Moto Madness: Italian Motorcycles of the 50s and 60s · Mar 8, 08:30 AM by James Martin
Can Italians do anything without an overwhelming sense of style? Beauty is everywhere here in Italy—and it’s spread itself like butter on warm toast the world over—or perhaps that should be “Italian racing red over hot gas tanks” because that’s pretty much what I’ve come to talk about.
On my way to the boot I discovered the exhibit Moto Bellissima: Italian Motorcycles From the 1950s and 1960s at the San Francisco International Airport terminal while I waited on the first leg of my Air France flight headed for Paris. I can tell you: airports have improved at least as much as seats in airplanes have shrunk in the last 30 years. But back to these motos.
The Italian wartime recovery required cheap transportation options, cheap meaning the same as today only cheaper, vehicles that got 100 miles to the gallon. But do you think that Italians could just throw something together cheaply and let it out the door? Nah, they created enduring art. Just look at the details on the right. It is a pair of carburetors feeding pistons just larger than a thimble. The perfect duet, duetto.
Imagine this (from the exhibit):
The Italian government assisted a beleaguered industry in 1959 with a revision to its Highway Code that allowed anyone over the age of fourteen to operate, unlicensed, any internal combustion vehicle “not exceeding 50cc and able to travel on a horizontal road at a top speed of 27 miles per hour.” Manufacturers competed for a whole new generation of riders with a variety of innovative small-displacement motorcycles, including Moto Morini’s Corsarino, FB Mondial’s Record, and Italjet’s Mustang Veloce. They all used a piston the size of a shot glass, and were all easily modified to achieve speeds of up to sixty miles per hour.
Could your government do that for you? It’s not that way these days, of course, but the actions of the backroom boys with the cigars sure made Italy the place to go to zip around on a snazzy moto between trips to the bar for a quick Caffè and a gawk at the girls.
It was the time of great and optimistic Italian pop music—and a time when space exploration was becoming a reality. Italians went nuts over the concept of a flying saucer, making the MV Agusta CSS Disco Volante (flying saucer) the hit of the show. It gets the name from the smooth, wing-like bulges from its tank, as you can see in the picture above right. Alfa created a car with the same moniker.
Italian racing red. You’ll see a lot of that when you start looking at Italian motos, and this exhibit was no exception.
Read more about the exhibition.
Click on the pictures to see them larger. If you love motos, you’ll really want to.
Moto Madness: Italian Motorcycles of the 50s and 60s originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Mar 08, 2012, © James Martin, 
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Enzo Ferrari and his Museum in Modena · Feb 28, 04:58 PM by James Martin
Modena. It’s the epicenter of Motor Valley, La Motor Valley in, um, Italian.
In just a few days a new museum will open at the boyhood home of Enzo Ferrari. The pictures of the museum are almost bizarre, a building covered with a sensuously curvy roof looking for all the world like the type of louvered hood you might find on a Ferrari—in Modena yellow, a vibrant canary yellow. This in the historic center of Modena, mind you.
Here’s a News Report from Motor Valley, which has a picture: The Enzo Ferrari House Museum opens.
So you can mouse yourself over to our Modena map and guide to see Enzo’s museum mapped on a google map, along with climate information, hotel recommendations and other tourism info.
The museum has its opening set for the tenth of March, 2012. I’ll try to be there. Modena is a great city, ignored by tourists. Don’t all go there the same day.
The museum has a fine website in English: Museo Cassa Enzo Ferrari
Enzo Ferrari and his Museum in Modena originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Feb 28, 2012, © James Martin,
Rebuilding Vernazza, a pixel at a time · Jan 1, 05:38 PM by James Martin
Vernazza is one of the 5 lands, the Cinque Terre, a series of cute and colorful villages strung out along the Ligurian coast and well known around these parts. The Cinque Terre was hit hard by devastating floods, as you know. Vernazza is still a bit dirty and needs cleaning up.
One of the ways I’ve been told that this cleaning up can be facilitated is by the donations of folks who remained high and dry through 2011, the old year, the one whose ringing out might make your head throb in pain on this solemn day after.
Would you buy some pixels to help the Cinque Terre? Well, you can. What can a pixel or ten cost, anyway?
Look here: A Pixel for Vernazza. Not only can you buy pixels in 10 by 10 blocks to bring color to the iconic photo, but you can also link your luscious box of color to your web site. If you don’t have one, perhaps you can link it to your favorite site. Perhaps that is Wandering Italy. I’d like to hope so, but I suspect other sites with neked babes or sleeping cats might be more popular. Use your own discretion. Or, if you have none, use someone else’s. It’s what I do.
