would love any other thoughts you might have on how to make Venice more accessible to those disabilities. Have any tips? Ideas? Resources? Stories? Do you know someone who is handicapped and has negotiated the bridges and skinny calles? Write me or comment.

My sister has had MS for some 25 years ... doing rather well with it, considering.

Because of her, because of all the elderly, minimally ambulatory Venetians, and because,  a few years ago, I lost the feeling on the bottoms of my feet, I began to think about what it might mean to lose access to the city I also love more than anywhere else on earth. (My foot problem, it turns out, is not MS or anything massively pernicious, but merely the result of a pesky spinal nerve compression ... an annoyance, nothing more).

I hope you never decide that it just isn't practical. I hope you always have Venice. As someone who lived there, I know that practically anything in Venice is inconvenient, it's just a matter of degree. Imagine what it means to bring home, say, a new bookshellf, or a piano. Or a Christmas tree. Or to take your boat to a restaurant.

To be clear, I'm not putting these logistical challenges in the same category as a trying to negotiate Venice with the kind of weaknesses MS can present. No question, it's a city that wants feet. But if you obsess on logistics (which can actually be kind of fun ... but then, I'm an obsessive puzzle solver), I know you can hammer Impracticality into Possible. Game it out. ID every bridge with handicap access (there's an office in the Venice city government with this and other info you'll need  ... see http://www.comune.venezia.it/handicap/nuovo/index.asp ... in Italian ... but it will still be useful). Trade tips with others who have disabilities. ID hotels or apartments with elevators that are located in zones with bridgeless (or handicap accessible bridge) access to vaporettos.

Your sphere will shrink if your mobility wanes, for sure. But don't fret. Venice is equally delicious eaten whole or in tiny slices. Some of my favorite days were spent simply sitting in miraculous, everyday campos beyond the tourist crush, debating the relative worthiness of different gelato flavors, watching kids play soccer, tracing the outline of a gothic window, and observing the parade of ordinary Venetian life.

In Venice, the "pedestrian" is anything but pedestian, even if you are not a pedestrian.

Good luck and let me know how things go.

Come Out

As fellow blog owners know, combing over your site statistics can be addictive. There's great stuff there for anyone with even a hint of obsessive compulsive disorder. I glance at  my stats at least once day.

One of the coolest things you can see is where people are from and how often they come back. This only works for a small fraction of the total number of visitors (mostly those who surf from their offices), but it can still  be intriguing. I have a group of about 50-60 or so people who regularly write me,  but there are many frequent readers I never hear from. Lurkers .... many who come from -- or work at  -- very interesting places.

It's time to come out.

I put together this little list drawn from the last week or so of visitors to Veniceblog. Check to see if you are on it. If you are, step out of the shadows and drop me a line at [email protected] and write about yourself, your relationship to Venice, and anything else you'd like to tell this blogger (any ideas for stories, for example). Confidentially, if you like.

And hey, you don't have to be on the list to write (most frequent readers aren't ... 99% of the time, info is generally hidden by their ISPs). I love to hear from readers anytime.

THE LIST

The Supreme Court Of Canada (hmmm, surfing between decisions?)

Reed Elsevier (home of Lexis-Nexis, my fave info source)

Tiger Tigress Productions

Guideposts Associates

University of Warwick (looks like at least 3 different people)

Social Security Administration

The Comune di Venezia

John Wiley Sons

Loyola University

Access Tucson

Hawaii Dept. Of Education

Someone at Marymount Manhattan College

NASA

Perkins Coie

Syracuse University

Information Systems U.S. House Of Representatives

Reading Is Fundamental

Folks at Wake Forest University (looks like several people)

UK's Ministry Of Agriculture Fisheries And Food

Central European Environmental Data Request Facility

A&E TV

The Independant (Newspaper/UK)

The New York Times

The National Gallery, Scotland

Netscape Communications

The City Of Cedar Park, Texas

American Airlines

Reviews Trickle In: It’s Casanova in a Romp

The reviews look pretty positive for the out-of-competition debut of director Lasse Hallstrom’s Casanova at the Venice Film Festival. Do not expect an art film. Turns out it has precious little to do with actual history or high-voltage nookie-mongering. What we have instead is a rather broad comedy, or as the director himself puts it, ” the Disney version” of one of history’s randiest dudes.

Hallstrom says he flipped through Casanova’s journals, then decided to invent his own rake. "The real Casanova is a wonderful idea for another film," said Hallstrom, "but we pretty much threw that one out the window to make this one."

This is a pic designed to play in the Red States, for sure. The Hollywood Reporter writes that it’s “a genuine crowd-pleaser that should have exhibitors everywhere smiling along with huge numbers of moviegoers”. And London’s Evening Standard says “the film has energy and pace but very little sophistication. But if you like pretty costumes to go with pretty faces, and the kind of historical romp that murders reality but provides instant, easy entertainment, this Casanova is for you.”

Comparisons to Richard Lester’s madcap film, The Three Musketeers, abound. Screen Daily says the film is “more a farce-tinged rom-com than a risque sex romp”. The Hollywood Reporter says that Heath Ledger portrays Casanova like an “overgrown kid rather than the smooth seducer; more Gerard Depardieu than Errol Flynn.”

Translation: it’s OK to sit next to your parents for this one.

The city, as always was ready for its close-up. Writes the Hollywood Reporter, “Venice has never looked so scintillating on screen”. It wouldn’t be Venice without some controversy, though, would it? And so the Gazzettino is reporting that cultural commissioner Sandro Parenzo is grousing about how the production company cheaped-out and exploited the Comune, paying only US $90,000 for unprecedented access to calles, campi and the insides of countless, rarely filmed palazzi and other vintage buildings.

Bad Bag

A new program by the Comune of Venice is slapping leviathan fines on people who buy counterfeit designer goods from those guys with the open-air blanket-bottegas that seem to be at the foot of every bridge. How does a 10000 Euro fine sound for that ratskin Prada-like wallet? Believe it or not, it's possible.

The program is called "Bad Bag", and posters have gone up all over town warning  visitors of the new down-side to "brand crimes". It's interesting that the program name is in English. I'm guessing that we anglophones comprise the biggest chunk of the target market.

Venice has long been overrun with ersatz designer goods sellers. I have to admit, I haven't been able to advance a theory on how it is these guys -- largely foreigners -- have been able to operate so freely. Venice is so incredibly finite, so full of dead ends and limited-access campi. It would seem that trapping their quarry would be a fairly low-order military operation for the carabinieri. It must be more complex than I realize.

I've always wondered about the true effectiveness of hyper-criminalizing consumers who buy illegal stuff and services, when the real target is intended to be the sellers. Can anyone think of a case where sellers were, in effect starved out of business? I know it never seems to really shut down prostitution or drug operations.

I hope it works. These bagmen are rough dudes, and are often involved in other crimes in the city. I'll watch to see if this new campaign has the intended effect