Haha, you're welcome. It's not a period of my life I get to talk about that often! Was a great experience, though, and I have some very fond memories of my stays there. The thing is, the mafia in the south of Italy - but particularly in Naples - infiltrated everything. So the people in positions of local authority making decisions, even seemingly trivial ones, will most likely be 'connected'. From what I gather reading about it all and the odd catch up with old friends is that since the national government crackdown on the mob things have kind of gotten worse, as the old power structures that kept the city working and running have been eroded and left a void - hence all the bored youths and idiot Ultras causing mayhem, for example.
Another little story to show what it felt like there. When I was about 17 my mates and I went out to buy some weed and ended up buying it from some Turkish guys at a beach near to where we were staying (yeah, I know, but we were young and stupid). Smoked it that night and a couple of the lads got really, really ill. We told someone who I guess then told the owner of the beach (big hairy guy we called 'Mitch' because he looked like the Hasselhoff Baywatch character). In the early hours of the morning I was asleep and was awoken by some popping sounds. Turns out that Mitch and his posse had gone to 'deal' with the Turks and got into a gun fight, with the Turks escaping on a speedboat. I wasn't around for it but my friend said one of Mitch's group contacted him with words to the effect of "You buy from us, and only us, got it?". Really shook me up.
