Sweet Guest: 2019's Ad Campaign of the "Year"

When we're in Rome we read the Rome edition of one of Italy's national newspapers. These days we're reading Il Messaggero, mostly for its local coverage of city issues, from the garbage problem to the closing of Metro stations.  Now and then we are also attracted to an ad campaign.

This year's favorite advertising campaign featured a company known as "Sweet Guest," which apparently has a relationship to the home rental company Airbnb.  Most of the Sweet Guest ads ask, "Do you want to get more from your rented apartment?"  The company offers to help the owner value the property correctly, and it manages the rental, freeing the owner, as the ad says, from all worries.

Our interest in the ads had little to do with the company's purpose or business model, and much to do with the old folks used in the ads--the same man and woman every time--and the way they were presented.  Over two months, we found 4 different ads.  The first one is at the top of the post.  Here  are the others, in chronological order:

The ad directly above makes a somewhat different pitch: "You've hit the ground running, now you can only accelerate."  Beyond the words, our first reaction was that the characters in the ads were simply designed to attract attention, because they're so different--and not just in age--from the younger people that dominate advertising.

On second thought, the ads seemed to be targeted at the older people who, in a rapidly aging Italy, own the majority of Rome apartments.  They suggest--possibly, we're not sure--that if you use Sweet Guest, you'll have time for, and be in a relaxed mood for, leisure pursuits: playing basketball (make sure to wear goggles), serving donuts in your stylish clothes, riding a motorcycle (without helmets), and....well, we're not sure what's going on with the short-sleeved, striped 1980s shirts, white undershirts, and winter hats--maybe just enjoying one's bad taste.

Bill

A New Bauletto: the Curious Charms of Porta Portese

Intimidating

Porta Portese is best known for its enormous Sunday flea market, and perhaps to motorists for the rather harrowing twist into and through the porta from the Lungotevere.  But it has still another attraction: as the site of the biggest collection of shops devoted to scooters and motorcycles--and bicycles.  You need it, it's there: helmets, gloves, jackets, pants--and yes, bauletti, the lockable storage boxes for helmets and clothes and the like that sit on the back of the machines.  And we needed one.  Ours was old, and the hard rubber pieces that anchored the bauletto to the metal frame above the rear fender were cracked and warped, to the point that we were worried about it falling off.

Our Malaguti at box 40

The entrance to the narrow back alley of shack-like shops at Porta Portese can be intimidating; you feel like the white guy in the ghetto.  Still, we summoned our courage and drove the Malaguti 250 into the center of things, asked a few questions, and in less than two minutes had found the right shop--box 40--and the right bauletto.  Although Porta Portese is known as a discount place, the bauletto is not cheap: Euro 110 [about 150 bucks] with or without installation.

Price includes installation

Installation is important.  The connections are tricky, require parts and tools most people don't have, and more than a little experience at the curiously intricate task.

Crowd gathers

The job took about 20 minutes and, as it turned out, attracted the attention, and the assistance, of other shopkeepers.  It was a slow day.  We fretted that somehow our machine wouldn't accomodate the new bauletto.

But then it was done, and off we went, pleased.

Bill

Bicycles, too

Pompidou Postmodernism--in Rome

Not Columbus, not 1972

Our introduction to postmodernism came, in of all places, Columbus Ohio--not, or not then, a pacesetter in architecture.  We were tourists, and we arranged to eat dinner in one of the city's trendy new restaurants.  The place occupied a long-narrow space several feet below street level, and everything was painted black.  To our surprise, the resturateur and his designer had made only the most minimal effort to cover up the "guts" of the place--the ductwork and electrical cables that made the place function, the old brick.  No lowered ceiling, no styrafoam ceiling panels, no wall paneling.  Painted black, yes, but hardly invisible; indeed, right in your face.  It was 1972 or 1973. 

Pompidou Center

Across the Atlantic, and doubtless unaware of Columbus's early lead in advanced architectural design, Renzo Piano and his colleagues were working on Paris's Pompidou Center.  It would open in 1977 to considerable acclaim and be understood thereafter as a seminal work in the postmodern vein. 

More Pompidou Center

Every pipe and conduit and strut was exposed; indeed, some may have been added for emphasis.  The architectect seemed determined to make a rather ordinary stairway a central feature of the design and "look" of the place. 

The modernists of the 1930s and 1940s had taken a very different approach.  While valuing the technological, machine aesthetic as much as the postmodernists, their interest in speed and movement led designers to give many of their creations rounded features, and to sheath the products they made in sleek skins of metal and plastic. 

Probably a film projector

In this "streamlined" universe, key ingredients of speed and movement--motors and wheels--were hidden away.  The pencil sharpener and the toaster appeared ready to take off. 

By this definition at least, Rome has come late, and barely, to the postmodern revolution.  Renzo Piano was no help.  Although Rome would be the site of one of his best buildings--the Parco della Musica--it shows not a hint of the architect's place in the postmodern pantheon.  Not a duct in sight. 

We've found two examples of what we'll call Pompidou Postmodernism in Rome: one in architecture, the other in product design. 

