Last day at JHP

More barricades, an offer from the City to relocate at 16th/Mission in an old schoolyard. Looks pretty compound-like from the satellite. A lot of resistance in the camp about going/staying the course. No drugs, no alcohol. No minors. Fine by me. But all the weedheads said they won't go if they don't get to puff. Fine, don't go. Wait for the batons.
I have so little in common with Occupy regulars. Don't smoke pot, hate badly played acoustic, not much for dogs. Slept best as I could through the GA meeting last night. No need to go, see people with their goofy little hand-signs. My mind's made up. I'm going to to the Mission, unless the Adamant ones raise a stink again and force another delay/cancellation. It's a trap. Definitely a FEMA camp next to cheap vegetable stands, used clothing, decent coffee shops instead of Noah's, Starbucks. If you don't want to go, hey don't go. I would like some structure. I would love the 10pm no music. 1950 Mission. Occupy is of the Mind anyway. Decentralized is fine by me. Virtual even.
JHP is squalor. Trash the place. Pee anywhere you like. Fetid. I hope they hose the eff out of the place, but not in the Bay. Bury it in Nevada.
People mistake anarchy for chaos. Anarchy is, in fact, order. Self-denial in a way. Capitalism is the mess. Dog-eat-dog, grab everything you can...

Fat Mike Check!

I was serving food last night and heard 'NOFX is playing'. and I figured this announcement was full of shit, but then it sounded kind of cool by the main part, so I drop my towel, and go over. Just in time to see Fat Mike getting his picture taken with whatever yahoo asked him to stand there with him. Damn. Shook his hand, thanked him for coming by nonetheless. Lives here, did not know that. Half the band's in LA. Invited him over to the tents, but he had sushi on his mind. ---a 'mic check' is what someone yells when they want the entire camp's attention - what the speaker says, in small phrases, is then repeated, by whomever, chooses to repeat.

My folding knife was absconded with from the cutting table, along with every other knife the kitchen has possessed. We're armed with kitchen knives, so watch out. Flak-jacket piercing rusty serrated knives, you bad guys in SWAT gear. Oy vey. I'm sure my fingerprints will be on whatever knife Billy Bob uses to hurt that lyin' slut Sharlene or whatever. The site is overfull - they got people off the strip of grass next to Herb Caen Way in order to reseed it, everyone who had to move bitching 'No Compromises!' Yeah right. You want the entire camp to move it, or do you want to move it yourself. It's not just the GA. That's where the tweakers hung out and man filthy ain't the word to describe. Fetid.

I am making myself available for work again finally. I have attire issues and tools to acquire. At least a Goddamn c-wrench. Have my ID. Have sobriety. Alright, holding my nose as I reenter the workplace. Wish me luck.

The winds of change are blowin but it won't be a breeze

A bit of history: the 'bridge' as it was known was the Occupy area between 101 Market (the Federal Reserve) and the much larger Justin Herman Plaza, which is crammed to capacity. The bridge was in front of the Bank of America building which apparently was built for the Southern Pacific Railroad, which in 1886 won the case which set the precedent that a corporation can and should be treated the same as an individual person. Legalese is not my thing, but the verdict included this statement:

"The Court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution which forbids a state to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does."

As I understand it, this when extrapolated, interpreted whatever, means that a corporation has the same rights as an individual. I remember something on Colbert about this but I don't have the time or inclination to research this further. I have to return to camp with rumors about an amassing of riot police in the parking garage of the Embarcadero Hyatt. 101 is gone now, they ripped backpacks off peoples' backs, took their belongings, took their pictures, cited and released them. Dude shivering under the Nic at Nite had no socks. Nic at Nite is the barter table where you can go for a free rolly most of the time.

I am soon to defy the open-flame law, as I was given a propane Coleman cannister, and found a burner apparatus. Hot water, instant Medaglia d'Oro, a rolly from Nic at Nite. Read my homework, Demanding the Impossible available at http://www.4shared.com/document/c44apGZ5/Peter_Marshall_Demanding_the_I.html

Have a good day everyone, and support OCCUPY however you may see fit.

Dog fights and the kittens in the morning

This morning a thin lass with a bit of fuzz on a leash were in front of my tent, the cat squatting on the pea-gravel next to the Bocce court where I have made my home. It does look like litter. How much can their little bladders hold? More than I thought, and the girl did shoosh me when I first approached. (Difficult to get the cat to go. Oh). A good morning trip to intestinal bliss I must respect.

