Don’t piss in the streets of Naples
Naples, Italy is a wild city; I’m honestly not sure how else to describe it. And I mean “wild” in an exciting+thrilling sort of sense, but in an equally dangerous+lawless kind of way as well. If you’ve ever been there for long enough to build relationships with Neapolitans across various backgrounds and in someway experience life “as the locals do” (I already hate myself for typing that phrase), then I’m positive you know exactly what I mean.
As a life-long sports fan, who loves studying history, and immersing myself into different cultures — I enjoy nothing more than when those three things intersect at a special moment in which a single game, team, player, coach, and/or fanbase accomplish something so noteworthy that its shockwaves reverberate to the point of impact on a given region’s history and culture itself.
That said, I was naturally drawn to Naples in the Spring of 2023, during the weeks leading up to Napoli clinching the city’s first Scudetto since the ‘89-’90 season and the glory years of the Maradona-era.
If you’re unaware of the passion this place has for its only Serie A team, and the game of football in general, you can simply walk into any small corner store or meat shop in Naples, and you’ll usually see a small, golden-framed image hanging on the wall behind the checkout counter, depicting Diego Armando Maradona, El Pibe de Oro, the man the home stadium is literally named for, verbatim. His image often times hangs directly next to a similar display of Jesus Christ himself. And in this overwhelming proud, Catholic city, the success Diego brought the club from 1984 — 1990 is still worshipped on a religious-like-level till this day, more than three decades after he played his final game for Napoli.
Being relatively low on cash, but craving to experience the madness this impending moment of triumph would create, I volunteered to work at the front desk in a city center hostel, in exchange for a free bed. The hostel was owned by two 30-something-year-old Neapolitans, and the entirety of the staff was comprised of other locals as well. Around the corner was an illegally operated sportsbook, where some low-level, wannabe mafia dudes hung out, took bets, and smoked weed/hash spliffs all day (many of which they shared with me during my hours off).
It was the perfect location, because as each successful result drew Napoli closer to the title, and the city closer to its explosion of prideful emotion — I’d hit the streets with my co-workers from the hostel and their friends, or these dudes from the sportsbook. And each time out, I could feel the tension boiling towards the top of the pot, lid ready to blow off.
On April 30th, one win away from clinching the Scudetto, Napoli faced off versus Salernitana in a long-standing local derby. A home game against an entirely overmatched opponent, the expectation was for Napoli to take care of business and festivities to ensue.
At a watch party located in an abandoned women’s psychiatric ward, now inhabited by university-aged squatters (so beautiful, but so dark at the same time, as all of Napoli is), I took a tab of acid with one of the hostel owners’ closest friends and a 29-year-old British doctor, who was staying in the hostel and came for the weekend in an attempt to escape the life and career he told me he found so boring back home. He simply wanted to feel something. And maybe the young British doctor’s presence made it easier for me to pop this tab of LSD in an otherwise extremely unsuitable environment for doing acid.
“If the doctor does it, I guess I’ll be fine,” I thought. I wasn’t wrong. But in hindsight, as I often do, I look back on that day with a strong mentality of WTF.
Napoli broke a goalless tie in the 62nd minute, and pandemonium followed all the way through until the 84th minute when Salernitana scored a shocker to even the score 1–1. The score would remain a draw, and thus, the city of Naples had to wait another week for the next opportunity to mathematically clinch the top spot in the table. Never in my life had I seen the excitement of a crowd go from 50 to 1000 to 0 within such a short timeframe. Not to mention, the emotional rollercoaster was exacerbated by my tripping on LSD… highly exacerbated. Cheesy pun intended ;)
As the crowd filed out of the abandoned psych ward, away from the small TV literally hundreds of people were crammed around to watch the game — Tom, Maurizio, and myself were left tripping our balls off with nowhere to go and let loose (I’m assuming you can guess which name belonged to the Brit and which to the Neapolitan who had supplied us with tabs). We roamed the streets for hours, taking in the weird vibes of the massive celebration that almost was, and ultimately found ourselves in a small bar Maurizio’s friends from high school told him to go to.
