london carnival

people in london know how to carnival...

notting hill has been for two days assaulted by tourists going mad and dancing in the streets, and a large square of this neighboroughood was the centre of the biggest audio-systems you've ever seen
racks of 10, 20 30 speakers tied together to get a constant drone (if you were walking at some distance) or to make your nose bleeding and your chest bumping (if you were crazy enough to get too close to any of these
locations). Children are dancing inside the trucks hosting deejay screaming on a loop "yooooooooo!!!! are you haaaappppppyyyyy????!!?!? letsSTARThereweGOOOO": one of these children was getting sick on the street for this, and the mother was upset because she couldnt dance and showup anymore (i think that there's a competition for the "nuttest mother of the carnival", and she was clearly winning)

what's also interesting though is what happens around the event, thousands of policemen/women deployed everywhere, helicopters high in the sky, and of course fights in the streets after dozens of beer cans

the most dangerous event you can have in an italian carnival is getting hit by candies, trown by the trucks full of questionable, typical italian masks (if you're lucky you're hit by maria grazia cucinotta or valeria marini, if you're not, maybe it's berlusconi)

but if you feel risky enough you can still try and throw some oranges in the beutiful ivrea carnival, where people throw oranges for three days, in a parade of trucks with horses. The smell of squashed oranges and escrements of the horses is something i'll remember forever