I do not know if this avenue will produce a better Vernazza. Nor do I know where the money goes, exactly. But you might want to check it out. There are worse places to send your money, I suspect. Giving it to rich people is popular in America, but I think that’s nuts. I’m pretty much alone in this.
Rebuilding Vernazza, a pixel at a time originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Jan 01, 2012, © James Martin,
Popular These Days
Italy After Berlusconi · Nov 20, 04:14 PM by James Martin
I’m worried. So worried that I haven’t been able to write for the last couple of weeks. I’m worried about the state of Italian culture now that a coup d’état, beautifully executed by Europe’s hit squad, has left in its malodorous wake an unelected representative of Goldman Sachs sitting as Italy’s PM—just as everyone and his rich brother is clamoring for growth!.
Sure, Berlusconi was an embarrassment; my Italian neighbors felt ashamed every time the conversation turned toward the skirt-chasing midget. But growth? I mean, not a single one of my neighbors salivates over an iPad they will never use. Their desire for goods doesn’t seem to be growing. Population isn’t growing. You’re telling me growth is the answer, the only answer?
Well then Bunky, Italy is certainly dead—or doomed to an endless coma. Can half hour lunches be far behind this clamor for industrial efficiency and growth? Is the pursuit of pleasure also dead, something the Italians do extremely well, even well enough to irritate the delicate sensibilities of America’s right wing lunatics who ignore that part of their own constitution? Will the pursuit of pleasure have to be jettisoned in favor of the nose-to-the-grindstone life so the “the Vampire Squid” (Goldman Sachs) can fatten itself like a tumor with its tendrils immersed in the delicious fattiness of that unlimited growth? (To ancient Romans, cancer was the crab because of those tendrils visible on tumors, but maybe they were thinking of squid…)
Perhaps I am underestimating the Italians because they aren’t on the street like Americans trying to get their government to return to the good old days of “government of, by and for the people,” the days before huge industrial companies magically became “people” by someone’s misinterpretation of law and banks simply lent money provided by depositors.
Definition: good old days—when being conservative meant you didn’t take unnecessary risks with your capital. Today bankers get bonuses for taking risk. The bigger the risk the bigger the bonus. There is no downside, no deductions for failure. Any engineer worth his salt would see the same thing as I see: Positive Feedback=Highly Unstable System. Avoid! Avoid! (Meaning bailouts will be needed every goddam time if this idiocy continues. And they’ll use your money.)
Yes, that’s it. I’m not reading the Italians right. They have their savings. They have their underground economy. Perhaps just a shrug is all they need. Ignore the bastards in Government; get on with your life. Plant by the moon. Eat what you plant. Love like you’ve never loved before.
That’s the ticket. Nothing bad will happen. I’m better now. Perhaps I’ll go to Venice. Venice is a good place for a fantasy life disconnected from reality.
If asked to give a speech on the issue, I’d give this one:
Is anyone else worried? Is it just me?
Italy After Berlusconi originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Nov 20, 2011, © James Martin,
Ligurian Floods: How to Help · Nov 5, 07:26 AM by James Martin
Just as the Cinque Terre had started to dig out of the mess the last heavy rains had left, now a new set of storms has begun to batter Genoa and other nearby areas, including the Val di Vara.
In the Lunigiana region of Tuscany, Equi Terme, a spa town, is getting pounded with rain as I type.
To get an idea of the amount of water we’re talking about here, and the tenacity of Italian bus drivers as they float down the streets, you need to see Simone Lupi’s video
Again, people have died in this latest disaster: Six killed, others missing in latest Liguria storm
How can you help? The Italian Red Cross has set up an English language page to accept your donations for the flooding in Tuscany and Liguria via credit card or Pay Pal. It’s in English: Croce Rossa Italia donations
For history of flooding in Liguria and video of the flooding in the Cinque Terre and the Italian Riviera, see: Devastating, Lethal Floods in Cinque Terre
To see where Liguria is located, see the Map of Liguria
Ligurian Floods: How to Help originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Nov 05, 2011, © James Martin,
Flooding in the Cinque Terre and Tuscany - The Aftermath · Nov 1, 11:46 AM by James Martin
If you’ve followed the story of watery mayhem and destruction in Liguria and Tuscany, you may have come away with a mental map showing a large section of Italy chunking off from the mainland and crashing unceremoniously into the sea, never to be fawned over by a tourist or travel writer again.
It’s time to put all this in perspective. I feel a need to do this because I was with friends from Oakland on a Greek ferry when the 1989 earthquake struck the Bay Area. We could see pictures of the destruction on the TV in the bar. Every 15 minutes the crowd fell into silence as the television replayed scene after devastating scene. Cripes, Frisco was no more!
