#3 Al Bar

A military parade, a Slam that's entirely ours, and the popstar who rented out the Gattopardo Villa in Palermo

Al Bar, every Thursday at 6 PM Italian time — the week in Italy, served the way Italians actually argue about it. Six short sections in the rhythm of an aperitivo, from the first Coca Zero to the bill. What people are debating, who said what to whom, the summer hit nobody admits to loving, the political verdict being delivered at the counter. Ten minutes of reading. The price of a coffee a week.

It’s Thursday, six o’clock, the machine behind the counter hissing, and three stools down somebody has already opened with “hai visto?”. Summer is barely here and it has already handed us the bill: a week under a beach umbrella now costs almost a quarter more than it did five years ago, and the lettino is quietly turning into a luxury good. Around it, the usual June noise — a deputy back in the wrong kind of headline, a quarrel over a military parade, a popstar who has annexed a stretch of Sicilian coast for a wedding — and, for once, a little free joy arriving from a tennis court in Paris. The bar won’t reconcile any of it; it just keeps pouring while we shout. Pull up a stool — six rounds, ten minutes, the week the way we actually argue about it. Salute.

Una Coca Zero

Tuesday afternoon, a Mercedes SUV drifts off the Biella–Cossato superstrada and ends up in a ditch near Vigliano Biellese, in the rain. The man who climbs out unharmed is Emanuele Pozzolo (deputy, ex–Fratelli d’Italia, right), and the name should ring a bell. This is the one who, on New Year’s 2024, at a Pro Loco party in Rosazza thrown by the village mayor — Francesca Delmastro, sister of justice undersecretary Andrea Delmastro (Fratelli d’Italia, right), who was also there with half his security detail — pulled out a mini-revolver to show it around. A shot went off. It caught the bodyguard chief’s son-in-law in the leg.