Outside the Sambodromo

whew.... been up every night past dawn for so many nights now.... Blocos all day, escolas all night.

The Sambodromo parades have been unforgettable. I couldn't even really afford tickets this year but went anyway.... blew the most of the rest of my budget on a setor 3 ticket for Sunday. (fabulous night, will post photos later) Monday night was tricky: I really wanted to see Beija-Flor and Grande Rio, but could only afford 200 reais. Tickets were going for 300 or higher. So I decided to go late, hoping the scalpers would drop their prices after the first couple escolas. I watched the first one, Porto da Pedra and the first bit of the second, Unidos da Tijuca, at home on my crappy tv - Tijuca's theme this year is photography, and I'd really wanted to see Tijuca's re-enactment of the famous photo of the poor girl in the Vietnam war running from a napalm attack. Spooky float. As soon as that float passed, I took off and jumped on the subway.

I LOVE riding the Rio subway on Carnaval night, because it is full of people in crazy escola fantasia outfits heading to the Sambodromo and everybody is buzzing with excitement and laughter. Whenever a crazy new costume came on board the whole subway car would applaud. Sometimes I wish I could just ride back and forth on the subway all night and just take pictures.

I rode in with some bodybuilders from Portela's sports parade, and some fire gods from Imperatriz's Norway-themed parade:




I exited the subway with a large crowd of happily drunk 7-foot-tall seahorses who were having some trouble walking up the steps to street level. First search point for scalped tickets: exit point of the Central metro station. There was somebody here selling Brahma camarote tickets! wow! But the prices were way above what I could pay. Turned out Unidos da Tijuca was still parading, only the second escola, and scalped tickets still full price... so I had to cool my heels.

I embarked on a huge, fascinating walk around the entire Sambodromo. The Sambodromo is mammoth, and surrounded by strange little alleys, and people always tell tourists to never, ever walk around outside the Sambodromo; so of course I wanted to do it. I walked....

.... past all the gorgeous floats lined up on the east side of the Sambodromo. They're so eerie when they're lined up here waiting, in the dark. (actually these pictures are from Mangueira's floats the night before, in the same spot - I didn't get my camera out here the second night - but you get the idea)



.... through hordes of people milling around in outrageous costumes and past literally hundreds of tiny little bars. People had set up full bars with little tent roofs, chairs and tables, and tiny battery-powered tv's to watch the parades. It's a whole street party outside the Sambodromo, all night long.

Fireworks started going off. That meant Salgueiro was starting.

I walked all the way to the start of the parade route at the very north end of the Sambodromo, where I found a whole row of little wooden bleachers set up facing the street that feeds the parade into the Sambodromo. The free seats! I'd always heard about the free seats! The free seats are for the locals (who can't afford full price tickets) to get a taste of the parades: the great floats scraping under the highway viaduct on their way into the Sambodromo, the huge parade sections of people in full costume walking slowly past. I squished my way up into free seats. I was the only tourist there and people gave me a few double-takes but let me squish right in. And I mean SQUISH. This is the tightest crowd I've ever been in! Absolutely jampacked like cordwood. Every now and then someone would need to leave, and it would get almost too tight to breathe as they painfully squished their way past. But despite the smush, everybody was in a good mood, happy and friendly, and the view was spectacular. We were right at street level with a super view of the floats and paraders. Almost as good as the real parade; the only thing missing was that the paraders weren't actually dancing yet and it was hard to hear the music. But I really enjoyed the free seats.

Until I felt the guy behind me try to lift my skirt up!!!! EW!!! I scooted out of there and to the next bleacher over and he actually followed me! I squeezed well into the crowd, thinking he wouldn't possibly be able to follow, but somehow he did, he got right behind me again, and he actually started groping me. I elbowed him and got out of there. He was kind of gross-looking, too - a grimy pot-bellied guy in a filthy t-shirt. Ick. He tried to follow me again but I just started walking, and there's almost nobody in the world who can keep up with me when I walk fast. I wasn't worried about him; I knew I could ditch him easily. So I left him in the dust, zipping my way through the endless fascinating foot traffic along the north side of the Sambodromo.

