Milan

The Duomo from the subway exit

Previously, the only part of Milan we had seen was the inside of the train station, which is cavernous.  The outside, it turns out, is monumental and grand in an eclectic way.  (At night the roof is lit with lavender light which gives it an otherworldly air, as if UFOs were landing.)  You exit onto a spacious plaza which, when we arrived, around 10 in the morning, was full of clothes and shoes venders set up in a warren of booths.  Milan is the business capital of Italy and right away you could see the dedication to commerce.  We had intentionally booked a hotel near the station because we wanted to catch a bus to the airport in the morning.  Beyond the plaza, the area around the station was open and far less congested than I’d anticipated.  We had no trouble finding our hotel and, dropping our luggage in the room, dove into the Metro.  The Piazza Duomo, the heart of the old city, was only 4 stops away.  We emerged from the subway and there it was facing us from across the piazza.  Now, although Europe is full of them, I’m not one to seek out churches wherever I go, but this one is impressive.  It took 5 centuries to build, and you can tell.  The care and attention that went into every facet is phenomenal.  We toured the interior with its soaring vault, plethora of carved wood, and sprays of stained glass everywhere, and then circumnavigated the exterior, literally dripping with sculptures, and it was awesome inside and out.



Entrance to the Galleria



Then we noticed we were hungry.  It was about 1 in the afternoon.  Because it was tourist central, I knew everything around the area would be expensive and mediocre, but we didn’t have time to go elsewhere, and we didn’t know where else to go anyway, so we grabbed a table right there on the piazza and ordered beers and pizza.  In Italy, pizza is usually safe; most places can manage an edible one.  And at least the people-watching was good.  Italian women (and men as well) have a well-developed sense of style and here more than anywhere it’s in evidence.  Milan is the fortress of fashion, the shrine of style.  Refilled and ready, we plunged into the Galleria, a sort of cathedral of shopping with a soaring glass ceiling.  Walking straight through to the opposite end we emerged on a little square with La Scala, the famous opera house, on one side.  From the outside it’s so understated that if you weren’t looking for it, you’d walk right by without noticing.  Passing it, we strolled along Via Dante toward the Sforza Castle, a building with a louring, forbidding air, softened by a big splashing fountain out front.  I had thought that Via Dante, a wide shopping street, would have all the designer shops, but it didn’t, it had just ordinary shops, and a few cafes.  On the way back from the Castle, we stopped at one for an espresso, and then headed over to Via Montenapolitano, where all the designer shops actually are.  Armani, Ferragamo, Yves Saint Laurent, Versace, Dior, Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Karl Lagerfeld, Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Oscar de la Renta, Roberto Cavalli, Chanel, Missoni, you name it, they all seemed to be there, and the prices were breathtaking.  Are there really that many people who spend $800 on a pair of shoes, you ask.  Well, there were some window shoppers like us but, aside from a passenger in a Bentley attended by a chauffeur, I didn’t see anyone actually entering the shops. 



Galleria interior



I have to admit to some ambivalence about the fashion world.  There is an air about it of superficiality and faddishness combined with pretense that is off-putting.  In addition, my social conscience wants to say that anyone who can afford $800 for a pair of shoes probably ought to be paying more taxes.  On the other hand, maybe that’s too severe.  To the extent that a designer is not promoting a follow-the-fad mentality but instead is enlarging the options and possibilities for self-expression, isn’t he making the world a more interesting place?  People who pay these prices are simply exercising another form of patronage.  They’re buying wearable art.  Still, it seems a frivolous, ephemeral art.  Fashion is a form of flirtation, the plumage of the mating dance.  For that reason it’s a youthful art form, but one few youths have the resources to indulge, except in a self-created way.  Wearing designer duds is a status display, a way of showing off your financial worthiness, but also a game of follow the leader.        



Sforza Castle from Via Dante



I knew we were unlikely to find a good restaurant in the neighborhood near the train station, but I also knew it was unlikely we’d find one around the Duomo, and the latter area promised to be more expensive without offering any improvement in quality, so we returned to the hotel and asked the desk clerk what he could recommend.  He offered a place called Il Tavolino.  We found it easily, but the entire staff of the restaurant was Chinese.  Could we trust a Chinese cook to prepare good Italian food?  It seemed unlikely, to me.  My misgivings gathered steam when I scanned the English menu and found items like “horseflesh” and “cakies in the undercarriage.”  Looking around, it seemed to me that the other clientele looked a bit weird, as well.  I was about to make a break for it, but Frieda convinced me it would be alright, so we ordered some swordfish and hoped for the best.  It was edible, and I didn’t get food poisoning, but I wouldn’t recommend the place. 

You can’t develop an intimate acquaintance with a city in 24 hours, but Milan has a different ambiance than other cities in Italy.  It feels more like an American city in that everyone is focused on business; they’re all in a hurry, on a mission.  And it’s like a German city in that it’s cleaner, and more car friendly.  Yet it also has elegant buildings such as you don’t find in either Germany or the States.  So, it’s an amalgam of qualities.  First and foremost it’s a working city, not a resort or a museum, though it has buildings worth looking at.  Frieda, being a New Yorker, liked it very much, but I missed the more relaxed pace of other Italian cities.  Also, while I’m sure there must be good restaurants if you know where to find them, the food we got was mediocre at best, and that’s a travesty, because Italy is all about the food. 

