VENICE: Back in the summer of 2016 in Venice, the comments regarding a crude and uncultured tourism were wasted, believing that things had hit bottom, and affirming that bad taste had crossed all limits. Photographs and video have immortalized without pity (for our city) swims in the canals, people relieving themselves on the streets, sleeping bags and bicycles, beachgoers in the calli of the Serenissima.
We did not consider, however, that with the growth in numbers, the percentage of bad actors could only grow as well. Neither did we consider the strange, depraved motivational force which drives the continuous challenge of legitimate borderlines, motivating the uncouth human being to always raise the bar towards desecration. So today we record, to our dismay, the most recent record of imported hicks: diving off the Ponte di Calatrava.
Venice knows it as the “Ponte della Costituzione”, but the trophy-video which the group of four young ill-mannered men took home (we hope along with heavy fines), is probably valuable for them because it involves the “Ponte di Calatrava di Venezia” which has become world famous for notable reasons.
Today, Sunday 23 July 2017, around 6 in the morning, without caring about the fact that underneath some vehicles might pass (there are moments in which it is not possible to check from the other side of the bridge to give the all clear), these hicks dove in the water from about 10 – 12 meters, which represents the highest point of the bridge.
A video shows these inconsiderate men completing their ‘tasks’ and exulting in it as if it were some common mischief. Instead the facts are very serious: if a vaporetto had been crossing beneath the diver would have crashed in to it, if a boat or taxi with people in the open had been passing underneath, the diver would have caused grave injury to a third party.
The person who took the video, an Italian passerby, at a certain point cheered to encourage the ‘less courageous’ member of the group.
Amongst the comments after the diving, instead, we note someone who railed against those who passed by, saw and turned away, pretending to have seen nothing, because they should have reprimanded the group. However, really, one cannot delegate the public order of the city to passersby and residents.
The video of these hooligans who dove from the Ponte di Calatrava has been seen by many and is generating many indignant responses but, it would seem, we are “always there to report about it.”
One of these comments, however, we’d like to share: Venice has in Piazzale Roma various police stations: how can it happen that the hooligans of orderly and peaceful coexistence are always lucky?
Source: Paolo Pradin, La Voce di Venezia, 23-7-2017
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