Open at 5:30 a.m., close at 9 p.m., no vacations: the life of a newsstand owner in Rome

Open at 5:30 a.m., close at 9 p.m., take 4 days off a year.  That's the life of our local Italian newsstand owners.  Perhaps understandably, their children don't want to inherit the business. 

Sonia and Alessandro  - a lot of togetherness.

We've been buying our daily paper the last few weeks--since we moved into the Ostiense neighborhood--at this (photo above), our closest "edicola" or newsstand.  Because we never saw anyone except the same man and woman in the small stand--which seemed open every minute we walked by it, and because the two of them seem to have an amiable relationship in a very small space, we asked one day about their working relationship.  

Alessandro's father is in the stand, in this photo
from the 1950s, before the stand was moved
to the other side of the railway overpass.

Alessandro and Sonia, both good-natured and seemingly happy, explained they've been married for almost 35 years, and they own and run, without help from anyone else, this classic Italian "edicola."  

Now on the other side of the overpass.

In fact, the stand has been in Alessandro's family since 1929, when his grandfather started with a smaller stand on via Ostiense, just on the other side of the railroad overpass that is one of the markers of this neighborhood.  His father continued the business and moved it to the location it's in now, after the war damaged some of the infrastructure around it and the bridge was widened to handle more traffic.  

One can barely see Sonia and Alessandro; the edicola is crowded with
items to sell - from toys to tomes.

We asked Alessandro when he started working in this family business.  "Sempre" [always], he said; essentially, as we would say, "forever."  We asked the couple when they eat lunch or dinner. Dinner, they said, is usually at 10 or 10:30 p.m.  Alessandro ticked off the days they were closed:  Christmas, "Santo Stefano"  (the day after Christmas), New Year's Day, and Easter.  That's it.  It gives new meaning to 24/7. 

The newspaper business, said Alessandro, is "in crisi" (in crisis), and so is the newspaper stand business, it appears.  A stand even closer to us remains shuttered with a "vendesi" and "affitasi" (for sale or for rent) sign on it. And one reason the couple never has anyone else help them is, as Alessandro said, because they don't have the "soldi" (money) to pay anyone else.

Nearby stand with "for sale/for rent" sign.

Alessandro is constantly rearranging the
merchandise - to sell more.

Looking at the stand, it is, as most of them, very "vistoso" (showy, colorful), because in addition to selling print media--magazines, newspapers, books--they sell lots of toys, as well as CDs, DVDs, maps, wrapping paper, some arts and crafts, lottery tickets, used books and vintage comic books.  We have seen Alessandro constantly arranging and rearranging the enormous display that surrounds the edicola, inside and out.  The "gadgets," as Alessandro referred to them, are promoted by the publishers to help the newsstand--and the publishers--survive.

Also critical to the stand's economic well-being are its regular customers, Alessandro said.  The neighborhood has changed dramatically since the huge central fruit and vegetable market (I mercati generali) closed in 2002, after more than 80 years of operation.  Now instead of the "piu' sano lavoratori" (more sane, normal laborers), said Alessandro, there are people coming to the neighborhood in the evening to eat at the many new upscale restaurants and, he said, get drunk. This isn't the clientele that will buy his products.  

In many ways the edicola is another example of the changing demographics of Rome neighborhoods and the demise of the Italian small business owner and, yes, the artisan, a demise often lamented in the newspapers Alessandro and Sonia sell.  

Alessandro, laughing, described himself as the last man standing.  And what will happen when he retires?  Their four adult children all have college degrees, of which they are rightly proud, and they will not take over the business.  He and Sonia hope to sell the stand - that's their retirement.

 Dianne 

TEX in Rome: an American Western Icon Still Sells

The comic character Tex has been part of our Rome experience since 1993.  It's remarkable to us that Tex is still around.  He showed up on the side of our local newsstand (edicola), along with the reminder that here you can get more money on your prepaid phone (RICARICHE on the side here).

Clearly Tex is still a publishing hit, because a poster for a new collection of Tex comics showed up a few days later on a nearby electrical pole, the one the newsstand regularly uses to draw in customers from nearby via Gallia.

