C'era Una Volta: Once Upon a Time, there was a Tram

San Lorenzo is known for its wall art, and justly so, and most of it is where one would expect--on the exterior walls of the neighborhood's buildings. But one that caught our fancy is located not only inside, but inside a commercial establishment that's only been around a few years: C'era Una Volta [Once Upon a Time There Was...] Il Caffe--basically a bar like any other bar, serving coffee and sandwiches. On some evenings, men gather to watch a soccer game on a small TV. There's a place to bet on sports. 

C'era Una Volta is located at a critical intersection in San Lorenzo, where the historic via Tiburtina (San Lorenzo's "Main Street") and via dei Reti (the core of the area's transportation system) come together.

A grey day in San Lorenzo, looking straight up via dei Reti, with C'era Una Volta at right

The back room, usually open only for lunch, is a pizzeria/cafeteria, and on its back wall is that mural. "Once Upon a Time," the mural tell us--and it was only a few years ago at most--via dei Reti was a thorough for trams, though cars and trucks used it too. As far as we know, the only tram that ran on those lines--one in each direction, between Piazza Verano and Porta Maggiore--was the #19, right there in the mural. Until earlier this  year, several miles of the tracks used by the #19 tram were being repaired. The tram had been replaced by a bus--yes, the #19.

The mural (above) doesn't do justice to the bar's clientele. While C'era Una Volta has women customers, most of its patrons are men. Indeed, of the 5 or 6 tables on the sidewalk outside the bar, one or two are usually occupied by older men (or one older man), using the table as a space for social interaction, sometimes without any purchase. Just a place to hang out. 

Inside, too, most of the patrons are men

In contrast, the only patrons in the mural are women, and upper-class women at that, with fancy coats and vintage hats out of the 1930s. Their red lips--and the empty chair covered in red--are a nice touch, suggesting an elegance that the caffe', comfortable and efficient as it is, doesn't possess. On the sidewalk, a woman in more ordinary dress appears to roll up a sleeve, and another, behind her, seems to be picking something up. 

There's only one obvious male in the mural, and not a single student, or so it would seem, even though today's San Lorenzo is populated by, and enjoyed by, students from the nearby university. 

Prominently featured, although it hasn't been in operation for more than a year, is the #19 tram. 

Bill 

San Lorenzo is a fascinating neighborhood. Here are a couple prior posts featuring it.

San Lorenzo: Where Maria Montessori Got Her Start

The Mural on Scalo San Lorenzo: Reading the Politics of the Neighborhood

Rome's Public Markets: a Cautionary Tale

Cemetery wanderings - a great trek through Cimitero Verano in Rome

Sites of Anti-Fascism: Trionfale, Garbatella, and San Lorenzo

 

The Mural on Scalo San Lorenzo: Reading the Politics of the Neighborhood

 

Of San Lorenzo's many murals, none captures the community's history of in-your-face, leftist politics--at one time the product of the neighborhood's working class, now of a newer population of university students--than the street-level monster on Scalo San Lorenzo. The street can be dark and foreboding, having been victimized by a 1960-era elevated highway running down its center, but it was central to the area's development and character. To the south and east lie a maze of railroad tracks that at one time were crucial to the area's commercial development; Scalo, a word that defies precise definition, has some relationship to loading and unloading--it's likely related to the English word, "scale." 

About fifty feet long and accomplished mostly in grey tones, the mural is a complex political statement of the ideas that currently motivate San Lorenzo's residents, generally, and particularly those in the social space and organization that occupies the space at Scalo San Lorenzo, #33, behind the mural and was, apparently, responsible for it: COMMUNIA. Created a few years ago, COMMUNIA (see below the photo of the bus in the mural) is a feminist movement, mutual assistance organization, and a laboratory for experimenting with modes of production, and culture, that lie outside the marketplace. 

As a feminist movement, it works against workplace harassment (le molestie) and other injustices; the driver of the #19 bus (today, replacing the tram on via dei Reti while work is done on the tracks far away in Parioli, it is central to the area's transportation network) is a woman with fist raised (looking a bit like the Statue of Liberty), but it's noteworthy that the mural does not attack patriarchy or men in general. The section of the mural at right foregrounds the role of women and the community's need for green space and public services. I have not been able to figure out who L. Blissett was or is. 

[Nota bene: an anonymous reader explained that L. Blissett was Luther Blissett, a "multiple use name" shared by artists and activists in Europe and elsewhere since 1994. That is, there is no individual artist named Luther Blissett. He (named after a soccer player) is a community "myth" and a community project. For more--much more--see the entry "Luther Blissett" in Wikipedia, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Blissett_(pseudonym).]

Among the issues the mural raises are gentrification and the proliferation of Airbnbs that have raised rents and driven out residents, especially older ones ("poor people leave quietly," says the mural).

Increasingly, the area is unable to support traditional business; there is no classic Roman deli, no dedicated bakery (although there is one attached to a bar), only two orto-fruttas (fruits and vegetables) and one 72-year-old butcher with a very limited array of meats.

The source of the problem, the mural tells us, is money ("Rich Uncle" Pennybags, the figure from the game Monopoly) and developers, represented here by grotesque machinery, part metal/part skeletal animal. "Fight power not people," is the phrase on the front of the bus (photo showing bus, above). 

San Lorenzo values equality. OMNIA SUNT COMMUNIA, a well-known phrase from the Latin, translates as "all things are to be held in common." And it values inclusivity: "No Borders"/"A San Lorenzo Nessuno E' Un Straniero" [at San Lorenzo, no one is a stranger]. 

The mural also includes at least two aspects of the community's physical presence: the Sopra-Elevata (the elevated highway that runs down Scalo San Lorenzo) and the neighborhood's graffiti, represented here in the signature of GECO (high up on the mural) and the painter Hogre.

Bill