We walked up and down Rua da Lapa a bit, and finally stopped for a little drink... we had cachaca with honey and cinammon. Delish. After an interesting convo about black men and women and their soiled and unfortunate relations (or lack thereof) amongst graduate students in professional schools, we spotted other friends from the language school, and from U of C. They joined us at the table and, well... ordered more drinks. The roomie doesn't drink, and I stopped after the first one, but the others, being men, tested their limits! One became obsessed with street meat, and after eating one churrasco went back for two more. Since I was starving, I fell victim to the chicken. As we started to walk towards the "hip-hop" club, I turned around to see 'churrasco boy' - tall, pale, and blonde - tearing away at the one churrasco in his right hand as the one in the left hand pointed up towards oblivion! It was 2am mind you, and the streets were packs with cachaceiros young and old, music, street kids, and everything else... including our pale, blond friend and his street meat.
Anyhow, we go the the club and they start playing Teach Me How To Dougie which started what to me looked like a riot, but to others was apparently good fun. Everyone was dancing, and blah, blah, blah. They mixed in U.S. hip-hop with Brazilian, and it was surprisingly a good mix. Anyhow, at some point they played Lauryn Hill Doo Wop (That Thing) and a girl came up to me and said I was "muito bom", gave me a thumbs up, and said "as mulheres não podem!" She gave me like 4 high fives. Some of you know how I feel about high fives. I hate them.
Anyhow, a few minutes go by and they start playing The Game "How We Do" which, go figure, is not my favorite song to dance to so I was just doing a little sway. This girl standing next to me points to her wrist and says "Where's your blood?" I say "huh?" She says "Show your blood." And I'm like, "wha?" And she's like "You're black!" And I'm like, "duh..." And she's like, "You should be dancing." And I'm like, "...ah." So apparently, because I wasn't dancing all hard, I wasn't showing my black (and by her own skin tone, I must say she wasn't showing much either). I think she was disappointed in me because I was wasting the physical blackness she could have used for her dance moves. Anyhow, we leave from there after a while (and after the same girl yells at me for leaving early and not showing my blackness by staying late and dancing wild, lol), and we step outside. There we meet Mateus, who is from Northern Brazil and asked me if I was from Bahia.
It's the hair. Everyone talks to me because of the hair. And in all honesty, it takes me about 2 minutes to do it. Easiest style ever - but it makes me look like I did something. Mateus didn't believe it only took two minutes. It did. We leave Mateus and head down Rua da Lapa to start the search for a taxi. The street is PACKED, since it's Friday night at 3am. More people than at midnight. People selling shots of Cuervo 3 for R$5. Dancing. Sweating. Yelling. And some girl with long red braids grabs me and says "Rihanna!" Now I have NEVER done anything Rihanna-like in my life. Not my clothes. Not my hair. Not my Ipod. She is far away from me. But I guess this girl wanted to be a dick because my hair was in a high bun. Whatevs. I grabbed her back and said "Você é Rihanna! Aw, você ta muito bonita! Aw... querida! Rihanna!" She started laughing, as she didn't expect some American girl to do the same thing back to her. Then I took her braids and draped them on my hair and asked her for an autograph :-). She was like, "no, no, stop. I'm not." And I was like, "yeah me neither (slut)." The slut part I didn't say. And it was mean. Sorry.
Then we carry own a few more feet and see where all of the cabs are converging. There is a bus in front which we learn is unable to move because of the intense fight taking place in front of it. The people stand around and watch this dude pouncing on this dude. It's crazy. The bus goes around them, followed by a bunch of cabs. The fight is several minutes long, and not one officer comes from anywhere they're hiding (although there are empty police cars out the wazoo). Somebody got their ass BEAT. I tell the roomie, ok, so... we should catch a cab over here then... away from the fight. People in the street are gravitating towards the fight like ants to sugar, so being the New Yorker that I am, I want to go in the opposite direction. When I was a teenager going out and people fought, someone would generally get shot. Me nah wan fi become that person! Anyhow, we go in the opposite direction and look for the direction we need the cab to go in, and all of a sudden, Fighty McFighterson is done and heading right to where we're standing. Booooo. So I'm like... right... lets goooooo... this way. Anyway, we hop in a cab and head home. But that's not it...
On the way home, another huge crowd makes its way into the middle of the street. This time, there's a huge car accident between a taxi and a minivan type car. Here, accidents are inevitable. Especially at night when people drive even crazier than normal. The windshield of the taxi is broken, and the paramedics are inside trying to help the poor dude. His cab is f&*ed. The other car has the airbags out... about 80 people are surrounding both. Our cab drives by close enough to touch it, and hangs half of his body out of the window to see...We felt safe. Anyhow, we eventually made it back to the casa.
I forgot to mention the drunk girl sitting on the curb outside of her taxi before the night even begun. You can see her in the middle of the pic if you look really hard. Poor her.
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