Are there MUSIC FESTIVAL in ITALY?

Too bad. You were looking for a professional review of the huge quantity of festival that Italy can supply. And you arrived in this blog, which is all but professional. But come on, tourists always complain they do not want to see the "touristy" things, they want to see the REAL Italy, the one ITALIANS enjoy.

If you ever thought those things when on holiday, then keep reading: don't waste an occasion to read a fascinating report about Italian MUSIC SUMMER FESTIVALS, written by an Italian, a musician, and a New Yorker.

So here we go: let me tell you I am a little biased when it comes to music (who isn't?!), so I'll write exclusively of the following two events, which - in my humble opinion - are the two more valuable events of the Summer:

Eating Italian Food in New York?!

So: I posted quite a lot about food already, and I'll keep this pace hopefully. I've never dedicated a whole post - though - to eating Italian Food in New York.

Let me start in an optimistic way: IT'S NOT BAD.

If you're not accustomed with the Italian culture you might not know that Italians are well known to always complain, when abroad, about food. Especially when food is sold as "Italian". To this extent they might be sort of right, since most of Mario's Restaurants or Capri Pizzerias around the US serve all but Italian food.

In a sense they accommodated American tastes to Italian recipes, but that doesn't make a good restaurant.

So, what is different in New York?!

So there's not going to a STARBUCK IN ITALY, right?

I feel quite bad about repeating myself. Both in this blog, and in life. But I really need to review a previous post of mine, where I talked about Starbucks and Italy.

APPARENTLY, THERE IS NOT GOING TO BE ANY STARBUCKS IN ITALY.. At least anytime soon. Let me be clear about this, since my post could have been misleading. I decided to cover the topic because of a poster I had seen online, on facebook, where they said that:

Starbucks Comes to Italy (Rome, Venice, Milan, Naples) - June 2012

Now, if I am not wrong, June has come, but no Starbucks have shown up in Italy. So: what was wrong with the poster cited above?!

Guido's BACK?!

'Zup Folks?!

So sorry about the delay.. these last few months have been so hectic, I could barely find time to eat. And you know that for as much as I like writing in this blog, I still prefer to eat well!..

So, what's new with the Italyorker?! Pretty much everything: starting with the fact that I'M TYPING FROM MY BELOVED ITALY. In this sense, "Guido's Back" stands both for Guido is back to Italy, and Guido's back to blogging. I'm a GENIUS, right?!

What's a nice English word?

So, I've been posting mostly about NYC so far, and I'm hoping to do it as often as possible, but let me take a little break to speak about something more related to foreigners abroad and learning English.

As you might have noticed, I am not English mother tongue, so I'm learning a lot of new words day by day, and sometimes it's overwhelming.. Fortunately, from now and then you find a REALLY NICE WORD, and by nice I mean something that sounds fun, or has a fun meaning.

So the word I want to talk about today would be:

BALONEY

How could NEW YORK CITY be even MORE LIVABLE?

I know I've just arrived in the city and it might sound a little arrogant to try to IMPROVE NEW YORK CITY, but come on, I am Italian.. We do love to take a stand against or for any kind of discussion, starting from the last soccer match, ending with tomorrow's weather. If you're proved to be true many times you get to become a politician; if you are almost never true but you say it really loud, you become president.

Anyways, back to the topic, I noticed that many of the blogs on NYC (rightfully) praise New York as a wonderful city to live in mainly because of:

• a lot of walkable neighborhoods (see here) - check out this website, it's kind of amazing:  http://walkshed.org/nyc
• a lot of green areas (a serious article here);
• etc..

Unfortunately, though, I don't think there is yet a culture of BICYCLES..

Is there something like the SUPERBOWL in ITALY?

Let me be frank: NO.

Since tomorrow is the big game's day, I tried to think really hard about some similar tradition we have in Italy. I couldn't come up with much, and I was somewhat sorry about that. I generally like these weird situations in which the sense of belonging of some people becomes really really strong, for a couple of hours.

The only thing that would compare is the World Cup final (of soccer, obviously). A lot of people get just nuts about it, and I would say the general feeling is similar to the Super Bowl. Only with less Buffalo wings.

Why isn't there a STARBUCKS IN ITALY (yet)?

