Admittedly, this video is a mess... but then again my approach to video is kind of like the popular idea about deskilling that I have also critiqued in the past. Hipocracy, maybe. But then all critique is self critique after all. (Ahem.) Think of it as a Berta Style approach. Even so, this video moment is best paired with the next one to follow in this blogpost... but more of that later.
Someday, I want to give a slow tour of the house, a 5 min. shot of each floor.
It was built in 1703 as a cava winery. Later, it was a bodega where locals would bring sardines to cook over the fire, toasting Pan Catalan* and drinking cava from porrons. More of that later.
What is of note is that we are building a new kitchen. And a patio. But more of that later.
The filming was difficult while we were making our last checklist, so I shut it down to not be too much of a nut and attend to the important business at hand. Instructions to Kiko, Ramon, Miguel and Tanya had to be attended to, and the exit was the last chance to tie up loose ends.
As we made our way to the bus station; the first link on a chain of events that lead us back to LA: Bus to Barcelona, taxi to the airport, plane to Heathrow, plane to LA, taxi to the car, car to the house; we encountered a noisy group of people in front of Tossa's police station.
At first, I couldn't tell if it was a party or a protest...
The big guy crossing the street was going after me.*2 I could see the eyes of the police asa they were sizing up the crowd, people with the cameras were big priority features in their landscape. He tried to write me a ticket (una denunci?) saying something to the effect that filming the event was a provocation but as I spelled out my name ("ah-che oh, elle elle, eeee, ene, hee, ese, doubly-ooo, oh, arrre, te...), a comic moment wrinkled and the big guy looked up and said "?Estranjero?" and my mind ran to the anticipation of missing the bus for Barcelona because I would be soon sitting in a police station articulating my situation in poor Castellano. "Oh, this is going to be interesting real quick.", so my thought ran. "?Si!" I said with a smile. "?De vacac?ones?" "Si.", still smiling.
He waved us off and pivoted over to that other cameraman you might have noticed near the end of the video. We headed to the bus, relieved and amused uncomfortably in a thrill-park-type-of-ride kind of way.
We learned that it was a protest against alleged police abuse against drunken youth who were breaten up by police late last night, how bad I don't know. The shouting older guy with the gloved cowbell looked like a dad to me. We had seen posters in the street by the police about "hooligans" and violent activity recently, so it seems that the pollice were certainly primed for confrontation. There was also another incident that I had heard about in the early summer, but I chalked it up to the natural effluence that comes with tourism.
I still do. Pueblos, whose solitary industry is tourism should have a procedural, routinized response to this side effect of being a fun place by the sea. Maybe Tossa should go through drunken brawler training exercises where training is judged by artful minimal force methods.
Yeah.
They could make a town party of it.
* Good advice in that link, by the way. You gotta get juicy tomatos for your Pan Catalan, Tio.
*2 For me, this is a vivid illustration how a human eye works in comparison to what the camera can catch. We could simultaneaously see telescopically to sizeup the situation as well as navigate stereoscopically.
How wonderful life is.
Posted by Dennis at September 4, 2007 2:52 PM
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