As a teenager I would sometimes go for a walk in the afternoon with a couple friends from school. We would walk around Pescara’s city centre, just chatting and pretending we had a chance of pulling girls. (Never happened.)
Occasionally, one of my friends would suddenly look away from wherever he was looking at, and staring to the ground he would whisper “Don’t look to your left!”, in a low voice but with some urgency and the slightest hint of panic.
Of course, when someone tells you that, you can’t help but looking, and sure enough, across the street, there they were: a group of three or four pigri staring at us.
Pigri is the plural of pigro, and pigro is the slang word, used in Pescara alone, to define something that is found all over the country. In other parts of Italy he might be known as a coatto, tamarro, gabibbo etc, but they all mean the same thing: the rough kid from the rough neighbourhood looking for trouble.
A pigro is usually quite easy to spot. If he has a Vespa, the engine has been modified to sound like a Mig fighter jet. If he has a car, he would be revving the engine every time he stops in traffic, and then leave an inch-deep skid mark when he goes again.
The windows of the car would be down at all times, and blasting from the car you’d hear the most atrocious Neapolitan music (music sung in Neapolitan dialect), at a volume so loud people in Croatia could hear it.
You should know that, with the exception of Naples itself, Neapolitan music is deeply loathed everywhere else in Italy. And for good reason. It’s complete shite. And yet pigri seem to really like it (and they want everyone else to know that).
Apart from that, there is really nothing specific about a pigro that identifies him as such, at least not in the way of fashion. (Sadly, back then mullets and gold chains were not the prerogative of pigri alone.)
Somehow you just knew a pigro when you saw one. And it worked both ways, because pigri always knew you were not one of them, and that automatically made you a target.
In Pescara, pigri come mainly from two neighbourhoods at the opposite edges of town, Zanni and Rancitelli, where most of the city’s social housing is concentrated (the infamous case popolari), and the places to go if you wanted to buy heroin.
For a pigro, coming from either Zanni or Rancitelli is a source of pride, a badge of honour. They would say “I’m from Zanni” or “I’m from Rancitelli” not as a matter of fact but in a way that you were supposed to shit yourself just hearing that.
For some arcane reason, you’re not supposed to look at a pigro straight into his eyes. A bit like Medusa of Greek mythology. Gazing directly at a pigro will, without fail, prompt him to come over and ask two questions: “What are you looking at? Are you looking at me?”
These two questions seem to be very important for a pigro because they keep cropping up every time you make eye contact. (Maybe they keep asking them because no one ever thought of just answering “yes”. Who knows, maybe they’d be happy with that.)
Even if you managed to avoid eye contact, the pigro would still come over and demand that you gave him a cigarette. When you offered him one, the pigro would then help himself to six or seven. (Why not?)
As a teenager in Pescara in the 1980s you understood that running into pigri was just a grim fact of life, something inevitable that you just came to accept. Like pollution, or girls who don’t like oral sex.
But at the same time you knew that once you grew up you didn’t have to worry about them anymore. That was one of the few perks of being middle-aged. The silver lining in being an old fart. Yes, you become slower, fatter and bald, but at least you could freely gaze around, finally.
So you can imagine my surprise when, just a few years ago, it happened all over again. I was in Pescara and I was walking back home from the comic bookshop (some things never change), when this kid stood in my way and demanded a cigarette.
I couldn’t understand. What the hell was going on? I was twenty years older than him! It was always understood that pigri only target people their own age (plus or minus a few years). Didn’t he know that?
Didn’t he read the manual, or the monthly newsletter (Il Corriere del Pigro), or go to the annual conference in Naples, or do whatever it is that makes sure that all pigri behave exactly the same way nationwide? (Which they do.)
This sort of things just isn’t supposed to happen. I mean, what next? Italian policemen being courteous? Politicians actually caring about people instead of just bankers and big multi-national companies? What’s the world coming to?