Lake Como

Varenna Lakefront

Lake Como is the best known of 3 roughly parallel glacial lakes in the Italian Alps northwest of Milan.  It’s been a retreat for the wealthy since Roman times and many plutocrats have, over the centuries, built villas there.  Despite its mountainous location, which provides some spectacular scenery, the climate is Mediterranean, so tropical plants can thrive.  In shape, Como is long and skinny.  Viewed from above, it looks something like a running stick man, with Bellagio in the crotch, Menaggio on the west hip, and Varenna on the east hip.  It was our first visit to Como and the Italian Lakes, so we chose Varenna as our base on Rick Steves’ recommendation.  I don’t always agree with Steves, but I find his guide books generally more useful than those of his competitors.  Because these mid-lake towns are only 15 minutes apart by ferry, and, as in Venice, the ferries run constantly (there are both passenger-only and car/passenger ferries), it’s like they’re all part of a single city.  Varenna is the smallest, so it’s a good place to start. 



Stairs in Varenna



We got there in mid-afternoon and had explored most of the town by dinnertime.  Because of the steep terrain, exploring any of these lake towns entails a lot of stair climbing, and in Varenna the stairs are particularly steep.  I had to wonder how elderly people could manage, because, in addition to being steep, the steps were of uneven height and pitch.  (Our hotel was on the main pedestrian route through town, about 3 flights up from the lakefront, and our room was a 3^rd floor walkup, albeit with a terrace and a great view.)  In addition, many of the walkways were paved with river stones, which played havoc with Frieda’s heels, and not only hers, since Italian women, unlike Americans, rarely wear sneakers.  She consoled herself by buying a dress.  Then we found a lakefront café to sit in, have a couple beers, appreciate the view, and people-watch.  Varenna was quiet, serene, and undeniably charming.  It reminded Frieda a little of Vernazza, in the Cinque Terra, but ritzier.  However, we were still missing Venice and, to me, Varenna seemed too small for a long stay.  We supped at the restaurant attached to our hotel, on a terrace facing the lake, which started out delightful but by the time we reached the end of our delicious and leisurely meal, it had gotten dark and, despite the romantic view of the lights of Menaggio across the lake, had turned uncomfortably cold. 



Bellagio



The morning was cool and overcast, threatening rain.  There’s a steel walkway (passerella) attached to the cliff face that leads from the lakefront to the ferry (traghetto) landing. We bought day passes there and headed to Bellagio, sitting in the open part of the boat so our view would be unobstructed.  We quickly discovered there was a cold wind out on the lake, but we braved it in order to see Bellagio from the water.  Bellagio is larger than Varenna and more pretentious; somewhat reminiscent of Portofino on the Italian Riviera.  It also has a lot of stairs, but the flights are wider and gentler in slope and the pavement is a little more even.  There are only a few narrow routes for cars to get through town and the ones that try are unappreciated by the window-shopping pedestrians who get out of the way slowly and reluctantly.  After a couple hours of exploration and an espresso, we got back on the boat and went to the next stop, Tremezzo, a more humble town on the opposite shore.  Here we found a quiet little trattoria and got some lunch: pizza Siciliana and pasta with gambiere (shrimp), both quite good.  By the time we emerged from lunch, the weather was improving, so we walked to the nearby Villa Carlotta, built in 1690, and took the tour.  The layout of the villa struck me as quite unimaginative, with identical rooms arranged symmetrically, but there were some Canova sculptures on display, the best being Amor and Psyche.  Also, the gardens were pleasant.  Frieda particularly liked a walkway along the front of the villa formed by parallel rows of orange and lemon trees tied to a trellis, but again, the pebble paths were a trial in her heels.  Next we went to Menaggio, where we had heard one could catch a bus to the Swiss city of Lugano, on the lake of the same name. 



Chess Players in Lugano



In the morning we set off early for Lugano.  Because it was ready to leave when we got to the landing, we took the car ferry.  Over time I grew fond of the ferries with their promise of freedom and adventure.  The car ferries cut a particularly enchanting figure from our balcony as they plied the lake, shuttling cars and people hither and thither.  It was cold and foggy on the lake, again threatening rain, but in Menaggio, as we found our way to the bus stop, it warmed, and as the bus wound along the narrow Italian roads I even got too warm, but couldn’t wrestle the window open.  Then, around a blind corner, we came face-to-face with an RV (“caravan” in Europe).  The driver slammed on the brakes and both Frieda and I slid off the seat, which had an open space in front of it, and landed on the floor.  Amidst a barrage of expletives and hand gestures, the driver put the bus in reverse and backed up to let the obstacle pass.  I moved to a seat that had a functional seat belt.  After nearly an hour to travel about 12 miles, we were dropped at the edge of a car park.  From the size of the buildings it was clear that Lugano was a real city, not an overgrown boutique like Varenna or Bellagio.  We walked along a rushing, rocky river toward the lake shore, near which we found a pedestrian bridge that led across the stream to a park with elaborate, lovely flower gardens.  You could feel the cultural shift from chaotic, expressive Italy to orderly, buttoned-down Switzerland.  A couple of men were playing chess with knee-high pieces as we strolled along the water front, the triumph of intellect over the rampant emotion south of the border.  The weather by now was sunny and warm, although not as clear as one might have hoped.  We turned into town and found a restaurant with a covered patio near the square to have a leisurely lunch.  We paid with a credit card so we wouldn’t have to buy any Swiss francs, and then made our way back to the bus stop.  In Varenna, when we returned, we got perhaps the best gelato of the trip at a little place by the waterfront. 



