italiafile

Even the Times is reporting on the Camorra now, and apparently publishing maps of where it isn't safe to stray. The body count is now in the 120's, hundreds of extra Carabinieri have been drafted in, and businesses are being torched on a daily basis. Apparently tourism is suffering, though if you had tried to walk through the city centre yesterday you wouldn't have thought so. The weekends leading up to Christmas see hundreds of thousands of people flock to the centro storico to buy Xmas decorations. The typically Neapolitan presepe are the main focus, and the street of San Gregorio Armeno is impassable most of the time. For English eyes, it looks more like a Blue Peter make it yourself sticky backed plastic, fairy liquid grotto, but the tradition is even older than Biddy Baxter. Yesterday the danger came not from the Camorra but the heavy rain, which caused a balcony to collapse into the street hospitalising two old ladies from Puglia.
Anybody thinking of avoiding Naples because of the turf war would be mad. The chance of anyone wandering into Scampia or Secondigliano accidentally is absurd. You'd be relieved of your camera and wallet long before you made it all the way to Scampia.
The new red double decker tourist buses now have plain clothes police escorts, so frequently are they stopped and raided by the 'baby gangs' as they are called. For me, it conjures up images of the Little Rascals and the Double Deckers, but unfortunately this is a little far from the truth. The golden rule in Naples is not to behave like a tourist. Despite the obvious danger in doing so, I saw Americans today, in shorts, bristling with cameras, taking photos of the Spanish Quarter as though the residents were exhibits in a zoo. Watching the street urchins closing in for the kill I found it hard to summon up any sympathy.