Get ready for Carnival

by Jerry Guo on

The Mangueira shantytown, which you’ll see looking up the steep slopes below the Christ the Redeemer statue, isn’t a place you want to be caught walking through. Drug dealers swinging automatic guns are a common sight, for one.

But travelers are already flooding the district, which is in the middle of preparations for Carnival (Feb 3-4). The streets of these slums have been turned pink and green (the colors of Mangueira, one of the most well-known samba groups in town). It seems work has been going on for six months already, and $1 million has been poured into this year’s celebration.

At first glance, you might be thinking, “These people are crazy! They live in shanties, for God’s sake. A million dollars can feed a lot of people!’ But it seems the $1 million also goes to keeping a lot of people employed as construction workers and dancers for the floats. And it does keep drugs off the street.

So you do the math.

Rio: Women Outnumber Men on the Beaches of String Bikinis

by Anna Brones on

I recently moved back to Portland, and when I met one of my neighbors last weekend we got to talking about traveling, politics, etc. When he mentioned that he had a subscription to the Economist my face lit up in a nerdy way and we talked about sharing it. He pulled through, and on Friday afternoon he brought over last week’s edition which had a great little, not so nerdy, tidbit in it: the female to male ratio in Brazil.

If there ever was a place for single males to visit it’s the Brazilian beaches of Rio: for every 100 ladies in the city there are a mere 86.4 males. Strangely enough, the average ratio for other major Brazilian cities is 95 males to 100 females. So, why the big difference on the flashy beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana?

Three factors have turned the city into hottie heaven: a decrease in birthrate (many women have chosen sterilization as their preferred method of birth control), women moving away from rural areas and into urban ones where job opportunities are more abundant, and lastly, deadly violence which in Rio affects a mostly male population.

In plain English, the beaches of Rio are running wild with women. So if you are in search for a skin-baring Spring Break option on a top-notch stretch of sand, I think you’ve found it. If you are a woman however, be prepared to fight for your vacation fling. Unless, as the Economist points out, many of those women are really your grandmother’s age. Better check it out to make sure.

And for those not lucky enough to have a neighbor as nice as mine, you can access the article online without a subscription.

Heading to Rio? Try The City’s Newest — And Most Dangerous — Art Gallery!

by Willy Volk on

Vila Cruzeiro is a dangerous shanty town (or favela) in the heart Rio. How dangerous is it? Recently, military policemen launched an assault on the favela, killing at least 6 “suspects” and wounding several civilians. Teens roam the area with grenades hanging from their shorts. In 2002, the favela saw a Brazilian journalist get dismembered and incinerated by local drug traffickers. The area isn’t nice.

However, the area is getting prettier, thanks to Jeroen Koolhaas — a Dutch illustrator — and Dre Urhahn — an art director from Amsterdam. Together with several local residents, they’ve recently completed the first “installation” associated with their Favela Painting Project. Ultimately, Koolhaas and Urhahn (who hope to attract other muralists from around the world) will design and implement what promises to be one of the world’s largest, and most unique, outdoor “organic museums.” The best part: free admission!

According to Koolhaus, “By making huge paintings in the favelas we hope to inspire the kids … to pursue a career in a creative field… Our final goal is to paint a whole hillside favela depicting one single image.” Imagine: rather than a hillside of dull corrugated aluminum, there will be a hillside of vivid colors and never-ending possibilities. If you want to learn more about Rio’s favelas, check out the Koolhaas- and Urhahn-produced video after the jump.

Arnold Loves Butts

by Erik Olsen on

Given the coming election in California and the likely re-election of Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger, I have to revisit a hilarious story from the LA Times (via Worldhum) about how the Governator got help from a tabloid publisher to suppress the release of a 1983 Playboy video starring the then-future governor in which he visits Brazil’s Carnival and engages in some on camera grab-ass (among other lewd and lascivious gestures).

The tabloid publisher, American Media, paid Thomas Wells $2,000 for a copy of the video and crafted an agreement whereby Wells would not discuss the existence of the tape. The tabloid’s interest in Schwarzenegger’s success was due to their ownership of two muscle magazines, Flex and Muscle & Fitness, for which they wanted Arnold to be their public face (and for which they made him executive editor of the two magazines and paid him a percentage of advertising revenue (which, if I remember correctly, was an extraordinary sum).

The best quote by far in the video: “You know something,” Schwarzenegger says “after watching the [dancers] shake it, I can absolutely understand why Brazil is totally devoted to my favorite body part: the ass.” Who said Arnold doesn’t have class?