An even smaller one was getting a bit of fresh air minus the bully-dogs that rule the night, it on a 10' string emerging from a small tent, one of the flood plain ones. (The east gravel strip has drain issues that will make your tent into more of a beaver dam). I am the tent next to one of those huge concrete spheres - good signage for a ball court. I put my prayer flag string over it like a hairband. I wrote Welcome to the Circle A Ranch on a pallet set edge-wise and attached the black flag. Get branded!

The kitchen is about to snap. JD has achieved his own bliss in not caring, as he puts out the dozens of sandwiches and preparing more for the cause. Mike the guy who comes down from 101 is easy to work with. No one freaked when we had to move the kitchen to storage. The sink was a poor investment, when your water comes in 5 gallon camping or commercial containers. That went away yesterday.

Woke up to Christmas music. Thought the rink was very loud and...no, it is to my North. I'm confused. A boom box, aimed in my general direction by two guys in a higher up tent, South. I'm sorry, what? I check the time on the Ferry Bldg. It's 8:30 am. The crooner stuff at the Ice Capades last night was so much better. Mel Torme, Blue Eyes, good shit. Pseudo rockabilly Santa Claus is Coming to Town. You know the one. I go give them grief. Pull rank? I just asked if you experienced the non-stop wingnut melee that went on for three days. I think I moved each of those days. Once for the flood plain, once to the com tent, pulled down during 2am raid. Then to yup. 100 Main Street, JH Plaza, SF, CA 94666. Surely no one took that zipcode. We should have it.

Another dogfight. Where's the fucking muzzle? Who took the muzzle off? It's not my dog. (That's a punchline, you know). He spit on me. I remember I do in fact have a dogbite. Three punctures in box shape bruise. Dogbite. I forgot but now I have on shorts so I can have some props in saying what fucked up kenneling is going on. I was hassling its owner over shit on the ground or just being irresponsible. I forget. They are going to be the final straw. Irresponsible dog-ownership brought down occupy. Our unsafe verdict (the Public Health sheet - did you get the memo?) included feces and urine on the ground and a dog disease known as parvo.

This morning, I prefer kittens.

The long haul

Folks, I need a few things beside the obvious socks, water, and a camping-style solar apparatus for heating water (Tea/coffee and warm suds for the dishes would be a Godsend). I, we, need to know this is not all in vain. I finally got off my depressed pity-party ass and got busy helping the kitchen scrub up after the urinary-edible confusion someone had, and evacuating yesterday when NEW barricades showed up, that is the kitchen substructure (shelving, stainless table, cutting blocks etc). I spent the morning handing out food to the grateful as well as those that just don't fucking get it. Can I have two? No, Goddamn it, tell whoever the hell it is to get off their ass and come get one, and there's dishes back there if you maybe might possibly want to contribute. And fucking around on a Goddamn acoustic guitar is a detriment to the cause because quite honestly you suck ass.

I also decided I could share something in the way of alleged expertise by leading a work group on ~Anarchist literature: I include Kropotkin as well as Vonnegut, Angela Davis and Huysman. I am here for the duration. Rain schmain. Falls mainly in the plain. And ends up going down the motherfucking drain. Hey that's a good line. http://vimeo.com/9704178 in case you forgot.

Come see me. I'll be where the kitchen kind of is. Or near my tent Center Street with the black flag proudly hung. As Bugs used to say, "Of course you realize, this means war." Peace y'all. Or not. Whatever. I'm out.

RAID versus Black Flag

RAID has definitely won the first sortee. At least a lot of the the wingnut cockroaches flew the coup (pun intended): At 2am last night as I was trying to enjoy my fourth hour of sleep in the last week, I hear "cops in riot gear!". I am unfazed hoping the prankster would shut the eff up...When I reached the end of Market, I saw a few boneheads grabbing barricades to put with rolling trash barrels and doors, etc. for "our barricade". That is the stupidest idea I have ever heard. Trash barrels and their barricades. More embarrassment.

