There Goes the Neighborhood
Italy's World Cup participation has had my neighborhood in a tizzy for a few weeks now. I live on the border of a neighborhood in Toronto called Corso Italia, which is basically where all the Italians moved when Little Italy ceased to be a predominantly Italian neighborhood. But it's not just Italians.. the flags and colors of Portugal, France, Brazil, Germany, Argentina, and Ecuador are also all over the place. Essentially, when the Cup ended, we were looking at some crazy ass shenanigans, but based on overall flag representation, an Italy win was guaranteed to provoke the mother of all street mobs.
I could mark the Italian goals during the qualifying rounds by the sounds of fireworks going off and my neighbors screaming and blowing whistles. After every win, cars full of fans would drive up and down the major avenue near me, flags waving and horns blaring. After the win against Germany, I saw 4 ostensibly Italian guys hanging out in an Italian flag-covered Volkswagen Golf with absolutely no sense of irony. And during the final, even a blocked shot would send 6 people streaming out of a neighbor's house to basically all leg hump each other. Then they'd run back in as quickly as they'd exited to avoid missing the next pseudo-event.
The culminating shootout ended on Sunday while we were off seeing A Scanner Darkly, and on our way home we witnessed a mess of people out on the street celebrating, which wasn't too surprising. But the funniest description I've seen is from this story from The Star:
As if stunned by the win, 73-year-old Giulio Menniti hopped from one foot to the other, arms outstretched, through the crowd on Via Italia — a Canadian flag draped over one shoulder, an Italian flag on the other framing his naked, tanned belly painted green, white and red — until he found his son.
Frank Menniti, 46, was a well-muscled mirror image of his father, but for a grass skirt and a knight's helmet accented with red feathers.
After they embraced, the younger Menniti sprayed them both with champagne he'd kept hidden in a black garbage bag.
What. The. Hell.
Anyway, the honking, whistling, and cheering was still continuing when I went to bed at about 1:30 AM. I just can't imagine maintaining that level of excitement for that long...
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