9th FRANCESCO’s tale: “BAD BOYS”

What was the best summer of your life?

4 Italian 19 years old friends, 4 passionate music lovers, 4 backpacks, 4 interrail tickets, a limited budget and limitless expectations.

I remember the four of us conquering train compartments and transforming them into little clubs where our trustworthy portable music cassette system was constantly playing grunge songs and??where smoking cigarettes was mandatory.

We were traversing Europe without a specific scope other than living and we felt we were the coolest. I still think we were.

BAGNA was the leader. Take Eddie Vedder’s style, Billy Corgan’s face, shaker them with a bit of Liam Gallagher’s attitude and you’ll have a tall handsome rockstar with long wavy hair and a killer smile. Yes, that mother fxxxer used to win the most beautiful girl in the club just with a smile.

KARRA was the crazy one, an expert in the art of breaking unwritten social laws, brave, always positive, always happy, a fantastic dancer, a singer, always ready to do the unexpected or to say what everyone is thinking and absolutely shall not be said. A sort of Robbie Williams, but with a good soul.

NICO. I know Nico since I was 4 years old and he has always been impossible to be completely understood. So curious, so knowledgeable, so visionary and always against the current, Nico is an unstoppable experimenter constantly projected in the future. The Prodigy was his favorite band and Nico has been certainly the first one in Italy getting the Keith Flint’s style nose piercing, of course with immense joy of his parents.

Before I said that BAGNA was the leader, but not for NICO. NICO follows his own rationality only.

And then there was me.?

Summer of 1999 marked the end of high school and beginning of a new life. I remember it like a limbo where contrasting feelings where battling in my head and body.?

I was free with my friends, free to experience the reality of the world rather than the one described by our professors, but at the same time adult life was knocking at the door with new questions.

Who do I want to become?

A biologist, an engineer or maybe a dentist, they say they earn damn good money!

Does she really love me?

They also say I should do what I like, maybe I should study veterinary, I really like my german shepherd and my cats.

I love her, but she is not here and I don’t think she is completely faithful to me, is she the right one?

Maybe I should follow my instinct and become an architect or a construction engineer like Davide’s father. He’s always well dressed, he plays tennis and he transformed an old barn into an amazing villa with 10 meters high ceilings. I would love to be like him, but am I good enough at drawing??

I don’t think that she loves me in the way I love her, shall I leave her??

After 10 days of traveling I found the answers to my questions.

We were in Paris, it was afternoon, we were strolling around in search of adventure but it was hot and we decided to find refreshment in a pub.

BAGNA, KARRA and NICO started playing pool, a game that bores me to death in maximum 20 min, so I finished my beer and I left.?

I found a strange interesting sloping square where people where sitting on the floor so I did the same and I lighted up a cigarette to keep me company.

What a strange building they are building here. It’s really very strange.?

All these scaffolding and nobody is working on it, how come??

How many colored pipes, how many joints, how much metal, glass, what will it be? A factory? A factory in the city centre of Paris?! Wierd!! I‘ll light up another cigarette.

I got it, it must be a basket arena, I don’t know what all these blue and green pipes are for but this is the only plausible solution.

Let’s ask someone. That girl is holding a Lonely Planet guide and from her classy posture she must be French.?

“Excuse me, may I ask you a piece of information? Which kind of building are they building here?”

“What do you mean exactly?”

“I mean, will it be a factory or a sport arena?”

The girl smiled at me and I noticed her freckles and her green eyes:

“Boy, this is the?Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou,?opened in 1977.?Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano won the architecture international competition held in 1971, they were young and their project was selected from 681 entries.”

“wow!”

“And do you know what Renzo Piano has recently said about that competition?”

“Go ahead, please.”

“He said: “we were just BAD BOYS who wanted to change the world””

“My name is Francesco, what’s your name?”

CULTURE IS POWER???

BAGNA Guglielmo Bagnacani, NICO Nicola Iori , KARRA Alessandro Carapezzi , STECCA Francesco Spaggiari