The fights and the theft and the intoxication were not enough, then we have made-for-TV drama when Stan tries to make sense by standing on a concrete stanchion and saying that resistance must be passive if it is to be effective, and this 'barricade' will be about as effective against rubber bullets and tear gas as a paper bag. I am with Stan, believing Occupy the Mind and the Heart will follow, but a fellow protester has other ideas and will not quit banging the green recycle bin enough for Stan to be heard. The cops are half a block away dude. The stick ends up drawing blood from Stan's head, at least 4 or 5 professional-looking cameras rolling. More embarrassment.

I speak to a well-educated fellow from Berkeley, who mentions that the cops change shift at 4. We put together between the 2 of us that if new cops come on, they could tap the old crew for some O.T. and perhaps double their force. After verifying my logic with some members of the G.A., I approach each of the TV trucks to make sure they please stay, explaining my logic of the cop duty change. They seem to agree.

I am deranged by lack of sleep and the frustration of having to watch my stuff constantly. I came back to my spot this a.m. and somebody was literally moving in ON my sleeping bag which was laid out neatly under the communications tarp. ON my bag with a whole park depleted of a quarter of the tents it previously had. I go semi-ballistic and relocate for the...4th or 5th time, involving a modicum of gear, but plenty of frustration.

I do believe there are 'plants' who steal and foment internal disention by creating distractions of a Health and Safety violation nature. Urinating on the foodstuffs in the kitchen. Underscoring the parvo in the dogs in the park in the press. (Thank you Examiner). One may go a bit further to think that drugs, especially stimulants are allowed and perhaps supplied, that there is a 'stand-down' order for boosting alcohol from the one Safeway within walking distance. I dunno. It just seems so obvious, including the person in a wind-breaker no one has ever seen saying 'we' should not go help defend 101 (The Federal Reserve branch of Occupy), that 'we' should' defend our own turf. As far as I know, we're all the same schmuck.

Gotta go, never know how long the 'calm before' will last since we were read the Riot Act (municipal code violation blah x3). Thanks for reading. We need water. SW corner of Justin Herman.

Bill Bailey

Bill Bailey (1911-1995)

The Volunteer, Vol. XVII, No. 1, Spring 1995

Bill Bailey, whose craggy face, imposing stature and gravel voice well suited his legendary career, died in San Francisco on February 27 after a long pulmonary illness. He was 84.

Bill first won celebrity in antifascist circles in 1935 when he ripped a swastika flag from the bow of the passenger liner Bremen at a dock in New York City. Several months later, Bill upgraded his anti-fascism to the battlefields of the Spanish Civil War where, as an International Brigader, he became commissar of the Lincoln Battalion's machine gun company.

Bailey grew up in extreme poverty - his mother sent him barefoot to first grade and he was sentenced to two stretches in reform school, before shipping out at age 15. In his 1993 autobiography, The Kid from Hoboken (Smyrna Press, Union City, NJ) Bailey brings to life the Irish slums, where he grew up, his life at sea, his experiences in the Communist Party, which he quit in 1956, and the ups and downs of his trade union career.

Bailey joined the Marine Workers Industrial Union in 1934, attended the Communist Party's national training school, and was dispatched to a succession of difficult organizing posts, including Norfolk, Virginia, and a sugar cane plantation in Hawaii.

During World War II, Bailey served as business agent for the Marine Firemen, Oilers and Watertenders Union (MFOW), until he couldn't stand sending out any more men to risk death. He shipped out himself, taking part in the invasion of the Philippines.

Expelled from the MFOW in the McCarthy years of the 1950s, he edited a dissenting rank-and-file newspaper, The Black Gang News, before switching over to longshore work. He was elected dispatcher at ILWU Local 10 in San Francisco. Bailey became a celebrity again in his '70s, nearly running away with the documentaries, Seeing Red and The Good Fight. He was invited to speak at Harvard University and college campuses across the United States, and was interviewed by Studs Terkel for The Good War. He played dramatic roles in the Hollywood feature films On the Edge and Guilty by Suspicion. Bill was extremely generous with his time, was supportive of activists, young and old, seeking to make a better world. Like Eugene Debs - "a warmer heart ne'er beat, betwixt here and the Judgment Seat." '

Bill's own postscript

This is the text, undated and unedited, of a letter in Bill's handwriting that he had asked his son Michael to send to T h e Volunteer after he passed away.

