The Diagonikals stick it to Palermo!

“Palermo, dark window of European fantasies” we would declaim, were we not repulsed by romanticism. On a Saturday night we witnessed the city metamorphosize into a surrealist saturnalia, each plaza a coded gathering point. At 2 a.m. in the crumbling Piazza Garafello we sat down by the medieval fountain, a 2,50 euro bottle of beer in hand and watched thick fumes of grilled meat mix with lurid disco lights and raise towards the top of glamorously ruined old houses, surrounded by the swarm of 200 people in various states of intoxication dancing, chatting, throwing shapes, rolling, smoking, eating, drinking, shouting, playing with the fat street dogs, grinding to the hip-hop and techno beats blasted out by the dj’s, checking out each other, making out, collapsing, laughing, strutting and munching on sweets. Mesmerizing.