johnnycomelately

Palermo is a hard city to forget – I’ve still got the bedbug bites as reminders – but an even harder city to figure out. It is a tumultuous, urban, energetic mess sprawling like a hardy weed at the foot of jutting rocky cliffs and choppy ocean waters. In the middle of September it was hot and the afternoon rains came in like a deluge. Unlike the other quiet coastal towns we visited in Sicily, Palermo is not Slow.  This is not some Under the Tuscan Sun bullshit. These people eat fried goat anus, for chrissake, and they will easily grind you up into some unholy rich and tasty concoction if you show any signs of meekness or Rick Steves unworldliness.

We were crossing a busy street, which, especially in Sicily, almost begs one to make the sign of the cross before proceeding. Traffic obliged our passage to the extent that we weren’t actually hit.  One scooter pulled short of P by a foot; another jutted in front of us and as the driver steered by my toes, his passenger, sitting behind him, eyed me and exhaled like Marcello Mastroianni blowing a puff of smoke, “Palerrrrmo.”

I didn’t recognize the expression for what it was at the time, but it’s a perfect encapsulation of this city’s ethos, and a mantra for all who enter its confines:

• You just stepped in another pile of a mangy dog’s feces – Palermo!
• We took the french brioche and shat down the middle of it with an incredible heap of sweet, creamy gelato – Palermo!
• The streets here go every which way but back the way you came. Hope you enjoy the long winding walks – Palermo!
• Diesel, scooters, honking, cigarettes, broken glass, dusty dilapidated buildings, fish guts, whatthefuckareyoulookingat – Palermo!

In other words: take it or leave it, sucker.

We visited several of the neighborhood mercatos during our stay and nowhere better defined, for us anyway, this ethos; the good, the bad and the ugly.

At the Mercato del Capo, scooters crawl up everyone’s ass, vendors and shoppers alike smoke directly on the produce, flies are everywhere. I was struck by the classic southern italian faces – dark, serious, weary. Men shout at other men, grab their nuts, quickly flick their fingers under their chin (“Get a load of this asshole.”) or gesticulate in any other number of wildly primeval forms. The butcher sings as he skins a goat tethered to the old stone wall.

Another chops goat heads with a cleaver like they’re fucking coconuts, blood and brains decorating the street, your shoes, anything within range. The fishmongers hack enormous pieces of flesh and shout.  The locals shout back.  Everybody is shouting, gesturing.  Occasionally, to keep things looking fresh, vendors bring a bucket of water over to their produce or fish, dip their hand into it and fling water over the table, Pa-lermo!

This was not the proud, colorful bounty of a Florentine mercato, but a working class exchange that felt like it hadn’t changed much in centuries.  Except for those goddam scooters.