The beast unveiled

The product is the motorcycle.  Not all of them, by any means; some--perhaps most--have been designed and presented in the modernist mode, or in some combination.  But some, especially the big, muscular cycles with enormous engines--750 and even 1200cc's--could trace their heritage to that Columbus restaurant.  Their huge and complex engines could be covered with plates of steel, but instead they're exposed, letting us know just what it is we're riding, and what makes it go. 

Exposed girders at MACRO

The building we have in mind is one of our favorites: the MACRO gallery, in the Nomentana quartiere.  It's a lovely combination of sleek, curvilinear modernism and defiant Pomidou Postmodernism.

While the bathrooms are aggressively modern--whether they can actually be used, we can't say (oh, yes we can, says Dianne), but they sure look good--that and other modernist flourishes succeed in part because of the postmodern environment in which they're embedded: the exposed steel girders, with bolts and all, there to remind visitors of the brewery that once operated on the grounds.

Revealing glass elevator, Macro

The elevator, its innards in full view, challenging us to accept technology as the complex phenomenon it is; and a sturdy, unpretentious metal stairway that subtly suggests that our fanciful designs--those sleek skins and surfaces--are products of animals who learned to walk upright. 

Bill

For more pictures of MACRO, see an earlier post.

Postmodern muscle

Modern, streamlined muscle

Sidesaddle Cycling

India--one hand around the driver, maybe.

We read with curiosity a recent story in the New York Times describing the efforts of Shariah law advocates in Lhokseumawe, on the island of Sumatra, to prohibit as "improper" women riding on motorcycles and scooters with their legs spread.  Under the new regulation, women can ride (presumably only as passengers) but only sidesaddle--that is, with both legs on one side of the vehicle.  In addition, women are not supposed to hold on to the guy who's driving.  We suspect that Lhokseumawe's directive derives in part from a Shariah-based society in which women are discouraged, or prohibited, from wearing pants (an odd perspective, in that pants, while a mark of liberation, are also, arguably, the less sexy option.  See Hillary Clinton). 

Something similar happened in America in the late-19th century, when men took issue with women riding bicycles.  Just too sexy.  In that case, the prohibition had to be absolute, or men had to get used to it, for sidesaddle was not an option, at least for the woman doing the pedaling.  There was a time, too, when proper western women who rode horses were expected to use special saddles that allowed both legs to go comfortably to one side.

Rome, 2007.  Waiting for the dress to
get caught in the wheel.

It's understandable that Muslim men of a Shariah bent--who paradoxically seem to be titillated by just about everything--would find their hearts beating fast at the sight of the spread legs and prominent rear ends of cycle-straddling young women.  Indeed, we (that is, I) have not been immune to the occasional palpitation while surfing the streets of Rome on a warm spring day. 

And we have witnessed, with shock and concern, the occasional effort at going sidesaddle (right).  It's a dangerous practice: bikes must negotiate bumps and the occasional object, and they lean as they turn.  A passenger with both legs on one side, and only an awkward grip on the handles (that only sometimes exist) on either side of the back seat, could easily fall off.  Modesty has its price. 

Bill 

China.  Two riders, one helmet. 

 

Scooter Feminism

First, a confession. About 15 years ago I got it into my head that there was a market out there for a coffee-table book featuring Nikon-made photographs of Roman women navigating the city on scooters and cycles. My camera has changed--it's digital now--but the adolescent fantasy remains, weakened by an aging body but also strengthened by my decision, a few years ago, to get a scooter and ride those streets. You won't believe it, but my interest in this subject is feminist; riding a scooter on the streets of Rome requires courage, a certain athleticism, decisiveness, even strength. It is liberating. Let's call it scooter feminism.

Waiting for the light to change and the charge to begin and there, on my left and on my right, chicks on bikes. One on a small scooter, perched on the front of the seat, reaching for the handlebars with short arms, knees pressed against the metal, all earnestness. Another policing an unruly skirt in the breeze. A single working girl, headed home from the office, in slacks and impeccable white blouse, purse on the floorboard. A tough girl in leather and full helmet, astride a fast bike known, perhaps unfortunately, as a crotch-rocket. (The girl in pink, above, is on a crotch-rocket). Most girls wear jeans. Occasionally, high heels (photo at left) and often, sandals (last pic), which offer scant protection when you're underneath a scooter that's sliding down the asphalt.

One day in the spring of 2007, I dropped Dianne off at Castel Sant'Angelo, where they were doing a show on art work that had been stolen and recovered, or something like that. Instead, I planned to take some pics of chicks on bikes. I crossed the Tevere on the nearby Ponte Sant'Angelo, then crossed the wide and busy thoroughfare known there as the Lungotevere Tor di Nona, and took up a position downriver on the corner of Via Paola, my camera ready.

The results were not what I had hoped for. It proved harder than I ever imagined to identify at a distance a woman I wanted to photograph, and harder still--indeed, impossible, given my skills-- to capture the action moving by at 35/50 km per hour. About all I could manage were still photos of women sitting on their cycles and scooters waiting for the light to turn green.

And even that was challenging, not to mention embarrassing. The ladies know what you're up to, even if you don't (see right). I like the yellow top. A good example of dressing for safety.

The book project is on hold.

Bill