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Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
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"Rio de Janeiro" directly translated means "January River", which sounds so much less exotic. It is like "Antonio Banderas" in English is just "Tony Flags". Lackluster.
Rio is without a doubt one of the most beautiful cities in the world. In fact, I can't really think of a a more dramatically situated city, but its beauty, like mine, is only from a distance. Is that how it should be measured? I was walking downtown with a local and she commented to me on how much she loved the downtown. This was after we had just stepped around a couple of homeless people on the disintegrating sidewalk and the stench of urine permeated the air. Really?
I love San Francisco and I guess it's the same way there, but I don't wax poetic about downtown.
I get the impression that Cariocas (residents of Rio) see the omnipresent poverty, homelessness and begging and the ubiquitous smell of urine as an intractable problem and it's easiest to just say "Rio is a city of contrasts" and just move on, concentrating on the positives.
I didn't stay for Carnival, but I felt OK about it after having seen this five minute video of my Governor visiting Rio long ago. It is funny and painful to watch at the same time. You have to see it. Trust me on this.
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Me on Praia Vermelha (Red Beach)
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Copacabana beach. The guy who took this photo I randomly ran into months later--but we didnt know it until he saw the photo on my website several weeks afterward!
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Mural near the tram for Cristo Redentor
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 Racist water bottle in my hostel
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 Anti-USA imperialist lexicon
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 Two girls at a rally
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 Halloween is satanism!
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 I just like this photo
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These three pix are from the Selaron Steps in a dicey neighborhood near the Arcos de Lapa (a few months later during carnival everyone was robbed in a hostel down the street from here.)
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 View of Pao de Acucar (Sugarloaf) from Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer)
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 Another view looking down at Leblon and Ipanema
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Beef!
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 Plane taking off from Rio's domestic airport
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View of Pao de Acucar from Flamengo beach
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 On the airstrip of Rio´s domestic airport
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 The Girls of Ipanema--the fun stopped when they saw me with a camera.
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Ipanema beach soccer volleyball
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 Garbage on the way to Cristo Redentor
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View looking down from Pao de Acucar
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 Can you believe this man is still single?!?!?!?!
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A very Brazilian photo
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 Maracana Stadium
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Maracana the next day
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When USA had the soccer World Cup in 1994, Brazil was based near where I lived in the San Francisco area. The practices were open to the public and I always went to them. It was quite a sight. A group of people was always playing drums. Men wearing large yellow and green wigs and too young to be missing teeth were dealing tickets. Statuesque, big-haired women of the kind you don't normally see in straight-laced Silicon Valley wore tight clothes and preened, dancing to the drums regardless of anything happening on the field. It was a big samba party.
I have been to soccer games in the Bonbonera in Buenos Aires and a World Cup qualifier in Bogota, so I am not naive as to the intensity of South American soccer, but I thought Brazil would be something different and fun.
It's not. It can be ugly. It brings out everyone's irrationality. I don't even recognize them as Brazilians as soon as they enter a stadium. I can see why many people don't like it and would never consider going to a game. In 5 days in Rio I saw 4 games in 3 stadiums. I didn't stand with the tight masses in the crazies section, and yet the "normal" people got worked up in a frenzy in a way that I never saw anything outside the stadium from Brazilians. "Puta" is high on everyone's vocabulary. It's a curious thing to scream at a soccer player, but I didn't try to engage anyone in a discussion about it. (As evidence of this irrationality, when I was in Sao Paulo, Palmeiras' own coach was beat up at the airport by the team's own fans and he had to coach the next games with his arm in a sling.)
Brazilian soccer must have a serious talent drain since the big money is in Europe. I recognized some names, but they are considered old and finishing up their careers here. I was surprised to see how rough and tumble the games could be. Spectators don't like a lot of dribbling, either, preferring touch passes and movement.
Brazilians are remarkably unfazed and unagitated no matter the circumstances--except inside a soccer stadium. I had two examples of this when I went to a Vasco soccer game in the distant Rio suburb of Sao Januario. The neighborhood, not a bastion of wealth, could perhaps be described in an uplifting, PC way as "full of local flavor". I took a slow bus at rush hour from Botafogo and the driver was all over the place, swerving to avoid and also to aggressively merge. Plus, his bus kept stalling at inopportune times, such as in the middle of intersections. After 15 near-accidents and finally at the stadium, I was a bundle of nerves while he was calmly telling me where to go.
After the game I realized there was only one single bus line to get back to town and so I walked in what I hoped would be the general direction of a metro station. I stopped to ask two men on the street having a discussion. One said he would help me in a moment and it was then that I realized that they had just had a minor car accident. They were exchanging information and then afterward, nonplussed, the man offered me a ride to town. I was surprised.
In USA a man would not be offering a ride to a stranger in a bad neighborhood at night and he'd especially not be in the mood to deal with a foreigner with an accent after a fender bender. In fact, they'd be wondering if they reloaded their gun.
I went to Maracana stadium for 2 matches, but what interested me most was the subsidized meals the city serves under the stadium on weekdays to the public, just US 40 cents for lunch and US 15 cents for breakfast. A security guard was telling me about it and I was in disbelief. It is like a soup kitchen and has a more raucous atmosphere (eg, it wasn't a good place to take photos). I ate there. The food was fine. Portions were big and dessert, fruit and drink were included.
Maracana lives off its famous name. Intrinsically there isn’t much to say for it. It used to hold about 200,000 people, but in its present incarnation it holds less than half that and is oddly designed. It has a shallow field level where the cheap seats are (US$9) and a huge, more expensive upper level where the hardcore fans sit (US$18). It is going to be closed and renovated again soon as it will host the 2014 World Cup final.
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A tale of two crowds. Botafogo on top and Vasco on the bottom. The only thing that can be said for Botafogo is I like their cheer ("Bo! Ta! Foooooooo Gooooooo!") and my hostel was there! I never got a good explanation as to why the Botafogo game was so empty. Tickets were crazy cheap, about $2-4 for most seats. The Engenhao stadium, said to be one of Latin America´s newest and best, was also said to be in an awful neighborhood, but a metro line ran right to it.
Vasco´s fans would go en masse even if their stadium was in a rock quarry.
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I was on a tram going up to the Santa Teresa neighborhood and we had to stop twice because cars were parked on the tracks and yet no one freaked out. The first time, when the first driver finally sheepishly came to move his car a good 15 minutes later, he received an ovation. In America, he might be heaped with verbal abuse--at best.
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Brazil
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