Alcohol and the city

NoLo, an acronym for ‘North of Loreto’. is the way a semi-peripheral area of Milan has been recently renamed by a group of new inhabitants, middle-class students or workers between the thirties and the forties attracted by affordable rents that triggered an upscaling process in an area with a previously bad reputation (Novak & Andriola, 2008). Due to this sudden transformation two co-existent stratified visibilities are still visible (Brighenti, 2010): the first is that of an unsafe neighbourhood devoured by urban blight, threatened by drunken people that when the sun goes down swarm through the streets bringing alcoholism and drug addiction; the other is that of a growing trendy scene of cool bars serving craft beers and cocktails. Alcohol, with its containments, leaks and overflows is a protagonist of both visibilities with two evident, opposite directions: in the first it is an intoxicating poison, in the second a ‘liquid pleasure’ (Burnett, 2001).