Dear ----,

My dad, Bill Bailey, often told me that his telephone book contains the names of some of the best people in the world - people who in their lifetime have done much to improve the lot of the working man & woman to achieve a better life as well as bring peace in this world and a safer and longer life for the children yet to come.

I thought that in this aspect it would interest you to know that he died on -- after battling a long complication of lung problems. For some 21 years he worked in the engine room of our merchant marine, being around and handling asbestos - long before anyone would dare admit it was dangerous or even permit safety precautions to be used. For 22 years he worked in longshore, until he retired, again working around and with dusty and dangerous cargoes.

I know he tried to remain active in helping achieve those political and trade union objectives and if he experienced any bad days it was because he could not be active enough. He was loyal to his many friends and was in pain when they were in trouble & he could not help.

In respecting his wishes I k n o w he would have liked to have his ashes alongside of those brave comrades he helped bury in Spain but knowing this was not possible - his ashes will join those of the rest of his family by being sprinkled at sea. Like he would say, "May my ashes wash up on the shores of the world," and thank you for enriching his life by friendship over the years. '

March 2, 1995

The Kid from Hoboken

There is a biography of Bill Bailey available, The Kid from Hoboken. Extracts from it are available on this site, with a link thru to the main document.

---

Balls to you

I worked one night in a golfball factory, in northern Ohio. In Elyria. It was snowing. I parked in the slushy early evening gloom, walked up the concrete sidewalk leaving the only footprints in the new snow, entered, produced referral paperwork from the Job Center, and was introduced to some circle of purgatory Dante left out. My job was to take these little core things from one treatment to the next: first, they had to be sand-blasted. Bucketloads of the buggers went into some rotating hopper thing, after which I was to verify a certain volume of sand, and then push the green button and set the timer for 12 minutes. Not 15. Not 10. Twelve. Oh, by the way, there's a dustmask...if you really want to bother. Problem being, it hung on the wall inside the door, and one might possibly inhale more from putting it on than not. I pushed the button, and was immediately met with a powdery, lung-rending blast owing to leaks in the overall containment capabilities of this decades old device. I noticed that my footsteps, which were registered on the floor in the dust, had soon disappeared in a new caking of white soot by the time I left the 'containment' (ha!) room. Next, these blasted balls had to be taken to the acid wash. Similar, except this time the hydrochloric fumes almost knocked me out, and as I was gagging outside the door, some of the other workers found this amusing, and told me where the water fountain was, if I wanted to wash my eyes out. A pitiful stream came from the spout, sputum and some sort of fungal growth in its basin.
My father golfs, and I cursed him, and Arnold Palmer, and everyone with too much leisure time and nothing better to do than whack off a Titleist. A combination of fine powder and hydrochloric fumes...I'm thinking lawsuit. My girlfriend back in some comfy dorm-room giggling with her friends over the sexual innuendoes in a Nabokov book. Why did I drop out of school? Oh, that's right. Because I hated it. But this is even worse than having to sit there while some academe tries to impart his alleged wisdom, meanwhile said wanker ogling the freshly scrubbed nubile in the front row, she gnawing her pencil. Make it all go away. And finally, on this little trip through a mundane amusement ride of demeaning production, we have the rubberband girls. OK, there were these skeletal finger things that looked like a spider on its back, which rotated the cores in a random (?) vibratory fashion, while the RBGs (that's rubberband girls, again) assisted the process, sitting there at their stools and station, by helping the core to reach spherical fruition by feeding the rubberband thread and coaxing the core to reach its mark. God knows what volumetric determiner meant a full ball. They had ragged and bloody bandages on their fingers from where the machine had bitten them. Bloody ball strokers, mummy finger wage slaves. I needed sleep, and a pharmaceutical. As for the women and their wounds, perhaps they spaced out from the low rumble of the machines, or fell asleep and were awoken with a mechanical spider's bite, on the Nightshift from hell that belonged in the 3rd world. Leaving at dawn, I noticed no footsteps on the sidewalk. Just like inside the sand-blaster room. I forget if I ever picked up my check.