I guess time has come to talk about coffee. It is a hot topic (indeed! Sorry, bad joke), and let me say especially for Italians. Coffee for Italians is something like saudade for Brazilian, is the smile of a person you miss. The first thing most Italians do once back from a journey is getting a coffee. True story. Actually I should not get that sentimental, let me start by the very beginning: how would I describe coffee culture in Italy? Bullet-points!

• coffee in Italy means espresso - it is really a couple of millimeters, way less than what you can get at any American cafe - it is really intense and concentrated, almost as dense as honey;  
• it is served in a ceramic cup (not even in the outskirts of the worst Italian town would you find a paper cup);
• most guys get it at the counter, it takes less than 2 minutes to prepare and less than 20 second to drink;
• it costs something between 0.90 and 1.50 euros (in normal places - i.e. not in Piazza San Marco in Venice, or in front of the Colosseum);
• in summer you would sit in the tables and stand there chatting, but NOBODY WORKS IN THE CAFE', in Italy;

Who invented the TIP SYSTEM?

This is something I really care about, so let me make my point clear: I've been living here for a while, but I still hate the idea of leaving 15% minimum tips at the restaurant. I don't get it!.. Well, I actually get it but I hate it.

But waitresses and waiters are paid less than the minimum, something like 5 bucks an hour. That's why you should leave 15% tips.

What kind of reasoning is that? How about the guy who sewed the t-shirt I'm wearing. Was it paid enough? Wasn't he? In any case I don't leave tips. Do you know what I do? I go some place else to buy the same t-shirt, where I spend more because they are paying him enough.

Why HAVE I NOT POSTED on SUNDAY?

That's right! As some of you may have noticed, so far I've been posting regularly once a day. At least that's what happened up until last Saturday. Actually, I consider a success keeping it going for 13 days straight - to my remembering I've not really ever committed to anything for longer than half an hour.

I am sorry to have skipped Sunday, though, but fortunately enough that gives me a good introduction to today's topic: quality of life. Exactly, I had thousand of things to do - yesterday - but as soon as they asked me to go out to dinner I did not refuse, and therefore I found myself going on working up until 3AM. Then I went to bed, not being even able to spell my name.

So what is this quality of life, then? And what makes you think to be qualified to talk about that?

Will THERE COME WINTER, eventually?

I've just got back from the park.
Not the Park.
Riverside Park.

How's it possible to have such a great day even in January? The sun was low on the Hudson, the three mile long park was crowded with kids, sports team, and dogs... Beautiful.

Weird, though. I spent last winter in LA. After some obvious enthusiasm about the 60 degrees in January, I got a little pissed. That's right, how come there was fake snow in the window shops, and outside snow would have melted in 10 seconds?

What's wrong with this PEOPLE?

That's right, even though you're might be thinking this post is about either Americans or Italians, or French, or an obsession of an Italian in New York, this is actually a post about stereotypical American expressions.

One of them, my favorite maybe, is this "What is wrong with this people?!".. It is even funnier if you think of the Italian translation of it.. which makes little sense to be honest, but sounds really crazy: "Che cos'hanno di sbagliato questi qua?".

Anyways, if for whatever reason you want to look American, I think you should rely a lot on the following expressions:

Who's probably the BEST KNOWN ITALIAN JAZZ MUSICIAN?

If you're Italian, and you care about Jazz you probably have asked yourself this question.. I did for sure and I could at least select a couple of them. By Italian - only in this post - I mean folks born and raised in Italy. So I got to a quite nice list:

• Enrico Rava;
• Stefano Bollani;
• Roberto Gatto;
• Sandro Gibellini;
• etc..

In particular, in this post, I will concentrate on Enrico Rava not really because I think he's the best (the competition in the top is quite fierce), but because he'll soon be playing in New York, at the Birdland...

Is it TRUE that NEW YORKERS LIVE BETTER?

Let me be a little technical, from now and then..

There's been this rumor in the last few weeks, following to the publication of new data by the New York City Department of Health. Several reliable blogs have reported the news, and started commented such data.

Let us start by some of the data explained in some of those blogs: the whole discussion starts from the following statement:

the average life expectancy in 2004 is 78.6 years, a bigger value then the US average, which is 77.9

Then in most website I saw they try to find the reason why such average life expectancy is high, and apparently a reasonable answer seems to be that NEW YORKERS WALK MORE (and FASTER). That's right: there are studies supporting the idea that fast walking and long living go hand in hand.

Yes, but: HOW MANY ITALIANS are there in NYC?