View from Monastero



On our last day we considered taking a ride to Como, all the way down at the southern end of the western leg of the lake, past Clooney’s villa in Laglio, but in the end rejected that idea in favor of staying in Varenna, relaxing (which is what the lakes are all about), and touring the Villa Monastero, which, although less noted, we preferred to the Villa Carlotta.  The more interesting rooms were filled with antique inlaid and carved furniture and there was a vintage bathroom with a sunken tub.  It gave you a more intimate peek into the lives of the financial elite in the 19^th century.  Plus the fabulous gardens stretched on for what seemed like half a kilometer along the lakeshore, with winding pathways, stairs, statues, fountains, lookouts at stunning vistas, and gazebos.  They even had tables set up in the shade of trees near the main estate where you could sit and have refreshments.  It was so serene and relaxing that we stayed for quite a while.  When we finally got back to the Varenna lakefront around 2 o’clock all the cafes were full so we returned to our hotel room and ate sandwiches on our terrace, which had a spectacular view of the lake and the mountains behind.  The air was so balmy that below us teenagers were swimming (despite warnings that the lake wasn't clean enough for it here) and sunbathing on the dock.  I could hear strains of “Hey, Soul Sister” coming from their boom box. 

Car Ferry

In the evening Frieda treated me to dinner at Vecchia Varenna, a romantic ristorante with tables on a deck over the water.  The deck is covered and sheltered on three sides, only the lake side being completely open, which was fortunate because it started sprinkling just as we left our hotel and no sooner were we seated than the skies opened up.  It rained cats and dogs for about 20 minutes, drumming on the canopy roof, dimming the view of the far shore, and refreshing the air, but by the time our main course (trout) arrived it had pretty much stopped.  Despite the rain and the open lake side, it was still comfortable, so we lingered and got a bit drunk before going back to the hotel to pack.       

The next day was sunny again as we made our way to the train station to set off for Milan.       

 

Venice

Venice is the most beautiful city in the world.  That’s a bold statement, I know, but what’s the alternative?  Paris?  San Francisco?  Barcelona?  These cities have their charms, without doubt, but Venice is on a whole other level of pulchritude.  If I were to attempt to assemble a list of the top ten most beautiful cities, at least 3, and maybe 4 would be in Italy (Rome, Florence, maybe Sienna), but Venice is a cut above the rest.  In the 1^st place, it’s utterly unique.  To get around, you walk or catch a boat.  Aside from the Lido, there’s no wheeled transport.  That, in itself, is mind-blowing.  Then there’s the architecture, a genre unto itself.  Then there’s the history.  In the States we think it something extraordinary if someone is living in a 100–year-old house, but in Venice people are still living in 500-year-old houses.  Venice was founded in 421.  Lining the Grand Canal are mansions that were there before the United States was born. 

People complain about the tourists.  Because it’s the most beautiful city in the world, 150,000 people visit every day.  But the tourists don’t bother me much.  They’re just another aspect of the city, and add vibrancy and an international flavor.  And they’re mostly concentrated around St. Marks Square (Piazza San Marco), the Rialto Bridge, and the train station.  As you venture away from these hubs, they quickly thin out.  And many of them, the day trippers and cruisers, leave in the early evening.

Via Garibaldi

For this short visit (my 4^th) we stayed in the Castello area on the eastern side of town, in an apartment just off Via Garibaldi, a broad shopping street that cuts diagonally away from the Canale di San Marco (where the Canal Grande and the Canale della Giudecca come together) just east of the Arsenale vaporetto stop.  (The vaporetto is the water bus that forms the backbone of Venetian transportation.)  This mostly residential area was one I had only slightly explored before.  Staying in a different neighborhood each time you visit a city is a good way of gradually getting to know it.  On our last visit we got an apartment in the sestiere (district) of Canneregio, a middle class residential area on the north side, a long way from here.  Castello offered the advantage of being close to St. Marks, but not too close.    

Arsenale on Riva Schiavone

Because the Arsenale stop is at the opposite end of the Grand Canal from the train station, we took the boat from the airport, the first time I’ve done that.  I thought it would be faster than taking a bus to the station and then catching a vaporetto all the way down the Grand Canal, but I don’t know if it was.  The ride seemed to go on forever, but that could be just because I’d gotten on the plane at 7 PM after having been up since 7 AM and it was now noon of the following day, California time, (although dark in Venice), and I got only a couple hours sleep on the plane.  Fortunately there was a trattoria next to the apartment that, although they were packing up, agreed to serve us, so I got some spaghetti alla vongole (clams) and my wife had pizza crudi, which provoked the question: why is the prosciutto you get in the States stringy and tough while the stuff you get in Italy melts in your mouth?  At least we were now convinced that we were, indeed, back in Italy. 

