NYCVE - Italian American Magazine - Usa » 2008

American sport 24 hours a day 7 days a week with the new satellite channel NASN – North American Sports Network, started thanks to the agreement signed between ESPN and SKY Italy.

Perhaps is just the desire to get away from the usual run of the mill sports that every day we watch on the Italian television screens, perhaps it is the desire to discover something that smells new or perhaps the desire of dreaming a little of the famous “American Dream”. A sofa, a television and a satellite channel that starting April 8 will open the window on the North American sport world: MLB baseball, NHL hockey, college football and basketball, Nascar and Indy Car Racing. Plus, MLS soccer, Texas Hold’em poker, and some extreme sport and horse racing. Full Story

Current Affairs

USA General Consulate in Milan Weygandt pays a visit to the NYCVE’s editorial office

The American General Consulate in Milan, Daniel Weygandt, has paid a much appreciated and surprising visit to our magazine and to the home of Mazzanti’ s Editors.

An unexpected visit crowns the commitment by NYCVE in bringing United States and Italy closer. Last March 27 the American general consulate Daniel Weygandt has in fact been guest of our magazine, part of a tour which has made stops at the main cultural areas in Venice. After spending some time at the Guggenheim Collection and visited Palazzo Grassi, the new USA general Consulate for Northern Italy has completed its own visit to the Laggon City by meeting the editors Andrea and Carlo Mazzanti, the writers and designers of the Italian-American magazine NYCVE, which for the last five years has cooperated with the American embassy and consulate. Full Story

Business

McDonald’s versus Starbucks, the coffee war is set!

McDonald’s declares war to Starbucks. The very famous take-out coffee in the green brand paper cup could be overshadowed and ousted by the more economic McCafè. On the Italian style eatery will be concentrated the strategy of the fast-food giant.

McDonald is gearing up to conquer Starbucks’ market share. The fast-food giant has globally launched the McCafè and the top management of Starbucks is starting to quiver and feel the pinch. For some time the chain of cappuccino, latte, long coffees, espresso and tea, whose cups have been seen held in the hands of many managers, actors and common people throughout the crowded streets of New York, could be replaced by those red white and yellow’s of McDonald’s.
Starting now, and for the next few months, the strategy of the ‘Big Mac’ group will be to couple each McDonald’s eating outlet with a McCafè, whose interiors will be entirely reminiscent of an elegant Italian café. Full Story

Dossier

The sense of fairness and golden salaries

How does one go about reconciling the limits of the top managers’ star-high salaries? A criterion exists, and it is the one of assuming the risk. But Italy is not ready yet. Less self-righteousness and more meritocracy. Paying due attention on the stock options and contractual clauses.

Italy is not yet ready for corporate meritocracy. Public opinion, and in some cases justified, is outraged about the salaries of the top managers. Actually though, in business top remuneration is the fuel that achieves top results. It is what teaches the United States, for ever a breeding ground for meritocracy. However, what’s needed are some more refined and technically flawless contractual clauses, which would keep under control the opportunistic attitudes inspired by stock options and high added value. The analysis is by Giovanni Costa, full professor of Corporate Organization at the faculty of Economy at the University of Padova, which describes the psychology of the career bound top managers, thus making a point if favor of the intellectual human wealth, which must be always well paid. If full respect of the sense of equity. Full Story

Culture

Those good Veneto writers!

Ten questions for Romolo Bugaro and Roberto Ferrucci.

Romolo Bugaro, Roberto Ferrucci, Marco Franzoso and Tiziano Scarpa: are four Venetian writers, their age range between 45 and 47, together they have supervised the collection of texts ‘I nuovi sentimenti’, the new sentiments, published by Marsilio Editors. They look at the world with inquisitiveness, but also with criticality. Seems that their thoughts go beyond the pages of the novel, beyond the writing itself. The same ten questions posed to each of them, starting from Bugaro and Ferrucci, just to get to know them a bit more. Full Story

Culture

Architecture beyond just the building

Beyond just great buildings and communication through cement. The 11th Internatioanl Architecture Show of Venice, directed by the American Aaron Betsky, will propose new ideas-prospectuses.

The American director Aaron Betsky has been entrusted with the task of conceiving and organize, in few months, the 11th International Show of Architecture in Venice, which will be called “Out There. Architecture Beyond Building”, and which will be opened to the public from September 14 through November 23 2008. The exhibit was outlined and characterized sitting in an Amalfi restaurant last December 24 2007 before a plate of linguine with seafood during the first meeting between the American curator and the newly elected president Paolo Baratta. Full Story

Dossier

Waterloo, the stock option and manager in pullover

A manager is paid to achieve results. If he or she fails, they are paid anyway, and to boot, even more. A journey in the most evident contradiction in the global corporate business.

Change of government in Italy and the waltz of jobs in the key spots in the Italian corporate sector. The tricolor trading desk of the super-managers throbs like the Brent’s price in Wall Street. The climbing and descending in the corporate ladders of those in the race to the highest salaries, most convenient stock options and endless list of fringe benefits, so outrageous that the reimbursements for a Congressman of the First Republic would pale in comparison. Full Story

New York Itinerary

New York’s underground cathedral

The City Hall Station, with its elegant architectural details, was planned to be New York’s own subway showcase. Abandoned in 1945, the station is an amazing mirage for those venturing-out past the end of the line.

Below the ground of City Hall Park, at few yards from the offices of the Mayor of the Big Apple, is the most charming “ghost” subway station in the world. It is the old City Hall Station, open to the public in 1904 and gone out of service at the end of 1945. Perfectly conserved, the subway’s station stands today as a relic of the monumental architecture of the early 20th Century. Conceived as a “representative” terminal, an ideal backdrop for the official celebrations, City Hall Station was supposed to symbolize at the same time the grandeur and modernity of the first New York’s own subway. Full Story

Current Affairs

An all venetian legend

The Harry’s Bar between the sub-prime discount and the past with Hemingway

Some say that one’s own fate is written in the stars, but there are also those who have their destiny written in a name. 76 years old, one less than his “historical” bar, and with the same stamina of staying always in step with the times, swinging between tradition and future. Legends are born also like this, from a father named Giuseppe who calls his own son Arrigo in honor of the American friend Harry and the bar in question is exactly the Harry’s Bar, which had just been opened and which, since 2001, is a National Monument.
Son of a man who was the first Italian to be featured on the cover of the New Yorker and who had as an endorser a certain Ernest Hemingway, Arrigo Cipriani tells us his story sitting at a table and enjoying dishes of the Venetian cuisine. An empire of restaurants: 8 in New York, 1 in London, 1 in Hong Kong, 2 of near future opening in Los Angeles and Miami. Full Story

Culture

Lady Art

Helen, Arabella, Edith and the other ladies in art. The American collectors, their tendencies, ambitions and eccentricity told in a convention organized at the University Ca’ Foscari and Frick Collection of New York.

Often they were wives of very rich men, merchants, bankers, and tycoons of whom they utilized the moneys for apparently frivolous reasons. Some were beautiful, strong-willed and arrogant. Others were generous and unselfish and wanted to remain anonymous. All, though, had in common a burning passion for art and desire to own it: they were the great female collectors, who started to make a name for themselves in mid-19th century in the United States of America. Full Story