Hammerball

Mugsy a.k.a. the Groover and I were best friends. Before we had cars, we would smoke some pot, go down to Howard’s which was more or less a K-Mart and play pinball (Gorgar - will EAT you!), eat some Bar-B-Cue pork at Jerry’s (was it?) buy a superball for a quarter, and go bouncing it back to my house. If we did not lose the ball, we might end up in the basement where we invented hammerball®, played as such: The pitcher would deliver the ball, with one bounce to the batter. The batter would take the hammer, holding it sideways-ish to maximize hitting area and deliver the swing, hopefully hitting the pitcher in the gonads with the ball. Once, when the ball was lost (common occurrence), I located a golf ball and decided to use it instead…I pitched it to Groover and he hit it perfectly – at my head, with some serious velocity, some Arnold Palmer shit. Never substitute a golf ball for a superball when playing hammerball, words to live by.
Later, we would use hockey sticks for air guitars listening perhaps to Guns on the Roof...
Groover and I were walking through the snow one day stoned on the dried-out “Columbian” we thought was the good stuff, often more seeds and stems than anything, seeds that would explode or drop off hot and leave suspicious holes in upholstery or clothing…so it was a snow day, when they cancel school because no snow plows exist and who needs them when 3-4 inches is a blizzard, but the snow had thawed a little and refrozen, so the top was a layer of ice and when you walked it would support you, until you put your full weight on it, then you would go through. A little hard to describe, but it was like walking on another planet. Well, then one of us looks down and sees a little patch of black fur, which we investigated and discovered was a frozen little puppy. Being pubescent boys, and little stoners, we laughed until we peed our pants, holding it by its tail and making it walk. It’s…it’s…a Pup-sickle!! It ended up in the Kreidler’s mailbox, I believe. There is karma, for this episode and for the frogs and for the gerbils and for the crayfish as well. The crayfish I poked with an unlit firecracker, which it grabbed, which I lit, and they called him Lefty after that.

Coupe Sudan

Suicide Pack, 52 in all. Plus Jokers of course

17, 1982

Friends, this shirt lasted with me til I hung it up on a gallery wall in SF '01(?). {dadafest Somarts}. They were all using the hangar-type art gallery as an excuse to have public sex and did so in weird little performance whatever, whatevers. I hate performance art, and I'd need triple condoms with these jankbottoms. And, I'd just gotten married, but the 'fuck machine' was pretty um, mesmerizing, yeah, and green: it was pedal-powered. So the shirt, some bastard stole it - tellin' you it was bleached by wash, shrunken, shoulder held up w/ safety pin (!) So whatcha see is 1982. I'd wiped better cum than you twaddlefucks even know. Love you, Susie Q (the q as in question, always).

Ha ha, ha.

We had a boat, a green little tri-hull thingy with a 80-horse outboard (not lime like the Pinto, but a little kelly) we put in a muddy little pond called Lake Cherokee, made by the TVA, and part of the Holston, when they flooded farms and burial grounds and what not.

Steel Pole Excellence

Zapruder reenactment from Gordie Howe on Vimeo.

Interpret as you may

A home movie shot in the mid-seventies.

Traditional Wedding

When I start rollin, I be rollin West.
Won't take no Greyhound, be rollin in the best
Goddamned 'merican car I can find

In ever Dairy Queen, y'all in ever podunk town
I find some honey to show me around
(Jus' the quiet spots, darlin' if you don't mind)

Don't like to brag, y'all an' I don't like to boast
But I'm gonna spread my seed honey from coast-to-coast
Be a hunnert little rug rats runnin' round with my last name

Barefoot and pregnant now she's my pride
You turn 16 honey I'll take you for my bride
Our love is true, baby, got no reason to be ashamed.

Bruce Miller, 1987

The Fort

Kenny and his friend George (aka Chuck, not the other George) built a fort in the back yard with borrowed materials and decorated it with appropriated street signs and such. It was two-stories, fully carpeted with a tar-paper roof, total height maybe eight feet, having a rear annex with an angled roof in the back, with a bar. Just like dad. The upstairs was plastered with Hustler, Oui and Penthouse. Occasionally we little kids would spend the night below while Kenny and his buds would stay up top, with a hinged door closed between us. Later I inherited the fort when Kenny got a car and had better ways to be a menace.