In the morning my wife went grocery shopping at the little shops along the Via Garibaldi and when she returned we had breakfast on our terrace (renting an apartment enables you to save some money by eating in some of the time), then strolled over to St. Marks to say hello to it.  It has become like an old friend.  There was a lot of scaffolding around the perimeter, the worst being a hideous barrier around the base of the Campanile.  Apparently they are strengthening the foundation.  Also there was an unsightly wrap around the Bridge of Sighs advertising Toyota.  It costs a lot to maintain this city and they’re looking for money wherever they can find it.  We wormed our way through the hordes jamming the narrow streets to the Rialto Bridge, crossed it, and found the wine bar Do Mori, where we had some cicchetti (Italian tapas) and the house white, utterly delicious, for 2 euro apiece.  Then, just for the hell of it, we went next door to another place where we had some more house white (not as good as the wine at Do Mori) and some excellent baccala mantecato (a paste, made from salted cod, olive oil, and garlic, spread on toast).  Riding a buzz from the wine, we walked northeast and took a traghetto (a gondola that takes you across the Grand Canal for half a euro) to Canneregio (our old neighborhood) to do some shopping along the Strada Nova, another broad shopping street like Via Garibaldi, where I bought my wife a purple belt made of ostrich leather.    

The band at Florian

After dinner we strolled down to St. Marks to listen to the dueling bands at 2 cafes on opposite sides, Florian and Lavena.  These bands are essentially the same, consisting of a piano, a stand-up bass, a clarinet, a violin, and an accordion.  They play show tunes, tangos, polkas, and, while we were there, Boléro.  The crowd tends to wander back and forth, depending on which tune strikes their fancy.  Instead of walking along the Riva to get home, we took the streets behind the basilica and, of course, got lost.  Roaming through the maze of Venetian streets at night is a bit eerie.  You come across cafes lit up and full of laughing people, and then you find yourself in dark, narrow, deserted passageways that are a little spooky.  Sometimes they dead-end into a building or the dark water of a narrow canal and you have to backtrack.  Because of the constant twists and turns it’s hard to keep your bearings but, of course, that’s what makes it fun.  Eventually, we emerged safely onto Riva Schiavone. 

Crossing the Ponte de le Tette

The next day we took the express vaporetto up the Canale della Giudecca to the train station to buy tickets to Milan and Varenna, on Lake Como, where we were next headed. (The trains in Italy are mostly excellent and will take you almost anywhere you want to go.) Then we crossed the Ponte dei Scalzi and wandered through San Polo. We’ve seen the main tourist sites so what I now like to do in Venice is just amble around discovering fabulous new vistas and sampling unknown eateries. I wanted to visit a small neighborhood called the Carampane which was once the red light district but now is a quiet residential area in San Polo. It’s the only place I have found in Venice, so far, where a bridge, Ponte de le Tette (the Bridge of Tits) leads directly into the side of a building. It’s called the Bridge of Tits because the prostitutes used to lean out of the windows of the building. When you crossed the bridge, their bare breasts were hanging in front of you like ripe fruit.

The traghetto stop at San Silvestre

From there we picked our way through the tangled streets, heading toward the traghetto stop. Some of the streets toward the end tunneled under buildings, and that made it all the more stunning and magical when we suddenly emerged into the sunny vista of the Grand Canal near San Silvestre, with gondolas parked along it and grand mansions on the opposite side. I had started Donna Leon’s first novel, Death at La Fenice the night before, so I wanted to see the opera house of the title. Donna Leon is an American who has written a series of detective novels set in Venice that are fun if you know and love the city. She’s quite well-known in Europe and there are tours organized around her books. La Fenice is in the center of San Marco, and from there we made our way down to the Grand Canal and took a traghetto to Dorsoduro, yet another sestiere, so by the time we eventually got home for dinner, our feet were throbbing.

Consequently, our last day we tried to take it easy with a stroll to San Elena, a district very different from the Venice we had been exploring: no tourists, no canals. Instead we found quiet parks, kids, playgrounds, and old people. It was a respite from the hustle and bustle of the city. We sat for a time resting our sore feet at an outdoor café on the Riva Shiavone, drinking beer and eating potato chips and olives, and watching the boats and the people passing. In the evening we went to Florian to listen to the music and, for the first time, actually sat down and ordered. I had a white wine and Frieda had an espresso and the bill was 30 euro (more than $40).

In the morning we caught the train to Milan. As always when I visit Venice, I was reluctant to leave. Every visit I make new discoveries and am enchanted all over again by this ravishing city.

 

 

Cars

A friend called the other day to ask if I’d like to see a car collection.  He’s a member of the Alfa Romeo club and someone in the club had met the owner of the collection and asked if he would let the club members see it.  He’d agreed and the viewing had been set for Saturday morning.  My friend took me as a guest.