Of course, this was not the case. Not even close. By the time we came home, you could not tell there had been an earthquake at all, unless you happened to be at the dinner table with folks who just had to fill you in on the details. In the end, you have to admit: humans are quite resourceful when it comes to repairing things, expecially beautiful things.
It’s the same with northern Italy. Sure, there’s been destruction. But it’s not like either region has been wiped off the map. And flooding here is a frequent occurrence, as David Downie points out in Devistating, Lethal Floods in the Cinque Terre”.
The Lunigiana was hard hit by the massive rainstorm. Aulla is still closed to outsiders, the whole of its downtown area a mass of mud and messed-up cars. But Mike Mazzaschi of A Path to Lunch fame tells a story of the rest of the Lunigiana:
We walked all around Pontremoli, but could find no damage! Despite those incredible pictures, the building along the rivers were fine, no evidence of flooding, no one cleaning up. We drove by one bridge which was closed – down the valley at the edge of town, but all the walking bridges around town were fine.
Of course, there are allso sad stories about the folks who’ve come to help as well. Friend Paula Loi reports from her home in Sardinia:
Sandro Usai from Arbus (Sardinia), passed away while helping as a volunteer. A big wave took him away! His body was finally found today after searching for him for days! how sad!
Yes, folks from far and wide have come to help. Ciao Lunigiana reports that “refugees from Lampedusa helping with the cleanup in Lunigiana.”
What’s to come? More work. More rain. Again from Ciao Lunigiana: “Forecasts are still for heavy rain arriving on Friday through to 10 November, although not as heavy as the rain expected in Liguria and Piemonte. Piemonte is expected to receive 50% of its annual rainfall in this period.”
Bad weather and good deeds continue in Liguria and Tuscany— è sempre cosi.
Flooding in the Cinque Terre and Tuscany - The Aftermath originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Nov 01, 2011, © James Martin,
Now is not the time to go to the Cinque Terre--or Tuscany · Oct 26, 01:40 PM by James Martin
It’s devastating to hear the news from our little corner of Italy. Torential downpours over the last few days have ravished the medieval cities along the rivers they depended upon. Friends say our market town of Aulla has been completely trashed by the swollen river. Two have died there; three in Liguria. Hundreds sleep in the old train station. Folks are being evacuated. Sad pictures from Aulla.
The Cinque Terre is suffering a similar fate, with the steep slopes sending monumental amounts of water into the towns. Look at Vernazza.
There is not much to say. For the first time in my life since buying our Italian house, I can be sincerely glad I’m not inside it at the moment.
Now is not the time to go to the Cinque Terre--or Tuscany originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Oct 26, 2011, © James Martin,
Mountain Biking in the Lunigiana · Sep 11, 06:37 AM by James Martin
We were lucky. After deciding to amble over to Serricciolo for our Sunday coffee and pastries, we flung open the newly-varnished door and discovered flagmen lining our “street”. Their presence reminded us that there was a mountain biking race scheduled for the morning. Our battered guard rails held taped-on notices. The race was slated to head right past our door; racers would almost clip the corner of Francesca and Armando’s place.
Not only that, it was a stiff uphill climb to get up to the place, and I knew the racers would be huffing and puffing—and the pictures would be easy.
So, I strapped on the big lens and headed out the door. In a couple of giant steps I got to where I could see exactly where they’d come up the hill, aiming for the corbeled passageway under the building to continue on to even higher ground. There I set up. I’ve done lots of racing photography in my life, and never has the commute been easier.
First came a moto, sputtering up the hill, then the strung out pack. The guy leading must have been good, he had quite a lead. After the next ten, the rest of the pack seemed to fade. But that meant they had time to greet all the folks along the road. It was nice. They wear colorful clothes.
After they had all passed, I shoved the lens in my bag and we headed down the road to Serricciolo, as we usually do when we’re home in Piano di Collecchia, lusting for a half-dozen or so of their famed tiny mini-pastries and a coffee.
Twenty minutes later we ambled into town. We turned to head toward the bar, passing a man with one of those red lollypop things cops stop you on the highway with to check your documentation. Right there, in front of the bar was the Arrivo, nicely planned it so that the sun would be cranking out its light behind the racers, making the photos nicely dim and shadowy.
After coffee and cakes, the first racer arrived. It was the same man who lead the race up the hill in Piano di Collecchia.
Finally, the guy sponsored by “brains” had time to get some shuteye.
Mountain Biking in the Lunigiana originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com Sep 11, 2011, © James Martin,