We tried to figure out the source of this current interest in American Westerns.  Tex goes back to 1948, when the character was created by Gianluigi Bonelli.  The Bonelli publishing house is now big business, part of it built on Tex's back.  They have characters of more modern currency, such as Dylan Dog and Dr. No (the latter a kind of anti-hero, and not Ian Fleming's Dr. No).  But Tex takes the prize as the longest running comic character in Italy.  What was being advertised at our newsstand is one of several new compilations, this one "Tex Gold."

The May 2015 Tex, a reprint of 1985.
The front and back covers are in color, but
the panels are black and white - still.

Gianluigi Bonelli's family continued Tex. The kingmaker of the publishing house, Gianluigi's son, Sergio, took over the writing of Tex, and the May 2015 (really 1985) issue I just bought was written by yet another Bonelli, Mauro. But Gianluigi clearly formed the character in the late 1940s and 1950s.  The backstory is that Tex was a Texas Ranger, but quit that and "now" operates for them on some special assignments--often working outside the law to hunt down the really bad guys, who are sometimes themselves "lawmen."

The story in my hands is "Il Pueblo Sacro" - The Sacred Pueblo.  Like most Tex stories, it is set in the American Southwest.  Tex ("Night Eagle" is his Indian name) is accompanied, as he often is, by Kit Carson ("Silver Hair"), his "pard" (the same word in Italian and English).







Tex can be seen as a reflection of many different values.  First is the love of all things American in post-WWII Italy; what could be more American than cowboys and Indians?  Our Roman friends tell us they played "cowboys and Indians" - as did we.  Though by the 1960s, one told us, she would play only an Indian, not a cowboy.  In our day, the cowboys were the good guys and the Indians the bad guys.  Bonelli was ahead of most people here too.

The wise old Zuni:  "But if young Juanito [the young Zuni]
has brought you here...
It isn't for a meager supper of  millet bread and pemmican..."

Starting in the late 1940s, Bonelli reinterpreted the traditional "cowboys and Indians" narrative by having the Indians (we would now say Native Americans) be wise men - although Tex looks like the wisest of them all, since - through marriage to an Indian princess - he is "now" chief of the Navajo tribe.

The bad guys:  Ricky, the Mexican, and the Sheriff

Il Pueblo Sacro has all of these characteristics.  Tex, with grumpy and skeptical Kit, asks his young Indian companion - the "young Zuni" - to take him to the tribe's "sciamano" ("shaman" - or we would say "medicine man") to interpret a valuable diadem.




In the meantime, an upstanding rancher's (Thomas Harrison) not-so-upstanding son (Ricky) and the sheriff ("lo sceriffo") of the town - Rio Lobo - team up with a Mexican (Mexicans don't come off too well in Tex) to try to get a trove of gold that can be found via the secret of the diadem.

The medicine man knows how to interpret the diadem, but the gold is corn, the secret space beneath the pueblo is full of poisonous spiders, and the bad guys end up dead.

The poisonous spiders

In the last line of the episode, Tex says: "Even though we weren't elected, Kit and I keep order at Rio Lobo."

Some have suggested that Italians continue to love Tex because he represents the fight against corruption, and corruption often is IN the system itself.   No doubt this characterization is part of Tex's appeal, but it still doesn't explain to me Tex's almost 70-year endurance.  Yes, Tex doesn't sell as it once did (from 700,000 copies per month at its peak to 220,000 in 2010), but then what print publications do?

One of our Roman friends, who knows a lot about Italian culture and sociology, suggested that it's not young people who buy Tex.  Rather it's their parents, engaging in nostalgia, especially when one considers the many reprint series.

Bonelli's comics also tell us something about censorship in Italy.  He had to lower skirts, cover up cleavage (not that there are many women in these stories) and change Tex's name right before publication from Tex Killer to Tex Willer.

Dianne

The last panel, where Tex says:
"Even though we weren't elected, Kit and I keep order at Rio Lobo."