MGA



The cars were stored in a warehouse.  The first car I saw upon entering was an Austin-Healey 100M, worth about $100,000.  As I walked around with my mouth hanging open, I saw a roomful of sports cars: several more Healeys (including another 100M), a couple Jaguar XK120s, an early Porsche 911 targa with the soft rear window and a 911S, several Porsche 356s, including a Speedster and a Carrera coupe with a glassy silver paint job befitting a car worth about a quarter million dollars.  In one corner there was a Ford Model T Touring with full side curtains and, next to it, a ’36 Ford roadster, but otherwise the cars were all European sports cars of 50s and 60s vintage; just the cars I’ve always admired and desired.  I felt like I was in my garden of earthly delights.  There were several wonderfully restored MGA roadsters, and a coupe as well.  The MGA is a car whose lines I’m particularly partial to.  My first car was an Austin Healey Bugeye Sprite, and, in an ideal world, an MGA would’ve been my second.  The third would have been a big Healey and the fourth, an E-Type Jaguar (there were no E-Types in the collection).  But this ideal progression of mine was derailed by the intrusion of practical considerations.  There were also some Model T based race cars in the room, plus a Morgan, an Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint, an MG TD and a TF, and in the corner opposite the Model T, something I'd never seen before: a Turner.  There were maybe 25 classic cars in all, and none of them was even slightly shabby.



Pierce-Arrow



Then someone said, “There’s another room over here!”  I squeezed past a massive Lincoln from the 20s that was parked in a workshop area with a lift and work tables displaying a pair of running boards off the Lincoln that someone not present was inlaying with wood laths.  Doubtless the collector employed someone full time to maintain these cars.  That would be essential with a collection this large.  (Years ago I knew a guy—he painted 2 of my cars, a Lotus Elan +2 and a Jensen-Healey—who for a while worked for Neil Young.  Young at the time employed 3 full time workers on his car collection.)  Beyond I could see a room perhaps twice as large as the first full of ancient brass era cars (pre-1910), and cars of the teens and twenties.  I was told the collector was building on a collection that had been started by his grandfather and added to by his father.  There were a couple of Packards and half a dozen Pierce-Arrows, huge things bigger than an SUV, with tires (the early ones of white rubber) almost up to my armpit, the later Arrows sporting their trademark trumpet-shaped headlight fairings.  There was a Chandler, a Reo runabout from 1906 and a pair of Oldsmobiles with a couple Cadillacs from the same era; a Marmon, a pair of Stutzes, a Pope Hartford, a Maxwell, and more Model Ts.  It seemed a miracle that so many cars this old had been preserved.  After all, it’s not like they could be kept in a steamer trunk in someone’s attic.  They required constant space and attention.  Again, all of them were in excellent condition. 



1906 Reo



I hadn’t the vaguest notion what any of these cars were worth.  I’d never been much interested in cars this old.  Back in the days when I used to attend the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance every year, I would skip over this vintage with barely a cursory glance to head for the 50s and 60s era cars.  But this time I felt fascinated.  These were vehicles my parents would have known when they were children.  I wished I could climb into them.  The brass cars (aka horseless carriages), in particular, awed me.  They harkened to a steampunk aesthetic.  The brass fixtures were exquisite.  There was something on the running boards of a couple of them that looked like a brass thermos.  I asked someone if he knew what it was and he said, “Yes, that’s to make acetylene gas for the lights.  You put calcium carbide in the larger bottom section and water in the top.  The water drips down into the calcium carbide and makes the gas, which is piped to the lights through this tubing.  They’re often referred to as carbide lights.”  So if you wanted lights at night you not only had to load your gas generator and work up some pressure, you also had to light your headlights with a match.  There were strange pedal configurations, all sorts of levers sprouting from everywhere.  Back in these early days there were over a thousand independent manufacturers with no ruling paradigm for how to do anything, so everyone was going off in his own direction.  In some of these cars you had to advance the spark manually as you accelerated, sometimes using a hand throttle.  There was so much for the driver to attend to, in contrast to our era when all cars are pretty much the same and virtually drive themselves.  The oldest were incredibly raw and primitive, but the rapid evolution of the engineering was fascinating, you could see the brains of their designers ticking over, trying to solve problems.  You could smell the history in these cars; they were time machines.  If you could sit in them you would be in another time, and hence a different world.  I imagined driving one of them and finding the external environment transformed as well and myself chugging down a dirt lane through a slow, open, almost 19th century world.  I wished I could spend a few days there and fiddle around with them, get to know them better, but after an hour or so we were rounded up and told there was another building nearby where the “overflow” was stored.   



Bugeye Sprite



The 3^rd building had just a few, maybe a dozen, cars in it, the least valuable of the collection, it seemed: a Lancia sprint car, a couple of Porsche 912s and a 914, another MGA, a Ferrari 308 and then, over in one corner, I spotted it: a Bugeye Sprite like I had my senior year of high school and first year of college.  It had been a long time since I’d seen one in the round.  Better believe I lingered there a while, looking it over, letting the sweet memories bubble up.    

