As an aside I was in Apulia last week and on the way back to the airport stopped in Bari for a couple of hours. My family are from Palermo so i love the grittier cities in Italy & the bar we ended up sitting outside around midday was pretty edgy.

It was opposite a fairly run down housing block on edge of the historic centre. Some clearly drug-addled prostitute was standing nearby in an archway surrounded by a few guys who seemed to be going repeatedly in an out of a nearby grocers. After a while a guy with face tattoos cycled up and gave the woman a bag or something and she scuttled off. This presumed drug dealer hung around outside the bar for a bit before 3 massive men (height as well as muscles) showed up and started causing a bit of a scene. The were shouting in the face of the face-tattooed guy, although it seemed to be somehow slightly motivational rather than just out and out threatening (i couldn't make out the slang). Meanwhile a group of kids (no older than 13) were going in an out of the bar, continually bringing a battered old shoe box in and out the shop (drugs / money?).

Just then some older very average looking guy (5'10, 60ish, average build) came wandering down out of the housing block and the whole atmosphere changed. He just sat down on a chair opposite the bar but there was obviously some juice about him as all the massive, loudly attention-seeking thugs who'd been swaggering around the street bellowing at each other moments all immediately settled down or wandered off. And i mean stopped mid-sentence when i say settled down. The older guy just sat there happily chatting to a couple of little kids who'd been playing nearby, and he had absolutely no air of menace about him whatsoever. But he obviously must have had some juice to get that kind of reaction.

Anyway, there's no really point to this story other than i found the scene fairly interesting and thought I'd share it!