Sunday, September 28, 2008

Tchau, Santa Teresa

Cariocas pride themselves on their “most honest approximation” of Montmartre, the neighborhood of Santa Teresa. Unlike the more touristy beach neighborhoods of Copacabana and Ipanema, Santa Teresa lacks sand and is perched just above the city’s gritty historic center. Rio’s “bohemian” (no, those quotes are not ironic—more on that later) music scene, Lapa, is within spitting distance of the street car’s trek across the remains of the city’s aqueducts dating from the mid 1700s. The street car, known as a bonde, rides the narrow aqueducts for only a short time before it arrives in the lower streets of Santa Teresa. The iconic, yellow bonde (only about 60cents, cheap!) offers the mostly Brazilian and European tourists a delightful respite from first world rules and regulations regarding personal safety. While traversing the aqueduct, French limbs and Brazilian heads protrude from the bonde’s every orifice just one too sweaty palm away from a deadly drop into a pool of vomit and urine marinating in Lapa’s “bohemian” streets. Your fearless faux carioca felt obliged to ride the boards at least once on one of her several visits to the neighborhood. She found it remarkable that more people aren’t dashed to the ground. It would seem that fear is a powerful glue.

After crossing the aqueduct, the bonde begins its ascent up the hill where children jump on and off the moving vehicle. On one trip, the faux carioca seemed to be the only person to notice that there were children making sport of holding onto the lower bits of the bonde and dragging their flip-flopped feet on the street. While your delicate adventurer has enjoyed her share of idiotic pastimes, she failed to see what was so entertaining about being dragged beside a relatively slow-moving streetcar. Fortunately the children had the decency not to inconvenience the other riders by getting themselves crushed beneath the clattering metal wheels.

Santa Teresa itself is made quaint by its steep hills, meandering cobbled streets, and lovely colonial architecture. There is not much in the way of commerce here, but there are a surprising number of restaurants for such a residential neighborhood. Cuisine ranges from indigenous to Asian fusion to regional Brazilian. A tight budget meant dining in Santa Teresa was not usually an option, though the prices seemed reasonable for the average American who can afford to fly down to Rio. A generous Mexican stranger with the company credit card treated the faux carioca and two other companions to lunch one afternoon in Santa Teresa. Unfortunately one of your gentle traveler’s less gracious, omnivorous companions failed to humor the faux carioca’s unwillingness to eat pork. This person—an uncouth twit, really, but probably a decent human being—devoured most of the fish leaving yours truly with little to eat. At least the balcony view outside of the washroom was lovely.

Of course what you really want to know is if Santa Teresa is Rio’s answer to Paris’ Montmartre of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Perhaps. There are hills, some churches (though no Sacré Coeur), and artists seem to live there. There do not appear to be bars on every corner and only a few coffee shops that are on the bourgeois side of things. Speaking of bourgeois, this seems like a fine time to mention that Santa Teresa is one of those neighborhoods considered “dangerous” by many Zona Sul (Ipanema, Leblon, Copacabana) residents. Perhaps it was simple ignorance, but this is one neighborhood in Rio where the faux carioca felt supremely comfortable. It struck her as familiar with its odd assortment of people and vaguely abandoned aspect on weekday afternoons. Of the few shops that do exist in Santa Teresa is a clothing boutique called Favela Hype (www.favelahype.com). The shop has a pink VW bug parked out front and sells original designs for women constructed by nearby favela (translation: slum) residents. Many of the clothes (often in pink and black) include elaborate embellishments, screenprinting, and have an ironic cute sensibility—as you might have already guessed from the brand name.

But back to the task at hand.

Is Santa Teresa Rio’s “most honest approximation” of Montmartre? Well, of course we only remember the greats who came out of Montmartre, don’t we? We don’t recall that Montmartre was likely teeming with hacks and no-talent drunks in addition to its more famous hunchbacked, limping little people (was there more than one?). In early July, Santa Teresa hosted its 18th annual Open Doors event during which 43 “ateliers” and 12 museums and cultural centers exhibited a range of work. Most of it bad. While some event attendees were clearly interested in seeing art, many were there to eat street food and have a drink or two. And why not? Much of the art, we must repeat, was remarkably bad. Boring crafty stuff, ugly paintings, well-constructed rugs in disruptive (not in a good way) colors. Among the better work was a collection of charcoal and ink abstract drawings by a recent Vietnamese immigrant. Interestingly, there appears to be a small clothing-as-art movement. Most of the garments were screen printed T-shirts, embroidered T-shirts, bedazzled T-shirts, painted T-shirts, handbags and totes—nothing terribly remarkable that one couldn’t find among the DIY crowd in the U.S.

Bless them all for trying, but the Open Doors were not nearly as inspiring as the faux carioca had hoped they would be. Rents, however, seem to be cheap and the neighborhood is quaint . . .
This is the final entry (for now) of Waxing Brazilian. There is a possibility that your faux carioca will return to Rio for further research. If she does, she will renew her life line to the gentle readers.

For now, you must content yourselves with a new blog on dress:
www.insideoutdress.wordpress.com