Indian Wells 2

Milos Raonic

The first match I headed for when the venue opened on Friday was Milos Raonic.  At 11 o’clock it was already 90 degrees and apparently the word was out about him because Stadium 2, which is not small, filled up quickly.  Raonic, up against a Turkish player named Marsel Ilhan, was impressive in the smooth fluidity of his all-court game.  Despite being only 20, he has all the shots and puts them together with grace.  He dismissed Ilhan in 2 quick sets so I popped over to Stadium 3 to watch a bit of Ryan Harrison, an 18-year-old American who’s been talked up, but who is currently ranked 152 and lost in the first round of the Australian Open.  He did a good job of putting away the Frenchman Jeremy Chardy (ranked 49), holding his nerve even after losing the 1^st set tiebreak.  (He went on to beat Garcia-Lopez in the next round and then upset Raonic to earn the chance to face Federer, whom he took to a tiebreak in the 1^st set before losing, so it was something of a breakout tournament for him.) 

Ryan Harrison

Later that afternoon, after a breeze had come up and the temperature had dropped into the low 80s, I went over to Court 7 to see Bernard Tomic.  There were only a few people there so I was able to sprawl out, stretch my legs over the seats in front and lean back against the seat behind, and have plenty of elbow room.  Unfortunately, given how comfortable I was, Tomic looked tired and bored, as if he didn’t really care much whether he won or not.  All the same, he was able to deliver enough points to win in 3 sets.  But his game struck me as more one-dimensional than I’d thought, he was just banging the ball from the backcourt without much finesse or point construction, and I lost some of my interest in him. 

After a trip to the car to grab something to eat, I headed for Court 4 where a women’s doubles match (Benesova/Zahlavova vs. Sanchez/Garrigues) was just finishing up.  I snagged an excellent seat right on the court for the following match with the team of Victoria Azarenka (Belarus) and the foxy Maria Kirilenko (Russia) against another pair of Spaniards (Llagostera Vives and Parra Santonja).  It was cooling off rapidly by this time and even though I pulled a long-sleeved tee over my tee-shirt, and a sweatshirt over that, I was still a little chilly due to a brisk wind that had come up.  But as the match went on the wind slacked off and I slowly got more comfortable, and in the end the contest turned out to be a thriller, going down to 11-9 in a super-tiebreak. 



Maria Kirilenko

 

After the women, Alex Dolgopolov, slighter of build and more slender than he appeared on TV, and Xavier Malisse came on to play doubles against Tomas Berdych and Janko Tipsarevic.   Dolgopolov and Malisse were in high spirits, laughing and joking even when they appeared to be losing.  They seemed to find everything amusing.  Their opponents, on the other hand, were sullen and grumpy.  Tipsarevic got caught reaching over the net and hitting a ball on his opponents’ side, which cost him the point, and this put him in an even darker mood, the more so when he saw how amused Malisse and Dolgopolov were by it.  A little later, Malisse sliced a drop shot so wickedly that, before Tipsarevic could get to it, it bounced back over the net to his own side, something I’d never seen happen before.  He slapped his leg and chuckled with delight.  Like the women’s match before it, this went to a super-tiebreak that was pulled out by Dolgopolov/Malisse, 10-8, their relaxed good humor winning the day against the sourpuss Serb and his cranky Czech partner.  (In subsequent rounds Malisse/Dolgopolov took out both the Bryans and the Murrays, not to mention Bopanna/Quereshi, and, lo and behold, went on to win the doubles championship.)  When I left the venue it was 11 PM.  I’d been watching tennis for 12 hours.  It was the best day of the trip. 



Alex Dolgopolov

 On Saturday I started off at Stadium 3 watching Marcos Baghdatis play an Indian named Somdev Devvarman.  I’d heard of Devvarman for unexpectedly beating Tipsarevic in Davis Cup.  It was the only match India won against Serbia (which in the last few years has become a tennis power).  Nevertheless I was unprepared for the drubbing he gave Baghdatis.  Baghdatis, who is usually an energetic, happy guy, was dragging glumly around the court looking like he was sick, utterly lacking his usual pep. 

The following match in that stadium was Ivo Karlovic from Croatia, the current holder of the record for the fastest serve at 156 mph (topping Roddick’s 155), against the #6 player in the world and one of the best returners, David Ferrer.  6’10” Karlovic played extraordinarily well, firing off serves in the high 130s routinely and coming to the net to finish off the point when necessary.  He upset Ferrer in straight sets. 



Donald Young

 
From there I moved over to court 5 to see “The Dog,” Dolgopolov, play singles against the Rumanian Victor Hanescu, a journeyman opponent he handled in straight sets.  Dolgopolov has a fast, quirky game that is fun to watch, but he lacks experience and still needs to learn how to beat the big boys.  (He fell in the next round to Del Potro.)  While watching him I could hear the match behind me in Stadium 2 between #5 Andy Murray and Donald Young being called.  Donald Young is an American player who was spoken of as promising years ago.  He was the #1 junior in 2005, but so far hasn’t been able to translate that success to the pro circuit.  He was ranked 143, so my expectation was that Murray would crush him.  Imagine my surprise when he won the first set in a tiebreak.  But that was nothing to the astonishment I felt when he went on to win the second set and the match, and the stadium crowd erupted: then I was really flabbergasted.  Of all the upsets in the tournament (and there were many) this one and Ryan Harrison’s victory over Raonic were the most gratifying, because they offer some (slim, because it now appears Young’s victory probably had more to do with Murray’s post-Australian slump than with Young finally finding his game) hope for the future of American tennis, at least on the men’s side.  The women’s side remains bleak. 