I was, of course, wearing a silver tiara. I'd bought it for 5 reais on the street the night before. It has a cheesy little battery-powered light in front that flashes different colors, and it looks just FABULOUS. I bought it for bloco parades, in theory (you really have to have a silly hat of some kind in a bloco parade), because I am always stumbling across a bloco parade. But in truth I have found that I just really like wearing a little tiara all the time, just because it's so nice to have to say every now and then "Wait a minute, I have to adjust my tiara."

So as I was zooming along the dark Avenida across the north end of the Sambodromo, I guess I must have stood out - certainly the only gringa there, pale and tall, flying along in the dark, and wearing a flashing tiara. Every beer vendor that I passed had something to say about it. "Rainha!" (queen) "Rainha, you must need a beer!" "Princesa, a fresh cold Skol for you!" "Look, it's Princess Di! She's still alive! Princess Di, don't you want a beer?"

The beer guys were fun. And the grimy guy had disappeared. Eventually I found a footbridge that took me up and over the assembling Portela parade to the Sambodromo's long west side. From the footbridge I had an incredible view of Portela's sports-themed parade - floats lined up on the left and alas on the right. The ala on the right is all dressed as soccer balls, basketballs, etc.:



Here was that same ala during the parade later:


Security guards shooed everybody along the walkway, so I couldn't stay there, and I headed on down the west side. It's another world going down the west side of the Sambodromo - a warren of tiny little dark alleys. You'd never know you were near the biggest show on earth, except you can distantly hear the music, and there's a faint glow in the sky from the lights; and every now and then there is a little gap in buildings, where the lights are suddenly brilliant white, and you can suddenly see glimpses of floats regally passing by like giant ships. At each of these gaps was a little clump of locals watching raptly.

I was walking through these little dark alleys when, very suddenly, I turned a corner and there right in front of me was a huge line of those enormous, amazing, impossible floats, right in front of me, all crammed up behind one another in a tiny little street by a gas station. I was at the exit point of the floats from the Sambodromo. There was a lot of shouting and commotion, and a team of guys running around. The float in front, some kind of enormous magical tree, was too wide to squeeze past the gas station, and all the guys were trying to break pieces off the sides to let it squeeze past. They had a little forklift that they were driving into the side of the float, trying to crack pieces off of it. (Escolas get fined heavily if they block the exit path from the Sambodromo, since that can cause the next escola to get stuck on the parade route and go over the time limit.)

While I was watching, a branch came tumbling off the other side, unnoticed by all the guys, and crashed down onto a set of phone lines. Another little clump of locals was watching the show from the safety of the gas station, as pieces of the float came flying down.

Here's what it had looked like during the parade:


Here's what I met in the dark alley:


Look on the right side - there's a folklife that is pushing up on one of the branches, trying to crack it off.



I darted through, along with some other people, to the relative safety of a small herd of elephants just behind. It is surreal beyond belief to be walking through the grimy back alleys of Rio and suddenly be walking through a herd of peaceful, regal elephants.


Kept walking. I had reached the south end of the Sambodromo. I walked past lines of people watching the floats exit. There were several bars here and people just hanging out watching the floats.


Past weary beer sellers and their sleeping kids.


Past piles of discarded costumes.


A pair of enterprising guys had figured out a way to sell beer over the fence to thirsty paraders coming off the parade route:



They spotted me!


Past a huge line of eager cabs that was scooping up tired paraders.


Eventually I worked my way around to the east side, to Setor 11, the sector with the best view of the bateria. (From Setor 11, you can look right down on them in the second recuo.) Salgueiro had just finished. Third escola of the night over. I found a scalper who let me bargain him down to 200 reais. Bingo! I was in. I'll write later about Setor 11.

Turns out Salgueiro was one of the very best parades of the weekend - the only parade I missed completely. But I'm not sorry I missed it, because the walk around the Sambodromo was one of the best things I've done here.