Two impressions and one observation from a summer trip to the city that I used to live in:

1) At the hostel that I’ve been tending to stay in that has cheap single rooms – I could stay with friends, but my friends who all have room are in bad locations, and my friends who are all in good locations don’t really have room – there was a group (family?) of (Italian) tourists at the (free) continental breakfast spread in the kitchen in the morning, as I could tell from snatches of their conversation that were reaching me, as well as their modest but put-together style on all of them. And, at the very end of the meal, the (older gentleman) and the (dad guy?) and the (mom woman?) slowly sidled up to the wall, and each slyly took their phones from their pockets, and photographed something on it above the wall-radiator there.

After bussing my dishes, then, I walked by there to look, and there on the wall was a very small framed sign with a single saying in (English) that said --

YOUR MOTHER IS NOT HERE

PLEASE CLEAN UP YOUR MESS

-- and I can only surmise that signs like that simply do not exist in (Italy), and to them it must be a burst of incisive analysis, and wit.

I wonder if they put that on their Facebook profiles, or something.

2) In one part of the downtown area, the amount of (Latin American) (migrants) was breathtaking, with at least 30-40 people out by this intersection where a temporary shelter had been set up in a former hotel, with people out on the street by the hotel, and sitting out on the curb and on little chairs all set up all up and down the street towards and even right by this 7-11 like half a block away down a side street.

3) My one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the sister of the sister-brother pair) was saying how she had been reading that in one other (major metropolitan) city (recent) (Latin American) (migrants) were getting free access passes to the city check-outtable bike system there, and she was a bit enraged since “these people just show up and get that,” but it’s not the same case for the poor people who’ve been living here forever.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she was like, “I think everyone should have housing and bikes, but you can’t do that without trying to help the people who were here first.”

. . .