Xavier Malisse

Afterward I went over to Stadium 2 and caught the end of the Querrey/Tipsarevic match, which went to the American Querrey in straight sets.  Following them, in the same stadium, were Malisse (ranked 52) and Tsonga (seeded #15), and I’d long wanted to see Tsonga live.  Nevertheless, I tend to root for the underdog, and that was Malisse in this case (Malisse, who is 30 now, has failed to live up to the early promise of his talent).  To my surprise and delight, Malisse, although he was not the happy-go-lucky guy he had been when playing doubles with The Dog, still played well and came out on top.  (He was beaten by Devvarman in the next round.)

Sunday I started at Stadium 3 to see the Frenchman Richard Gasquet play Pablo Cuevas from Uruguay.  Gasquet has a beautiful all-court game and one of the best one-handed backhands you’ll ever see.  Like Malisse, he’s been an underachiever in his career but he’s still a joy to watch.  He had no trouble with Cuevas.  (Later in the tournament he beat Roddick, but lost to the eventual winner Djokovic in the quarters.)  After him the Serbian former #1 Ana Ivanovic came on.  She started strong, faltered with a string of double faults, but then recovered to take it in 2.  Actually I left when the score was 3-0 in the second to go watch the Bryan twins who were practicing in the next court over.  Then I went to Court 8 to watch Schiavone/Stosur take on Azarenka/Kirilenko.  I’d enjoyed the previous Azarenka/Kirilenko doubles match so much that I wanted more, and, even though the seat I found at the end of the court wasn’t nearly as good as the one I’d had for their previous match, I wasn’t disappointed by the quality as this bout also went to 11-9 in a super-tiebreak.  (Unfortunately Azarenka was injured in singles with the #1 seed Wozniacki, so she couldn’t play their semi-final doubles match.)  When it was over I wandered over to Court 4, where Yen-Hsun Lu from Taipei (who beat Roddick at Wimbledon last year) was taking on Ernests Gulbis from Latvia.  I got a great seat, right on the court, but the match was kind of lifeless.  Gulbis was firing forehands like bullets, as usual, but a lot of them were missing.  After the first set I decided the match lacked excitement (maybe I was just getting tennised-out at that point) and that I would abandon my great seat and get an early start on the drive back to the airport in Ontario. 

Richard Gasquet

So the highlights for me were the 2 doubles matches on Friday night for which I had a perfect seat and both of which were exciting cliffhangers, and then late on Saturday afternoon the Malisse/Tsonga contest.  The Raonic/Ilhan, Gasquet/Cuevas and Karlovic/Ferrer matches gave me the chance to see some good play on one side of the net, but only the last was somewhat competitive, and it was hard to fully enjoy them because they were all played during the most intense heat of the day and I felt like I was being barbecued.  But around 2:30, 3 o’clock each day a bit of a breeze came up and that made sitting in the hot sun more bearable, so that later matches were more enjoyable. 

Djokovic ended up winning the tournament, beating Federer for the third time in a row in the semis, and Nadal in the final.  That made him 18-0 on the year.  It looks like there’s a new sheriff in town. 

 

Indian Wells 1

I was recently in the desert for 3 days at a tennis tournament.  The official name used to be the Pacific Life Open, now it’s the BNP Paribas Open, but to tennis fans it’s always been known as Indian Wells, after the city in the Coachella valley where it’s located.  Palm Springs, Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert, Indian Wells: the cities in this valley coalesce and are all knit together with 5-lane boulevards filled with shiny, new, high-end vehicles zipping along at 50 mph through immaculate, manicured lawns, gardens, and water features (for a place in the desert, the profligate water use is astonishing), like one gigantic country club, with shopping centers as clubhouses.  Sometimes referred to as the 5^th major, with $3.6 million in prize money up for grabs and attendance of 350,000, it’s the 2^nd biggest US tournament after the US Open and the biggest on the West Coast.  The beautifully landscaped site, with date palms, flower gardens, and nearby rugged mountains that, in the clear, dry air, look close enough to touch, contains 22 courts with the main stadium seating 16,000.  I’ve been going there every year since 2003, and I have to say that, notwithstanding my comments in the Australian Open post about the declining popularity of tennis in the US, it gets more crowded every year.  Of course, it’s an international event, and you hear plenty of languages other than English as you walk around the grounds. 

