TAORMINA, SICILY
I didn’t read up on Sicily, I just came with my illusions. My friend Sheldon Neuringer tells about the Sicilians who lived in his neighborhood in Brooklyn, one of them a powerful Mafia boss, lived only blocks away. They were hard working down to earth immigrants. And in my head there are Sicilian mountain villages with a rich culture who are not much different from mountain people in Appalachia. Sicily is where my friend Louis brother died in the Second World War, I think, and a relative of Todd’s also died here. None of this stuff in my head has been of any use in adjusting to Taormina. First of all I am not sure how many actual Sicilians I have seen here. I’ve heard every language under the sun and seen a lot of Chinese, the only people I can identify, and I probably get them wrong as well.
Someone told Susie that she was the first person she had met in Asheville who was born there. Everyone comes from somewhere else, including floods of tourists.
Walking down Corso Umberto, a level pedestrian only main shopping street I see the same stores—Dior, Giorgio Armani, Louis Vuitton—that I saw in Milan, only a little smaller. And I see the same people, dressed up fit to kill, but in the bright pastel colors of vacation outfits since vacation is why they are here. In fact, I could be in Colonia, Uruguay or some of the streets in Essouria, Morocco or the Champs-Elysees, Paris or 5th Avenue, New York. I could go around the corner and be in any of these places.
I look at myself in my dumpy kakhi vest and trainman’s hat as I shamble down the street and wonder what I am doing here. But here I am.
And I like photographing stores that have windows that are displays of vibrant good taste. Someone else has done all the art work and all I have to do is to trip the shutter to get a beautiful shot. And the people are often the same way, begging to be photographed after having endless choices and ppl in spending the morning deciding what to wear.
But this certainly isn’t what I dreamed Sicily would be. There are people in wedding outfits here, as there were in Milan, but these people are here to get married in style. I will describe the wedding procession I saw today, tomorrow. But for today, this is what Taormina, Umberto Corso, looks like.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 