Under the Arches with Bloco X

Have spent the last couple days hanging out with my British friends Rob & Charlotte, who play with Verde Vai in London. Rob rented a plush apartment in Ipanama with a STUNNING view of all of Ipanema beach, AND of all of the Lagoa, AND of all the lush wooded hills in the background... wow, I am sold, I'm not messing around with Copa apartments again. This is by far the most comfortable place I've ever stayed here, and the view is REALLY something to soothe your soul. We see every single sunset - the sun sinking into the sea by the Two Brothers, the water gleaming like gold.

Unfortunately I only overlapped by a couple days with Rob & Charlotte but we had time for some good stuff. Thurs I caught a little of Banga rehearsal. Remember the super-packed rehearsal I described from Monday when they had 60 people in that tiny room? Which I swore was absolute maximum? I arrived late to Thursday rehearsal, inched the door open and stuck my head in, and, oh man, impossible, they somehow had squished 72 people in there! (I counted!) I couldn't even open the door more than 6 inches before it hit a surdo player. I saw it was impossible and tried to extricate my head to leave (my head was now stuck in the door), but Dudu, the leader, spotted me. "Kathleen, pode entrar!" he said - come on in. I mimed back with that Brazilian fingers-together gesture for "cheio", too crowded. He said, no no no, come in, and then said into the microphone "What do you think everyone, can we make room for Kathleen?" And all 72 people yelled and cheered and did a gigantic drumroll for me and somehow squished 8 inches over so that I could squeeze into the room. I was so touched.

So I squeezed into Banga for a while. Then, when that rehearsal finished, grabbed a cab to Imperio Serrano's Thursday night tech rehearsal - YOW they really DO have the strongest third-surdo player in the entire universe!! Go and see the tech rehearsal and you'll immediately see what I mean; listen for the thunderous nonstop third-surdo rolls and look for the burly bodybuilder who is creating it all, and you'll think "Oh, that's got to be the guy Kathleen was talking about."

Imperio has a hot, hot bateria! Blows the socks of most of Grupo Especial - jeez, some of the Grupo A baterias are absolutely first rate. (The only reason Imperio is in Grupo A is because they don't have the money for elaborate floats & costumes.) But we only got there in time to catch the very end of their tech rehearsal (note to self: some escolas actually start their tech rehearsals on time). We zoomed from there to the Unidos da Tijuca street rehearsal, which kept going for probably a whole other two hours (note to self: some escolas do NOT start their tech rehearsals on time).

"There's the Poles!" shouted Rob happily. "The Bloco X Poles," he explained somewhat mysteriously. Bloco X is the brilliant European bloco, the best of the best, that meets in Germany once every spring for a very famous "rehearsal" ("Rehearsal for what?" "Well, it's not really a rehearsal for anything " ) Bloco X attracts the best players from all over Europe, including, apparently, a contingent of excellent Polish players - and there they all were at Unidos da Tijuca.

So after Unidos da Tijuca's rowdy end at midnight, we ended up in a large chatty bunch of Bloco X Poles and Bloco X Germans, attempting to herd everybody to Lapa to hear some pagode. We lost everybody and ended up having a drink at that tiny bar on the corner by the arches (You know the one. The place you always walk past that's right where the streets split.)

"There're the Poles again!" Rob said again. "Look, under the Arches!" We'd found them!

Well, it turned into one of those ineffably satisfying Lapa nights, in which you're all milling around at the Arches trying to decide where to go, and you run into all kinds of people that you know, suddenly EVERYBODY is there, everybody from all all your Brazil journeys re-assembled, and a whole dozen or so new wonderful people (Bloco X!!! Another whole world of people I'd never met!!) and there you under the Arcos da Lapa under the huge white arches. In Rio on this wonderful summer night. And you can never seem to get the crowd moving anywhere because somebody's always in the middle of buying a drink or some grilled chicken or some squeaky grilled cheese from a street vendor, so you have to wait for them to finish their transaction. Then you think well, hell, and you buy yourself some squeaky grilled cheese and a caipirinha from a street vendor. Everybody, one at a time, is doing the same thing.

So you never quite get around to going anywhere. Just stand there on the red steps and talk and talk and talk.

The caipirinhas from the street vendors are MASSIVE. Plus (on this particular Lapa night) the Bloco X Poles are passing around some positivley brilliant Polish honey brandy. Actually I'm not really that much of a drinker - I used to never drink at all, believe it or not, and am still a fairly light drinker at home. But in samba it's just part of the social scene. So in Brazil I have to be careful, because those street caipirinhas, oh man, just one can really knock me flat on my back. Somebody insisted on buying me a second. I was doing okay, really I was, but definitely had to think a bit about where I was putting my feet when I walked, and Rob said "I think I know you well enough now, Kathleen, to be able to tell when you're drunk. And you're drunk now. Am I right?" Yeah, he was right.

Well, under the influence of the two gigantic caipirinhas, some number of shared Skols and the positively brilliant Polish honey brandy, I immediately forgot all the Bloco X guys' names. But they seemed like such fun people that now I'm determined to get to Bloco X someday. This spring if I can POSSIBLY squish it around my teaching schedule in Oregon. I sure heard wonderful things about it: Top-notch playing. Giant refrigerated beer truck. Excellent samba. And maybe the Bloco X Poles will bring more of the honey brandy??

All in all, a fine and classic night in Rio with Bloco X.