By Michael Wilner
“Broken windows theory” is an American notion that a neighborhood with urban blight is only going to get more blighted unless someone fixes a window. It seems that this theory has not yet made its way to Napoli, where the cycle of dirt and crime continues without much apparent effort to stop it. Residents end their days here not cleaning up the garbage but adding more to the piles. And nights in Naples are particularly unsettling.
During the day one sees rows of stunning medieval churches, but when the sun sets and the dim street lights come on, garbage and graffiti seem to be the city’s main characteristics. The fear of God is replaced by the fear of trash. As we walk the streets, one classmate jokes about becoming a filmmaker; “a black plague movie would be perfect here,” she points out.
And yet, the residents of Naples seem to embrace what is. A bar across the city’s central stone-paved street welcomes drinkers in to “Stay Insane,” a song by the aptly named Black Devil Disco Club. By twilight, all vendors have closed their shops, locking their phallic and deeply religious souvenirs away behind lewdly painted grates to a deserted street, watched over only by saints carved in robes of worn stone.
Through the garbage, the cast bronze skulls and the active breeze from the vents of crypts is the life of the modern Neapolitan: stylish at the bar and content with pizza that is deservedly famed. Walking these streets, one finds a tender balance between faith and refuse.