I’ve always just gone for the early rounds and hung on the outer courts where I can get close to the players (one year I actually collided with David Ferrer), so I don't bother with a ticket for the main stadium but just get a grounds pass.  That gives me access to everything except the big stadium where the players are too distant anyway.  Of course, I don’t get to see many of the top players then, but I’ve already seen most of them, back before they were top players. That’s because I keep my ear to the ground and when I hear about talented players coming up, I make a point to check them out.  For example, I saw Nadal play here years ago and he was only 30 feet away.  He was 18 at the time and playing Nicolas Massu in an outer court where there were only about 50 people watching, and 48 of them were rooting for Massu.  This year I was eager to see the new up-and-comers I’d discovered while watching the Australian Open on TV (see that previous post): Tomic, Raonic, and Dolgopolov. 

I’ve got a routine down by now.  I pick up a cheap Styrofoam cooler at Ralph’s, stock it with ice at my motel, and put bottles of water and lunch fixings in it.  The first matches start at 11, so I usually get to the venue between 10 and 10:30.  Then, at some point during the day, when it’s convenient and I’m hungry, I foray out to the car and have some late lunch/early dinner and grab a couple fresh bottles of cold water.  This way I avoid standing in line for the lousy yet expensive food sold on site.  I still have to stand in line, on occasion, for a $3.50 bottle of ice cold water, at least when it’s as hot as it was this year, because it’s just too far to go to the car every time you need another bottle of water and when it’s really hot (every day hit 90 degrees this year) the tepid water from the drinking fountains just doesn’t cut it.  I try to time my excursion so that it’s late in the afternoon.  That way I can also grab a jacket, because it can get quite cool in the desert at night.  All the courts are lit, so night matches are common. 

The tournament is a big deal for the town of Indian Wells, and all the motels are very aware of it.  The one where I stay has a lot of officials, referees and lines people staying there.  Every morning when you come down for breakfast there are schedules laid out showing all the matches being played that day, and the courts they’re being played on, so you can roughly plan your day (there’s still no telling how long each match will last, so you can’t plan it exactly).  Even without the big stadium, there are still 7 matches going on at any given time, so it can be difficult deciding on an itinerary.  Factored into the decision lately is how popular I think a given match is likely to be, because as much as possible I try to avoid the crowds.

In the early years there weren’t big crowds.  Most of my fondest memories are from that era.  In those days the tournament started on Monday and I could stay through Thursday of the first week and never have a problem getting a good seat for any match I wanted.  But when BNP Paribas took over as the title sponsor in 2009, the schedule was changed so that the qualifying starts on Monday and the first round matches don’t start until Wednesday (women) or Thursday (men).  As a result you soon run into the weekend and the huge crowds that go with it: both Saturday and Sunday this year were sold out.  That means standing in lines for everything, and sometimes not getting into a match you’d like to see, or getting in but having an undesirable seat with someone’s knees pressed into your back.  In the old days I always used to wish I could stay longer, but this year by Sunday night I was ready to go.  

In my next post I’ll share some specifics about the matches I watched. 

Fate vs. Free Will

In Oedipus Rex, Oedipus life is ruled by fate.  Try as he might to escape the destiny the Fates have spun for him, of killing his father and marrying his mother, it nevertheless comes to pass.  This notion of a master plan, as uncomfortable as it was for Oedipus, was yet comfortable for the ancient Greeks, as it was for all primitive peoples, because it put their lives into the context of a greater meaning (although what higher purpose Oedipus’ fate served remained unclear). 

Many millennia later we know that events are not the products of Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos hunched over their spinning wheel.  The dinosaurs were extinguished not by the Fates, but by the orbit of an asteroid crossing that of our planet, as a matter of random chance, and crashing into it.  Their demise, and the consequent rise of the mammals and us, was an accident.   The notion that our lives are ruled by chance is not as comforting as the idea that they are being scripted by some master planner, but part of the maturation process over the millennia is the triumph of reason over wishful and fanciful thinking.  Perhaps ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny in this, as I too was a fatalist in my youth, and even now an event that seems just too perfect may temporarily resurrect that feeling of destiny, but fatalism is a childish notion, an atavistic remnant of an earlier era, and the wisdom of maturity soon returns me to sanity and the uncomfortable truth. 

In the TV series Fringe, as well as the current film The Adjustment Bureau, based on the Philip K. Dick story Adjustment Team, the writers want to have it both ways: everything is fated yet free will is still possible.  The Observers or Adjusters intervene to correct an action that threatens to derail the master plan.  This, however, is nonsense.  If events are predetermined, then there is no room for free will, and vice versa.  The two are logically incompatible.  Once variation is introduced anywhere into the system, all determination is threatened.  That means you cannot travel to the future for the simple reason that it doesn’t exist yet (except, of course, insofar as we are all already travelling to the future).  Ironically, if fate existed, and everything was predetermined, then life, the actual playing out of these predetermined events, would become redundant and absurd; we, as individuals, would not exist, we would be mere notations of another hand, and original thought would be impossible, since all of our thoughts would have been, as it were, pre-thought.  This way lays madness. 

Unlike what you might infer from this movie, I don’t think Dick was a determinist, either.  Rather, he used fate as a metaphor for chance, to suggest the way randomness impinges on our lives.  But this issue is treated much more effectively in the German film Run Lola Run, in which a sequence of events is replayed repeatedly with slight variations so that we can see how contingency affects the outcome.