Graffiti, art or blight?

I have this tendency to grumble to anybody who'll listen about Rome and its graffiti problem. Our 'hood, Garbatella, in particular, is covered in grammatically dubious expressions of teenage love scrawled on the side of walls, on benches, on playground swings. Slow-moving nonne, I'm convinced, are at risk of getting a "Ti amoooo, Giovanna" declaration across their house dress. Nobody else seems to share my irritation though, so I thought I'd grumble about it here.

You see right outside our apartment lies the university, Roma 3. There are acres of clean wall space that are just taunting the aspiring graffiti artist. Until recently. A bunch of characters every other weekend sneak down to the tracks below the house and go to work on the wall of one of the university buildings that abuts the railway. I've begun to document the gradual transformation from nondescript building to urban canvass. With it, my opinion is beginning to change...

The first batch of photos were taken on the morning of June 1st after I noticed a new batch of boxy letters scrawled on the building below:





And then, last night I woke up around 3 a.m. to catch an inning or two of the Mets-Yankees game. It was a warm evening and the windows were open and, at one point in between innings, I hear that unmistakable rattle of spraypaint cans. I peered out from my salone into the darkness below and could just about make out two figures in black busy at the foot of the same building. Remarkable to me was that they did the work completely in the dark. They had no lights and there was just a sliver of a moon in the sky. Here's their handiwork:





The latest embellishment is certainly an improvement. So, I'm starting to refine my opinion of graffiti. If done well, it's not so bad. It adds a little color and life to otherwise drab city walls. The meaningless exclamations, hastily chucked up on a building, they are nothing more than vandalism. The graffiti artists should be more angered by these amateurs than me.

Marche, as the church saw it

Here's a wall map mural from the 1500s found in the famous Vatican Map room. It shows the provincia di Ascoli Piceno "back in the day." Yes, I'm a total map geek. Naturally, I zoom in on "Mandola," 16th Century shorthand for "Amandola," evidently.

Therapeutic mud

No, this is not a post about thermal hot springs. It's about mountain biking, a day out with the fellas for a 50km (that we somehow screwed up, and turned into something closer to 65km) giro across northern Lazio.



In the spirit of service journalism, here's the map:



The trio included Stefano, our fearless guide. Here he is after demonstrating how to extricate yourself from knee-deep mud.



Next comes Bruno, a trained medical professional who is fond of recounting in mouth-watering detail favorite meals from across Italy. Starving, pedaling along the trail, the effect of these stories is vivid hallucinations. Dishes of pasta, steak and potatoes seem to appear one after another along the trail the closer you get to lunch hour. Mirages, all of them. Drat! Here's Bruno, settling for a picnic of panini and tepid water.



I brought up the rear, snapping photos and asking questions.

Turns out Italy is filled with routes like the one we took yesterday. They're vestiges of the railroad age, a grand age indeed in Italy. A century ago, Italy built an incredibly comprehensive network of rail lines, connecting just about every town, village and city to the outside world, bringing passengers and commerce to even the quietest out-of-the-way place. The automobile put this age to an end. Today, there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of km of old rail lines. Perfect for mountain biking!

Berlusconi v. the Queen

Rule Number One: Use your "inside" voice when you are in the Queen's company.



The full story is here, courtesy of, gulp, The Daily Mail.

Where Romans go for coffee

Sure, the Pantheon is pretty impressive. But if you see determined Romans stream past around the back, paying little attention to the place, it's probably because they are on their way to Caffe' Sant'Eustachio for un caffe' vero. The constant queues are testament that this could be the best coffee in the world.

William Grimes back in 2002 wrote in The New York Times about the place:

When the need for a real espresso becomes overpowering, buy a ticket to Rome, tell the taxi driver to head straight for the Sant'Eustachio cafe. The espresso will be perfect. A little expensive, but surely worth the trouble.

For the pastry chefs among you, check out this informative video about making tiramisu, with Sant'Eustachio coffee of course.

Don't mess with a man in tri-colore wig

The Azzurri this year are having a rough 6 Nations tournament. There was much hope for the future of Italian rugby after a few promising victories against the French and the Welsh in years past, but this year, nah, not so fast. The Italians cannot seem to put a full 80 minutes together and they don't seem to have a try in them as the tournament wears on.

Still, the Italians are proud of their club. And, as the Azzurri took the lead against the mighty Welsh in the second half and battled to the 71-min mark with a 15-13 lead, you cannot blame the home team fans from getting a little carried away. Stefano, sitting next to me (pictured above, proudly displaying the national colors of Peroni red; Matt of Gastrokid fame is next to him, Matt's lovely wife, Jowa, just out of the picture) at Stadio Flaminio yesterday, started heckling a bemused Welsh supporter late in the second half as the poor guy left his seat, for a beer no doubt.

As the guy walked past, Stefano yelled at him:
Go home, friend! You are cooked! Boiled!

Surprised, he looked up at us. Speechless. Go home!, Stefano yelled again. The Welsh fan turned and walked off, to cheers from the nervous Italians and the good-natured Welsh sitting all around us.

A few minutes later the Welsh stormed down the field and scored. The Welsh never looked back.

A photo tour of Garbatella

I mentioned below it's such a spectacularly sunny day today here in Rome. Walking back from buying the newspapers I snapped a few photos with my N95. (There are also some old shots too).



First stop: the market. It's been under construction, the sign reads, since 2004. There hasn't been any progress on the structure since we moved in 18 months ago. But today, I see, there's a fresh coat of paint, declaring Fascism is still off-limits. The old lefty spirit of the 'hood is kind of quaint these days. Today the Left in this country is becoming more fragmented and irrelevant every day, sad when you consider the alternative, Berlusconi and his lot, have zero credibility outside of Italy. Garbatella reflects the decline of The Left. The PD (Partito Democratico) HQ closed up shop a few weeks ago. Still, you can see colourful mural homages to Che and Castro and even Bobby Sands just a few steps from this delapidated market. Perhaps there's a metaphor in there. Not sure.



Walking downhill now you come to the Basilica of Saint Paul's, Rome's other basilica. Most pilgrims head to St. Peter's across town while St. Paul's sits quietly on a flat patch of grass between the river and the hills that lead into Garbatella. It's really impressive inside, particularly the cloister where relics of the early Christians abound.

We get nice sunsets from time to time too.