I stay up late, wake up at eight. Time for some coffee and it’s time to go to last day of the Billabong Rio Pro. Head to Ipanema Beach and head south. Past the cones Past the cars Past the path to the Sheraton Past the bike rack at Vidigal. Take your friends Take your [...]
Jacare dos Patins, (literally, “the Skate Alligator”), blowing your mind at the Batalha do Passinho in the City of God. You read that right. Passinho is a new wave dance battle culture coming out of Rio de Janeiro. Like funk (and samba long before that) passinho comes out of Rio’s favelas, but it’s very much a [...]
It rained all night but I woke up bright. Let’s go to Piscinão. Take Avenida Brasil to Pasarela #13. Welcome to the Piscinão. 2 acres of artificial beach on the edge of Guanabara Bay. If the South Zone is far away. It’s Saturday, and nobody’s here. Take a dip. Take a dive. Get some fried corvina [...]
Meet the tween queens behind Brazil’s butt training meme. I first heard about the Bonde Das Maravilhas (literally “Train of Wonders”) last year from a lady giving me a bikini wax in Copacabana Beach. When she found out I like funk music, she told me I had to check out this group of girls on YouTube [...]
“Brazil knows how to party, but are they serious enough?” In my second photo-essay for The Atlantic‘s city-specific edition, Scenes From Carnaval, the ‘Largest Street Fair on the Planet’, I go inside the colonial view that Carnaval is evidence Brazil is not serious enough: Six million people have taken to the streets of Rio de Janeiro [...]
Flamengo Beach is about to get crazy. It’s time for the Flying Orchestra! The Orquestra Voadora (“Flying Orchestra”) is a band of musicians that met in 2008 playing in different Carnaval street parades and decided they wanted to bring the funk year round. Their Carnaval party kicks off at 3pm on Carnaval Tuesday. The crowd gathers. The band rolls [...]
It’s pre-Carnaval in Rio, and Rio is already a hundred-something deep into a superpartyschedule of over 500 street parties. Most of them are nothing like the mega-spectacle you’re imagining. They’re chill out, neighborhood affairs, like this bloco in Copacabana. Above: The Skate Gang holds court to Ja Rule in a Petrobras parking lot in Copacabana [...]
Sundays in Ipanema, the Feira Hippie goes down at the General Osório plaza. As it has every Sunday, without exception, since 1968. The Feira Hippie website claims it’s the largest open-air art gallery and artisanal fair in the world, which is obviously not the case. It occupies a single square block. It isn’t even the largest such art [...]
Pacified, gentrified, superbly located Vidigal. The “UPP” pacification branding in Vidigal plaza means it’s safe for tourists. Drive a mile down the coast from swanky Leblon Beach, just past a strip of sex motels and the Sheraton Hotel, and you’re standing at the entrance to Vidigal. Locals line up to catch a ride up the [...]
November, 2012: Rio artist Andrea Brandani snaps a girl river surfing in Munich. Photography courtesy of Andrea Brandani. More RioChromatic: From Andrea to Munich Ipanema artist Andrea Brandani is going to Munich at the city’s request to paint the town any color he feels like. Let’s see what (or who) he’s packing in his bag. [...]