Spiders were a serious problem as was the potential for fire, for arachnophobia was somewhat alleviated with a lit candle. “D” cell flashlights would last for only so long, usually dimming to a sickly yellow after a while of looking at smut. Smoke from waxy smoldering carpet would sometimes wake us in our sleeping bags, which along with the smell of Black Flag permeated our sinuses. The candle-under-the-bug-spray-nozzle flamethrower was in full force. We ate raw cookie dough purchased at the 24 hour Kroger across town and, good reader, I am getting nauseous describing these sensory experiences. The bug spray/toxic smoke/refined sugar moments we all savor. We would spend the night and go off on nocturnal exploits which sometimes made the paper, this not difficult in a town where tobacco prices make the front page.

The Smell of a Dead Mouse

I used to have a knack for smelling them out at my Mom's house. Move a few boxes in the linen closet and voila c'est ici, so I can tell you there's something rotten in Denmark. But how do you say to Society that the spinach or fennel stuck in its teeth makes you sick when it smiles, that it reeks?

You can offend it if you like (see below), but you cannot shock it. Its resilience and absorption surpass even the finest paper towels. The mediocre poet Baudelaire compared Society to a man bowing with flourish to an ass. Woe to he who tries to change it. Woe to you and me. And whoah! to you and the ass you rode in on, Jackie O.

You can do whatever you want. You can HAVE that decaf double cap with low-fat as a matter of fact. You can give yourself a Hitler moustache get high off the fumes and go goose-stepping around Safeway. But then some overzealous Zionist will throw blood on your lederhosen, which costs a fortune at the dry cleaners.

You can have sex with a dog, but remember the age of consent factors 10 and not 7, except in Alabama. You can say fuck. Lenny died for that right. Who's a sick comic? Who's sick? We're sick. And we keep killing the medicine men. Not the MDs of Marin, Over Insured Land Rover land. No, the guys with the cure we keep tacking up or shutting down. Why? Because your mind is real estate. Think of your mind as Cuba. A little, annoying fly-infested dungheap that just bothers the PTB.

Dig: Castro is your ego, and I guess that makes Kennedy your id. With your finger on the button, you go "Ten, nine, eight..." and the palms are sweaty, all ready for Armageddon "five, four, three..." Armistice! Fuck Armistice. Abort. Let's just leave it where you are under a sweaty palm tree, like Castro, smoking a cigar, prefer bicycles to cars. Havana good time. Wish you were here.

Invest in Nordak

Long term investors know that the future is in waste. If you want a sound investment for the twenteens, put your money in a landfill. Reasoning: the more we produce, the more garbage we will have to get rid of, and consumption is here to stay. Recycling offers a good sideline interest too, with the promise of many returns. No shortage of homeless people to redeem their self-respect being productive either. Trickle down does work. A-lu-min-i-mum wage.

The real money, however, is in Specialized Disposal. Sounds cool, huh? That's when you take something somebody desperately wants removed, and put it somewhere else. It's a little tricky at first, because you have to figure in the EPA's role in the demand curve. Icky chemicals, scary toxic goo, and even weird radio-active stuff is no problem for the dedicated Specialized Disposal Engineer. Nordak, a division of Specialized Disposal Services, owns a goodly portion of several barely inhabited and Southern states, where these nasties can be taken so no one ever has to experience those unsightly mutations that can occur. NAFTA and GATT have opened many doors to the world of garbage as well. More later.

The problem with waste is ignorance, and fear. Society, in its potty training, began to stigmatize its excrement, and never learned that these by-products may not smell particularly pleasant, but are nonetheless natural and deserve a certain amount of consideration. We must not turn our backs on waste, and like a dog, leave it for someone else to step in, but must, cat-like, bury it out of decency and sensitivity. Nordak was there when the Great Dane of Three Mile Island took its mighty dump. Parts per million down to almost zero!

The future is in waste. This is undeniable. Big things lie ahead for those with the forebearance to shun society's infantile disgust, to brave the tides of public opinion. For example, shining in the night sky, there lies our next challenge. Yes, the moon. As a thing of beauty and inspiration, it is without parallel. As real estate, it's useless. No air, no water, nothing. If we could but find a way to transport our waste there, what a magnificent benefit to mankind would result. This world would become a veritable Eden, and when we pondered the lovely orb circling o'erhead, we would, as did our ancestors, pay homage to its reflected light.

Yes, I am a dreamer. But society without its dreams would retreat into barbarism, like those hordes who invaded Rome, with its own aqueducts and marvellous sewers. (And what rich history must those canali have carried!).

Waste. Think about it.