“When I meet someone who shakes their head and says that Bologna is no longer the buzzing and anti-conformist place of old, I would like to ask them in a fit of pique: “Why, because you are? Do you still have the same smile and light hearted feeling you had when you were twenty?” “If I want to tell you about what Bologna means to those of us that grew up there, I must first return to the protective shadow of the long portico at the foot of the hills I knew as a child, when Vasco and Bologna were also younger. Then the names and surnames will materialise on the paper in the exact order of appearance they have had in this story.” Enrico Brizzi talks about Bologna, his ideals, his heroes and his times. The years of mass disengagement from politics, of rock, football, the angry years of the Vita Spericolata, suspended between Baudelaire, Boccaccio and the corner bar. Then the years of writing, that unexpected time in which anything could happen, while a unique Bologna developed and consumed itself— pleasure loving and a little matronly.