Wednesday 30 April: Around Trastevere day and night; or, The local black market gets busted

An uneventful day spent researching, writing, and once again postponing laundry. I caught a short siesta in the afternoon, so by nightfall I was not tired. A good thing, too, since this was the evening that the municipal police decided to bust the local black market.

Like most big cities all over the world, Rome has various areas where the black market sets up. Now, Americans hear “black market” and immediately think of drug smuggling, gun running, human trafficking, and other horrors. However, most black market goods are just things being sold without license to sell and with collecting and submitting sales tax. In Rome, the black market features counterfeit handbags, sunglasses and shoes imitating Italian designer goods; goofy souvenirs like Colosseum snow globes; weird things geared toward children like key chains with miniature Chuck Taylor sneakers or the stupid rubber squeak toys they sell at Trevi; and lots of jewelry, knickknacks, scarves, and purses. This last group often features nice handmade objects from around the world. The vendors are often immigrants, many from South Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe. There are regular spots where the markets set up: the Colosseum, Piazza Navona (where Gary and I saw an amusing police raid a few years ago); and of course Piazza Trilussa, literally thirty seconds from my door.

Piazza Trilussa is named for a local poet who wrote in Romanesco, the Roman street dialect of Italian. It’s a small piazza right across the street from Ponte Sisto, the footbridge across the Tiber to the center of the city. From Trilussa, you descend very quickly down Via del Moro right into the heart of Trastevere. It’s a cute little square, not at all pretentious, and a regular meeting place for people. Sometimes legitimate operations set up here, like the agricultural produce show that Beth and I saw. And most evenings, the black market sets up. It’s a regular activity that is usually completely ignored by the authorities and the locals, and heavily frequented by tourists because it can be a source of comparatively cheap souvenirs. Once in a while, though, the police break the markets up. They must want to keep everyone on their toes, or maybe they get a tip that other illegal activity is going on. Anyway, they periodically raid these markets. I had seen it happen in other places, but never in Piazza Trilussa. I was in my room reading at about 11 pm, and I heard sirens and a bull horn. Of course I had to run out immediately to check out the situation. Vendors were scattering everywhere, trailing their wares as they darted into the warren of twisted alleys that is Trastevere. The police left, and within five minutes the sellers were all back. I decided to wander the streets and listen to music at various clubs, since I wasn’t tired, and I had a feeling that any attempt to sleep would be futile anyway. I was right! The police came back, not once but twice. Each time the poor black marketers would run, the police would leave, the onlookers would laugh, and it would start all over again. All this did was delay bedtime for everyone; Trastevere was partying until 5 am. I didn’t find out until daybreak that everyone was up late because the next day was a national holiday.