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Second day in Salvador–part 3

With our dispensation, we felt free to roam the Villa Forma gym, which included a tour of the men’s locker room. There was nobody in there, thank goodness, because I felt like a camera and a locker room were as good a mix as Drano and Parson’s ammonia. The inside was cool, with old terrazzo flooring and antique lockers. It wasn’t a spacious, luxurious haven like the ones here in the U.S., but it had them beat hands down, character-wise. There were old photographs of U.S. movie stars such as Marilyn Monroe and the Rat Pack all over the place. It was very cool, and the age of the building and the luxury of the terrazzo floor made it all come together beautifully.

We said goodbye to the hardbodies at the front desk, who had become much more personable. Out the door and around the corner was a small hotel that Arilda had also done. Since I was totally hip to what Arilda was doing, Carol thought we’d like to see the hotel, too. Right across the street from the gated stairway was The Twist Pub. More homage to old U.S. stars. Very neat picture.

Up the narrow, gated stairway we found ourselves in one of the courtyards of Catarina Paraguaça hotel. This was another example of Arilda Cardoso’s use of recycled materials, varied tile, and functional use of space.

The large courtyard featured a large sculpture by Mario Cravo, Jr., artist of Bahian Woman. Every angle and color comprised a beautiful composition in any direction you looked.

Notice the Braque-like painting in the picture on the right. Another Mario Cravo, Jr. His work was prevalent, and very good.

Inside the hotel there was an entire wall made of different tiles from every type of source imaginable. Some were handmade. Some were antique. Some were new. It was an eye-popping display, and I have no idea why there’s no picture of it.  Stupid!  Stupid! Stupid!

Onward.  Homeward.

But not before stopping at a small bodega where Carol knew everybody, of course. I was sweating like no tomorrow by this point, and dying of thirst, so she bought me a water and herself a coffee. I chugged the water so fast that it collapsed the bottle, shook my sweaty head, and decided I wanted some coffee too! Especially from this charming lady, who looks like a professional model from a travel brochure. Well she’s not. And Carol knows her.

I laid my old suado act on her to everyone’s delight. Upon reflection, I have determined that my doing that is sort of like some Frenchman running around Birmingham saying “I’m stupid” in shitty English. I’ve decided to chalk it all up to charms of the language barrier.

Robo, meanwhile, had discovered that they had liquor in a little cabinet, and we began examining all that they had. Same old Bacardi Gold. A bunch of cachaça, but at that time we didn’t know how to uncork its charms. He got the lady to open the cabinet (just like here in America!) and he got some kind of liquor. I think it was the Bacardi Gold. A dying man will drink anything in the desert. He also bought some toothpaste. I think it was toothpaste. It was some kind of personal hygiene product. He had forgotten to bring it, whatever it was.

Little wonder he forgot something. He and Pettus had packed in TWO lousy suitcases. TINY suitcases that a chipmunk could carry. Jean and I were packed in 3 behemoths, with wheels that wobble just enough to throw them off balance frequently during the airport dash.

Jean had been forced to pack in 30 minutes due to last minute work crap before we left. Being that neither one of us had done any kind of major prep, when Pettus showed up at our house to take us to the airport the first day, Jean was still throwing stuff at three gaping maws of Samsonite covering our bed.

And that’s not all! By the time Pettus had dropped us off at the airport, Jean had come up with a list of things she had forgotten to pack. Pettus said she’d get them and bring them to us. I can’t remember what they were, but there were several. Such humiliation.

It was so much fun schlepping all that luggage around.  SO   MUCH    FUN.

We went back to the lot we had parked in, Carol tipped the guy and covered him with her pristine Portuguese, I told him I was sweaty, and Robo stuttered out something in bad English. We all gave him the thumbs up as we headed out. It felt good.

Second day in Salvador–part 4

Arrived back at Carol’s in time for my massage with Luciana. I say it happened after our trip to the gym, but it more likely happened before we went. At any rate, we had booked me a massage for that day, and it was time.

Luciana is beautiful, lithe, and a great masseuse. She gave the kind of massage I like. Not one of the ones where you grit your teeth as they knife their way down your spine. No, she had one of those three headed massage robots, some oil, and some jungle sounds. A mat on the floor, a bath towel, and she was ready to do her job. I naturally worried that there might be something unsightly showing–who knows what–but got over it pretty quickly.

As great as the massage was, my head felt like a concrete block when I got up, and that tiny knot in my stomach had returned to say “Hi. How was the massage?”

I went into the den where Daniel and Patricia were watching Brazilian MTV. Whoa! What a trip! There was a show based on that cover band gag that featured a wired up shirtless Brazilian guy with neatly trimmed beard, a few tats, a pair of harem pants and a white fedora. So here he is hammering away in Portuguese, and he has a pantomime “sidekick” who looks like him and is dressed like him and imitates every move he makes. Patricia explained that it was because since the bands imitate other bands, he had his own host imitator. It was crazy!