This is kind of an important question, because it defines properly the target of this blog. And good news is that there are quite many.

In order to approach this question you can do plenty of things, the deepest of which I think should be go to the US Census data and download this infinite spreadsheet with time series of immigration in New York. Alternatively you can go to wikipedia, and start reading pages related. That's actually what I did, but I'm planning to go straight to the source one day.

Anyways there are quite a lot of nice infos also in wikipedia, starting from this map:

that shows the Italians presence in New York State, with respect to ancestry (i.e. folks whose grandfather was Italian - I assume - and thus holding Italian passport - and thus Italian by all means).

What is the BEST ITALIAN dessert?

No question has ever been easier.

It's tiramisu'. It means something like cheers me up and it's surprisingly delicious and easy to prepare. And it cheers you up.

Where should I go if I want to see Italian music?

Good news for classical guitar fans, especially if they like Italian music. Yes - even though most people identify Italian music with Opera - there's quite a vast repertoire for classical guitar.

And it's gonna be played at the Guitar Marathon: Bell'Italia, the last event of a classical guitar festival in New York City, hosted by the one and only Eliot Frisk (for the New Yorker, the king of American classical guitar). There are gonna be two concerts, one at 2PM and one at 7PM in the Upper East, and the program is particularly promising.

Why doesn't it SNOW MORE OFTEN in New York?

That's right, I maybe new to New York, so I will probably change my mind, but I'd love if it snowed more often.

Today it snowed and even though I could find any reason to be pissed off, I got emotional at the sight of the snowed park. And it wasn't even such a sunny day, the sky was so grey I thought it were London. Then I saw a Dog-Sitter with 8 dogs, and I changed my mind.

Why is WILLIAMSBURG SO FANCY?

I don't know if you're from New York, or wishing to move there or simply about to visit, but there's something you should know:

Williamsburg is damn fancy and hip.

Why is that? I'm glad you asked that, and my opinion is related to one of the major attraction of the neighborhood: the Brooklyn Brewery.

Why is NEW YORK SO SMALL?!

That's right, New York is damn small, this amazing video to prove it:

My god, it is impressive to notice that even if I've been around for few months,  that fit exactly how I imagine newyorkers.. Not only that: they talk about several places where to eat and even if there are probably thousands all along Manhattan, I knew them all:

Why is PASTA SO GOOD?

I decided to talk about the reasons why Italians Hate Italians later on, because is kind of a painful topic for me, and it requires some more research.


So let's talk about pasta: I just had a good one, and I am always surprised by how good it is, let's break it down:

• pasta: basically durum wheat flour after a series of processes that while modifying it substantially, do not alter the taste that much. So it boils down to a cereal.
• sauce: can vary a lot, but provided you have tomatoes and maybe a little Parmesan cheese you are all set

Why does EVERYBODY loves Italians? (most of all Americans..)

Elephant in the room! This will be a major topic, so let's try to set this up.

Possible answers:

• Quality of life (my personal favorite): in Italy life is so good that anybody, especially stressed up folks, sees in the Italian Way of Life an ideal of peace and well being that has always been a major feature of the Bel Paese (i.e. Italy!);
• Italians are good at cooking: this is quite related to the previous point, and I think that it makes sense. But let's save the food issues for some further posts.. I will probably set up a dedicated page to Italian cuisine with home made recipe and food philosophy. 
•  Most people don't really know many Italians, but at most Fellini's movies, Venice canals, the Colosseum and probably some operas. This self ironic point (remember I'm Italian) reflect the fact that many Italians are not so proud of being Italians, but again let's save this to the following post (which is very likely to be called: "Why does MANY Italians hate Italians?").

Here we go!..

Apparently the web is suffering from a lack of blogs 'bout Italians in New York. So here I am, trying to provide such a service to help Italians make it in New York, and Newyorkers understanding why are Italian the way they (we) are.

Roughly speaking, I'll be posting about stuff I like, but being an Italian in New York, I will end up talking about: Italy, food, beauty, New York, economy, maths, and music. Be ready for all that stuff.


I like to thing I'll be writing regularly well tailored post, in good English and without going off topic. But this is not going to be the case. Sorry about that.

The only thing I can promise is that I'll be honest with you guys, so let me start by admitting that: I've never written a blog, I am not sure this is going much further than a few weeks, and I once surfed on a whale - with bare feet.

Cheers,

Guido the Italyorker.