Coping At Copa and Other Rio Tales

The month before I made my first visit to Rio de Janeiro, American newspapers were full of Brazilian mayhem stories--food riots, escalating murders, robbery sprees. So I was a bit more than antsy when I first split from the Rio Palace Hotel (where Copacabana pivots into Ipanema).

The only signs of imminent disorder were the long lines in front of automated-teller machines and gasoline service stations where Cariocas (all of whose funds over $1,800 had been frozen without warning) were patiently trying to get the wherewithal to leave town over the Easter holidays. That, and the repeated warnings of our Grand Circle Tour guides to be very, very careful.

So careful that we shouldn't "risk" taking the cheap and frequent buses to go downtown. Well, when I'm faced with the choice of being a professional skinflint or a taxi taker, I line up for the bus. A half-hour later (and 12 cents poorer), I was schmoozing with the director of the Museum of Fine Arts structure with marvelously wrought interior banisters and parquet floors.

The most poignant detail was the new display by artists complaining about the horrendous cuts in funding as part of the new president's austerity program to wrestle the devastating inflation to the stock exchange floor. The museum's 19th- and 20th-Century holdings reflect a feisty interaction between Brazil and well-known European movements, so a long, leisurely visit should be at the top of any tourist's agenda.

The paintings and sculpture were nutritious enough, but the big surprise was the furniture. Brazil's richness as a garden of trees of almost infinite variety led to its fecundity as a source of home furnishings. (The latest giant in this field is Jose Caldos Zanine.)

The director turned me over to the curator of sculpture--who, when I told him I was from Philadelphia, couldn't stop talking about the late Robert C. Smith of the University of Pennsylvania, regarded in both Lisbon and Rio as the greatest historian and critic of Portuguese art in the 20th Century.

At the Penn library, a bibliography of over 400 items attests to Smith's energy. Alas, he committed suicide, so depressed was he by his beloved Portugal going socialist. Even more astonishing was the professor's obituary portrait in Portugal's leading art magazine--I must have seen the guy every day at the Faculty Club, and at American Studies meetings: His other specialty was Winterthur-era furniture.

The Smithophile curator took us to the History Museum that occupies a recycled armory. It was full of trivia and trash--as most such attics are--but two sections were riveting: the sugar culture analysis and a dazzling recreation of an industrial exposition, the prime object of which is a great Art Nouveau exhibition stand. Put this museum on your must-see list.

I'm usually not a big Scenic Attraction maven, but Rio has two attractions that almost deconverted me: Sugar Loaf and Corcovado (the Humpback). Even the horrible favellas look radiant from its heights. Save a few minutes to pay tribute to the engineer whose genius made this hairy ride possible and unscary.

And if you're into historical statuary, politely elude all those souvenir hawkers at the ground floor and wander over to see what the monumental stones and bronzes are commemorating. I don't think any other city in the world can compare with Rio on the Scenery Index.

Corcovado--which takes a leisurely half hour or so to get up to ascend--is a wonder of its own. I heard anecdotes of bag-whipper-offers who use the semi-stations on the way up and down to relieve wealthy-looking tourists of impedimenta. The statue of Christ which surmounts this highest point on the littoral is obscured at the moment with scaffolding (it didn't make me homesick for City Hall!), but its grand Deco silhouette is still unmistakable--and moving, even to this disbeliever.

The only other don't-miss for me is the modernistic Catholic Cathedral. In its physics it recalls its San Francisco ecclesiastical cousin, although in metaphysics its grand ceiling-to-floor stained glass essays belong in another, higher league--with Chartres.

And as you blinky, blinky on your way back to the tour bus, take a gander at the great Babylon of a hanging-garden skyscraper across the way. That greenery is the work of Burle Marx, the Lawrence Halprin of Brazil.

He's also the great eye who crafted the best beauties of Copa and Ipanema--those marvelous black-and-white mosaic pedestrian walks. (The great disappointment of my visit was finding that Ipanema was Cellulite Canyon; somehow the much-vaunted dental-floss bikinis don't show well on galloping grandmas.)

Speaking of taste, the eating was great: sit-down barbecues where the slices of beef and cool cool beer send your taste buds into semi-shock from the excessive thrills of it. My last afternoon I spent cruising Copa for souvenirs. Beautifully-designed T-shirts turns out to be smallish dresses to cover up dental-floss bikinis. (I have my daughter to thank for that thank-you insight.) The beach towels are in the liveliest Carioca design, and far from Copa we use them as bath mats.

There's a lot of junk mixed in with the design treasures, but it's a kick to cull and haggle anyway. It's my schtick to get shaved at least once wherever I travel. My Rio barber was gifted with both steel and palm. But the Carioca touch that I relished most was his proffering a tiny paper cup of hot black coffee to top off my half hour on his spinning throne. It was the nicest single touch during my week in that Capital of Contradictions.

Reprinted from Welcomat, August 21, 1991