I've just wrapped up a quick 3-day visit in Rio before zipping to Salvador today. The 3 days was just a little preview to the much longer stay in Rio that I'll have in January & February. I haven't posted anything yet because I didn't have much email access this time in Rio - because I was staying with my friend Chris again, who no longer has email in her apartment because she is HOPELESSLY, HOPELESSLY ADDICTED to Facebook on her Blackberry and can't be bothered to tear herself away from it long enough to use the old-school regular Internet.
The Brazilians seem to have discovered Facebook en masse during 2009. I noticed it mid-year when I suddenly got a flood of dozens of friend requests from all kinds of Brazilian friends who had sniffed out my profile somehow. Banga friends, Monobloco friends, friends from I don't know where, escolas, blocos, all suddenly on Facebook. (And when the Brazilians all pile onto a social networking site, watch out. Nobody knows how to socialize like the Brazilians! Brazilians have long been the acknowleged rulers of Orkut, Google's social networking site - an astounding 50% of Orkut's users are Brazilian.)
I've got to say I notice little signs of technical improvement like that everywhere now. Rio is impressively wired and just about everybody (except me of course) seems to have some kind of internet access. All the escolas now have websites (even though they're often filled just with cryptic, flowery, incomprehensible passages about their history, and fail to have certain basic information like the address of their quadra). Even the poor favela kids in the escolas seem to know about the net now, and mug for your video cameras hoping you'll post it on Youtube. (Properly pronounced "ee-uu-too-bee" of course).
What really startled me, in terms of technological improvements, was the subway. For ages, Rio's been slowly ambling through an interminable series of delays in slowly getting its main subway line to reach all the way through Copacabana and, eventually, to Ipanema. For the whole five years I've been going there they've been casually chipping away at the planned Cantagalo station in far Copacabana, and occasionally tossing a shovelful of dirt out of the site of the long-rumored station further in Ipanema's General Osorio plaza. I used to ask Brazilian friends when these stations will be completed and they would just laugh.
Well, last year Cantagalo finished! I was amazed! I thought, well, at that rate it'll probably be another five years before the Ipanema station is finished.
Imagine my shock: The Ipanema station is OPEN!!! I walked up to General Osorio plaza and there it was, a lovely gleaming white dome leading down underneath the plaza. My jaw literally dropped. And it is beautiful. Lovely and huge. I noticed they've also switched the entire subway line (at last) to using rechargable permanent magnetic cards. The place looks impressively high-tech. I saw they'd put a huge sign up in front of it that announces proudly that Rio spent THREE HUNDRED MILLION REAIS (about 180 million dollars) on this one station.
And I thought: The Olympics. That's why this station suddenly was finished so fast - they had to prove to the Olympic committee that they really could get major infrastructure built FAST.
It made me look at all sorts of other aspects of Rio with a new eye. I noticed the airport is subtly improved - lots of new little shops, a new bookstore, a nice cafe. Lots of new buses. They've nearly doubled the number of subway cars. (Still not nearly enough, but oh well.) On a smaller note, they have also had a minor, but critical, technical breakthrough in ventilation of crowded bars - most of the clubs in Lapa have suddenly acquired a ceiling-mounted battery of most excellent tiny silver fans.)
What else will the Olympics bring? What everyone is wondering is - will Rio pull it off? Will they manage to really fix up the city? What everyone is hoping is that the Olympics will be the catalyst for major improvements that will be long-lasting, long beyond the Olympics, much as happened with Barcelona.
There are 3 formidable challenges: the infrastructure, the violence, and the filth. Well, so far so good on the infrastructure. The filth: that's going to take some work. (more in next post). The violence: that's the hardest of all. (more in the post after that.)
Anyway. I kept taking the subway to Ipanema over and over again just so I could pop out of the station right in the General Osorio plaza and say to myself "I'm in Ipanema!!" Ipanema to Lapa, Lapa to Ipanema, Ipanema to Lapa, Lapa to Ipanema, over and over again. "I'm in Ipanema!" "Hey! I'm in Ipanema AGAIN!" Let me go on record as saying I LOVE THE GENERAL OSORIO STATION IN IPANEMA. And now I want an apartment in Ipanema worse than ever... an apartment of my VERY OWN. (no, it's not enough to have an apt. in Salvador; I clearly need one in Ipanema too!)
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