We walked in and as Tom uncomfortably stood at the bar, trying to work up the courage to order a beer for the 3 of us, the song “Sarà perché ti amo” came on the speakers. And the already sentimental crowd of 20 to 40-year-olds burst into song and tears, belting the lyrics to this classic Italian anthem.
I stood there, in the depths of my LSD trip, hugged from all angles by singing and crying strangers, laughing my ass off. It’s a random memory of Naples that will stick with me, and that gem of a song will forever be its queue.
On May 4th, Napoli faced Udinese in an away game, needing only a draw to mathematically secure the Scudetto. Overcoming an early 0–1 deficit, they drew even in the 52nd minute and never looked back. Watching the game on a projector screen in a crowded plaza, the streets began to overflow.
Through the thick smoke coming from endless amounts of burning flairs in the streets, I split of to go celebrate with Simona — a beautiful, funny co-worker from the hostel — and a bunch of her local friends. One kept telling me how she found Napoli to be the Chicago of Europe, myself being a native Chicagoan. Not sure how accurate that was, but I went along with it because why not.
Still feeling a lack of desire to really party, due to my acid trip 5 days prior, I simply had a few beers and calmly, or as calmly as possible considering the circumstances, took in the historic night, watching people dance, hug, and scream throughout the streets for hours on end.
Naples, a city always railed against by the rest of Italy, has an incredibly proud population. But on this night, the sense of ‘Don’t fuck with us. We’re Neapolitan,’ was palpable.
I’d seen some dangerous characters walking the streets during my month or so there, as it really is a city with a strong Camorra presence — so I was always careful not to offend any bad-lookin’ dudes, and kept my head on a swivel, even in broad daylight, as friends there advised me to do.
A few beers in, and with a full bladder, I asked a guy from the group where I could take a piss. The bars were overflowing, so he pointed me down a side street and nodded at one of the walls — as if to say “That’s a perfect spot over there.”
So of course, I went. And as the piss started to flow, I stood there relaxed for a second, until I felt something heavy smash onto my back. A bit wobbled and with my pants still hanging below my waste I turned around to see Simona and her friends at the bottom of the street, standing in shock. Simona pointed to a small man, probably in his mid 40s, and (ironically for a Chicago Bears fan like myself) wearing a Green Bay Packers hat, although he probably had no idea what or who the Packers are.
This guy had literally thrown a table onto my back, which I realized as soon as I saw it lying next to the spot I had been attempting to empty my bladder. A rage came over me and I angrily walked towards the guy. He stepped back in fear, and pulled a knife from his pocket.
Immediately, Mr. Green Bay’s wife rushed onto the street, began screaming at him, and about 10 guys followed from the row houses surrounding us. Simona jumped onto me telling me to run. Luckily one of the 10 guys spoke some English and approached me saying, “Man, I’m so sorry. I saw that. The guy is nuts, but please don’t make any moves. He is part of the Camorra here, and they will literally come and kill you.”
Obviously, I took his advice and left the scene of the piss. For the rest of the night I was a bit off, and I’m not sure I’d ever felt so lonely and powerless.
Maybe that small street was a Camorra stronghold. Maybe it was this guy’s sense of pride after having just won the Scudetto and seeing some blonde, foreign dude pissing on his city’s streets (although the streets of Napoli are always littered with trash anyway). I’m guessing it was a combination of both. Whatever it was, I understood I was in the wrong.
The next afternoon, my back entirely bruised up, and my left shoulder frozen due the damage of that damn table, I chatted with some of the sportsbook guys down the street from the hostel. I told them the story of what happened, in broken Italian and some English. A few of them consoled me and said they wish they had been there to have my back. A few of them laughed and shook their head. One looked me straight in the eye and said with a knowing smirk, “Amico, non pisciare per le strade di Napoli.”
In English, “Buddy, don’t piss in the streets of Naples.”
