It’s very on-trend to hate Jason Micallef. In fact, I’m feeling a bit left out of the current hate-fest taking place online where everybody kvetches about how the chairman of the V18 Foundation is going to drag us highly-literate and culture-loving sophisticates to the cultural dark ages.
This collective despair has been brought about by Micallef’s now infamous ‘Paceville comment’. Going by what people were saying, it seemed like Micallef had declared that Paceville was going to be transported lock, stock and barrel to Strait Street.
The V-18 Foundation would take special care to ensure that a good number of skull-cracking racist bouncers, vomiting teenagers, lap dancers and drug pushers would be lugged off from Paceville to Strait Street. Once these Paceville essentials were installed in Valletta, the authorities would pepper the mix with a couple of ineffectual policemen to look on indulgently while pre-pubescent children waved vodka bottles around.
Micallef would personally see that a thumping decibel-shattering sound track accompanied this Paceville Mark II scenario. He would then retire to some suitable vantage point to laugh evilly (perhaps stroking a white cat in true James Bond villain mode) at the success of his plan to obliterate any form of culture from the capital – especially from that cradle of civilisation and elegance that is Strait Street.
From the howls online, that is the impression I got. However, when I followed the clip of the interview with Micallef, the reality was much less exciting and rather different from the sex, drugs and violent bouncers’ scenario being bounced around online. Micallef said that he wanted Valletta to continue to appeal to young people and that he had seen signs of life (night life) in Strait Street.
He went on to say that he hoped Strait Street would become the Paceville of Valletta – and here he clarified his statement – in the sense that it would attract more young people to choose it as an entertainment destination. That was it. Basically, a repetition of what politicians have been saying for ages – the need to regenerate Valletta and somehow stir up some interest in the capital in different generations.
Don’t turn it [Valletta] into Paceville but make it as popular as Paceville
It’s true that Micallef is guilty of the worst PR sin ever – giving detractors a suitably juicy sound bite to misinterpret (and putting Paceville in the equation), but I don’t see anything wrong with trying to make Valletta a cross-generational draw. For Valletta is dying, and despite the one-off successes (numberwise at least) of Notte Bianca and New Year’s Eve celebrations, it has been dying for some time.
For various reasons, the number of people living in Valletta has decreased dramatically. There are few young families to inject new life into the city. Many of the houses are either too impractical to live in or too expensive to refurbish and maintain, with not many residences falling into the affordable middle ground for families to live in.
Yes, there are the restored palazzi inhabited by high-end expats and being transformed into boutique hotels, but these are largely tourist-territory. They’re not homes to residents who live and pass on the legacy of Valletta as a thriving, vibrant city instead of a theme park for the Knights of Malta. And although Valletta is still a commercial centre, we shouldn’t bank too much on this aspect. The rise of online shopping, cut-throat competition and those horrific rents may be making retail less profitable.
So what are we going to do to ensure Valletta doesn’t turn into another silent city – just another pit stop for ‘mordi e fuggi’ tourists?
It’s not easy to find a solution which is suitable for all. Valletta’s history makes it an ideal culture centre, but it must be a living museum with an entertainment element. If this element consists in cafes, restaurants, quirky shops, and hang-outs in what is now a run-down road, what’s wrong with that?
Yes, it has to be done tastefully and ensuring that long-suffering Valletta residents don’t have to bear a greater burden, but we have to move away from the idea that Valletta is just to be looked at and not lived in and enjoyed. In order to this we’re going to have to find a way of ensuring Valletta has cross-generational appeal. Don’t turn it into Paceville but make it as popular as Paceville.
cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt