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Soccer unleashes enormous passions. But it also provides a relatively harmless space for political bantering. An old clothes vendor, commenting on Mayor Rutelli's known support for the Lazio team, growled that the electorate would turn him into the mayor of Frosinone insteadj29 Once I was speaking with a belligerently left-wing and pro-immigrant friend, a bar proprietor, when a right-wing restaurateur entered. The bar proprietor an nounced provocatively that the other man was the shame of the quartiere because was a supporter of the Lazio team.30 Not to be outdone, the other man responded that Roma was the team of the lowest social class-doubtless an allusion to Monti's "popular" status, and amusing in part because this man is decidedly local and speaks predominantly in Romanesco. The bar proprietor then made a rude gesture at what he thought was the restaurateur's car, only to discover that someone else was driving it! The restaurateur ignored this gaffe, simply responding-in what is an interesting attempt to claim a special form of marginality-that the Lazio supporters were "few but fine." The exchange remained light and cordial throughout. Roma enthusiasts admitted that they were pleased that the Lazio team-rather than a team from some other part of the country-had won the national tournament in aooo, but would have preferred to carry it off for themselves in that jubilee year.

The practical problems of the district require other idioms of interaction and organization. The street associations were often created to address particular issues. The Via Baccina group, for example, which ended by coalescing with an artisans' group of much wider geographical range and eventually was absorbed by the Monti Social Network, began as an initiative by concerned citizens to revive the languishing district market, down around from thirty or more active stalls in its heyday to a mere three or four now. An attempt to get artisans to join the food sellers in these spaces attracted some generic interest but produced no new leases. The market remains largely deserted.

On the other hand, the group spent an inordinate amount of time bickering about its name, much to the irritation of some of the more practical members. One vocal member alienated the younger artisans because of his right-wing background and his pompous delivery; two other members, a goldsmith and a bookseller, protested that when others claimed that the association would be "apolitical" they were already making a political choice-a fine point, perhaps, but one they were prepared to argue down to the last moment against those who wishes the association's constitution to include that very claim. As the bookseller pointed out, there is a world of difference between being non-party-political (apartitico), which the association could reasonably claim to be, and truly apolitical (apolitico). This group was especially complex in that it brought together a remarkably diverse group of people: intellectuals, merchants, artisans, artists, and retired bureaucrats. Yet in the end it was probably its riotous complexity that enabled it to play a formative and transitional role in the emergence of the most successful district-wide initiative to date, the Monti Social Network.

There were many other such small associations, each covering little more than a single street. One of these, in a little side street off Via Cavour that was connected with another road leading down to the Colosseum, had a fairly typical history. A former journalist, who had been asked to lead the group, described its goal as "defending the identity of Via del Cardello, to defend it against illegal parking." Parking was indeed a major concern, not so much because the presence of so many cars undermined the antiquarian feel of the little subdistrict, but because the city police were constantly fining the local shopkeepers rather than those outsiders who dared to park here. The ex-journalist, who perhaps did not realize that