The first band was covering the B-52s, and the other one was covering Blink 182. The set was small, sand covered, with a pair of bleachers for the live fans (many of whom were old as shit, some Japanese, who KNEW who they were?), and a big wrecked boat, on top of which were two Brazilian hotties dancing and posing. There were three Brazilian celebrities who voted for the bands in each competition: two comedians and a hot model type. Of course the vote was always even until the very last.

During the blast of speedy Portuguese, I heard the word “muthafucka” several times! CRAZY! I also saw my first commercial for Havaianas.

This über-hot Brazilian girl in a bikini is strutting down the beach, and an ordinary guy is lusting after her. She turns to talk to him! He can’t believe it! She asks him to hold her Havaianas. He gladly agrees! She struts off, and when she returns, the guy has the shoes in his mouth. He sheepishly gives them to her, she smiles, and the camera shot widens to reveal a big beefy guy. She promptly hands him the flip flops. “Thanks for holding my boyfriend’s Havainas,” she says sweetly. They run off.  HAR!!! It was fun watching TV with Daniel and Patricia.

No rest for the wicked. It was time for the afternoon excursion.

We were headed into a very old section of Salvador, Santo Antonio Alem do Carmo. Up a huge hill to a large square with a fort and a church on it. Both old as hell, both beautiful. The fort, Santo Antonio Alem do Carmo, was a beautiful white edifice perched on the top of a hill overlooking Salvador. It had recently been renovated to house many capoeira schools in the area. Capoeira (CAP-pa-WAIT-a) is incredibly popular in Salvador, and other parts of Brazil as well. It’s a martial arts dance/game devised by the African slaves in 16th century Brazil. In this fort several internationally famous schools were housed.

The first one we visited was run by Mestre Boca Rica, Manoel Silva. Here I got my first glimpse of a berimbau, the primary instrument played in capoeira.


Yes, I bought a CD and had Mestre autograph it! He spelled my name right (with Carol’s incredible Portuguese prompting). Here’s one of the tracks.

02 Quando Eu Vim Para A Bahia.mp3

I think I can talk Robo into bringing this whole berimbau/capoieira craze to Birmingham. It’s sure to catch on with our athletic youth. And I may be 55, but I can still kick!

Second day in Salvador–part 5

The Mestre across the courtyard from
Mestre Boca Rica

We said goodbye to Mestre Boca Rica, and proceeded to peek in a couple of the other classrooms that ringed the courtyard. There was nobody in any of the ones on Boca Rica’s side, so we crossed the massive courtyard, stopping to marvel at a big concrete cylinder in the middle.

Once on the other side, we encountered the school of this guy. I never got his name, but there were two or three people fluttering around him like he was somebody important.

I began to wonder if he and Mestre Boca Rica would duke it out with dueling berimbaus across the courtyard, and then go all capoeira on each other in the middle.

At any rate, he posed for pictures without complaint. On the wall just as you walked in was a portrait of St. George and the dragon. It was the second time I had seen it down there. It is obviously one of their important motifs.

At this age, you never pass up a bathroom, so after stopping at the sanitario, we headed toward the gate. On the way out, we decided to investigate the concrete cylinder, and found that it was a wall around an old cistern. The wall looked new, and I wondered what blocked it in the past. What a laugh that would be to see some guy capoeira himself right into this hole.

Once outside, we discovered the beautiful view off the mountain.

At a right angle to the fort on the courtyard was an old, beautiful colonial church, Santo Antonio Alem do Carmo. It is obviously still in use, because there was brand new playground equipment in front of it, and there were even a few food vendors already set up around the perimeter of the place square.


Of course one of the things I liked the best about the whole view was the gang of lazy dogs just hanging around and reminding me of Zoey and Spike. They were funny. They’d lay down for a while. Get up, walk around a little bit and then lie down again. They were oblivious to everything, and I would have loved to have met them, but decided to forgo it.


It was time to wend. We were in a very old section of Salvador, Santo Antonio Alem do Carmo, (duh), one that had recently become renovated and brought to new life by Europeans. Carol piloted that SUV like a champion over cobblestone streets that were as old as Dom Pedro himself. The streets were steep, curvy, and lined cheek to jowl with colonial storefronts, apartments and houses.

I managed to take a couple of shots from the car.

We parked in an impossible place for any car, much less a big one, and gingerly alighted from the SUV onto the totally uneven cobbles. Carol had advised that I be mindful of my camera, so I had it in duffel position #1, with drawstring wrapped.

Jean and I were being particularly vigilant of the uneven street, and I was constantly in high mental gear, lest some toughs rush by and try to grab my camera.

We passed by edifice after edifice, each scrolled with beautiful colonial details. It looked like something from St. Tropez as much as it did Brazil. Our destination at the top of a couple of hills was an old 16th century convent that was now re-purposed as a 6 star Hotel, the Convento do Carmo.

Carol’s dazzling Portuguese garnered us access to limited areas of the hotel ONLY, but it got us in, nevertheless. I only took a couple of pictures, mainly of this urn and whoever would stand in front of it. But only if they would answer the question, “What’s a Brazilian urn?” Jean did, but the picture was too blurry. But guess whose wasn’t! (Many thanks to my pal Pumpie for pointing out that I originally had written “who’s wasn’t”. I should be KILLED!)

