A $5 bill would let me and my friends play the pinball machine in the bar next to my nonna's house for hours, lol - plus Estathé's for all! Those were the days, lol.
Wonder as a capacity rather than a mood is the line I will keep. Something close to it from Milan, and it turns out to be a mechanism rather than a feeling. Virgilio Carnisio began photographing the shops of this city in 1968, while they were still open and still ordinary, so the pictures were documents before they were memories and nobody in them is posing. The archive has passed 110,000 images and is now held by the Fondazione 3M. What stops people in front of the one on our wall is never the shopfront, it is the price list in the window, because that tells you what a family here actually ate that week. So the wonder is really someone having looked before the thing was worth looking at. We keep a trattoria in Milan and write about the city that is going, which is the same job from the other end.
The line about accepting that you're a tourist may be the most useful one here. "Authentic Italy" often gets treated as one more service the destination is supposed to supply, somewhere real but conveniently arranged around your arrival. Positano is almost too neat an example. The water at the main beach is spoiled by the boats that bring people to see it, and every alternative you list comes with a price attached. You are still a tourist. The place simply has other business.
Great pic, so much character. If I'm being honest, I miss the lira.
1600 lire was $1 back then, I’ll never forget that
A $5 bill would let me and my friends play the pinball machine in the bar next to my nonna's house for hours, lol - plus Estathé's for all! Those were the days, lol.
Completely refreshing to read!
I love that you so cavalierly used the word ensorcelled—which I had to look-up :>)
It’s a good word!
😂came to say the same, and I pride myself in obscure word knowledge!
But you can kind of figure it out right? 🪄 🔮✨
Yes! But I was delighted to learn a new word and such a good one.
Wonder as a capacity rather than a mood is the line I will keep. Something close to it from Milan, and it turns out to be a mechanism rather than a feeling. Virgilio Carnisio began photographing the shops of this city in 1968, while they were still open and still ordinary, so the pictures were documents before they were memories and nobody in them is posing. The archive has passed 110,000 images and is now held by the Fondazione 3M. What stops people in front of the one on our wall is never the shopfront, it is the price list in the window, because that tells you what a family here actually ate that week. So the wonder is really someone having looked before the thing was worth looking at. We keep a trattoria in Milan and write about the city that is going, which is the same job from the other end.
The line about accepting that you're a tourist may be the most useful one here. "Authentic Italy" often gets treated as one more service the destination is supposed to supply, somewhere real but conveniently arranged around your arrival. Positano is almost too neat an example. The water at the main beach is spoiled by the boats that bring people to see it, and every alternative you list comes with a price attached. You are still a tourist. The place simply has other business.