 

Second day in Salvador–part 6

Okay, we did this in reverse order, but it really doesn’t matter. Dimitri’s place was first, followed by our look-see in the Hotel.

We were all standing around outside the Convento do Carmo talking about what we wanted to eat. (Duh). Carol looked up to see a tall, grey haired man in cabana shirt and sandals coming out of the hotel. “Dimitri!” she called. He replied with a beautiful European tint on the word “Moh-leee!” (Mollie) Everybody down there calls Carol that. Her real name is Mollie Carol James Cerqueira. She was always called Carol growing up, since her mother’s name is also  Mollie. Once she went to college, she started going by Mollie, since it was her first name, and in college people always call you by the first name they see. So Nelson knows her as Mollie. (They met at Indiana U where he was a professor). And everybody in Salvador knows her as Mollie. Jean and I stubbornly call her Carol. But the “Mollie” is so pervasive, that I even heard Pettus refer to her by that moniker more than once. Her brothers and sister call her Carol, as does her mother, so it’s kind of her American name. Mollie is her Brazilian name. It’s quite simple.

The man was Dimitri Ganzelevitch,

the owner of an incredible gallery right down the street from the hotel!

Carol had been telling us about how she and the kids had seen the place at an earlier date, and how fantastic it was. And here he was, right here in front of us! And he was inviting us to his gallery, which is also his home.

We cobble-hobbled down about a half a block until we came to his place on the left. Beautiful from the outside.
Incredible on the inside. This man had great taste in art, and a prescient eye to match. His specialty was outsider art, but he had a lot of established stuff as well. His own collection was mixed in with what he had to sell, and it was an overwhelming melange.

His modus operandi is to find these untrained artists from wherever they hide, and collect, nurture, and show them. The naive art in Salvador is very much like some of the earlier Southern outsider stuff. Before many of the outsiders themselves became savvy to the buck.

One of his artists had developed a method of capturing graffiti and actually lifting it from building fronts by smearing a polymer-type substance on the facade, letting it set, then peeling it off. The graffiti comes off with it, largely, leaving uneven patches that lend even more interest. I immediately saw Basquiat in the canvases, and the fact that it was graffiti to begin with made it all the more sensible. Dimitri congratulated me on my perception (puff, puff) and pulled out a magazine that contained a quote by him about this artist, saying the same thing. I hate to call him “the artist.” I wish I had gotten names. Maybe Carol will know what to do? Maybe we can email Dimitri at dimitri.bahia@qmail.com or try this.

The artist worked not only in undercover situations, but in the open as well, when he could. Dimitri told us how he had been ripped off several times by people who would wait for him to complete the process, then steal the result from him on the spot! Wow! Talk about bad karma. Art with a hex on it.

I wrote an e-mail to Dimitri, and he quickly replied. The name of the graffiti artist is Willyams Martins. The author of the heads is Eckenberger, an Argentinian of German descent. He presently has a showing of 40 years of his works, curated by Dimitri. One friend commented: “I wouldn’t want to get into his dreams.”

Another of the artists was a surrealist to make Max Ernst stand up and take notice.
The variety was immense, but very, very good. Of course seeing all this new art at once and talking with this guy in his gorgeous, but very hot, house, I had begun to sweat profusely again. I didn’t take any pictures except the mask above (when he was in the other room), and I didn’t ask him if I could. I wish I had, but somehow it seemed kinda tacky.

His house was incredible, of course. Hundreds of years old, on three levels, with galleries on three floors, it opened on the bottom floor to a courtyard, garden, and freeking amphitheatre! All three levels of this glorious old place had views of Salvador, since we were still very high up in the city. This amphitheatre had terra cotta poles with sculptured heads on top of them inset into the plant covered wall. I finally asked him if I could take pictures of the heads, and he said “of course”. So I guess I’m a schmuck after all for not asking to begin with. Sigh. The pictures of the heads are kinda blurry, because they were taken at 2 seconds exposure, and it was dark out there.

At any rate, Dimitri was charming, with an accent that would melt butter. His love of Salvador and his artists was evident. His life seemed to be idyllic. We thanked him profusely and left to get some food somewhere. Carol was thinking rapidly of what we could have. The GPS in her head had keyed in on several options, with her deciding on blackeyed-pea fritters from Dinha do Acarajé in her neighborhood, Rio Vermelho.

Here again, I was a chicken and didn’t even bring my camera out. One reason was, I was hot, sweaty, and kinda knotted up in the gullet again. I wasn’t thinking properly. I was hungry, I thought. And surely, I was ready for some kind of bebida, wasn’t I? Not particularly. We pulled up at an open place on the side of the street filled with tables, and a couple of large tents. It was right across the street from the Villa Forma Gym! I was getting so familiar with the area! Carol and Nelson really do live right over downtown Rio Vermelho, and it’s a hopping place! Dinha do Acarajé, according to Carol, had been pitching her tents here for years, and her children were working behind her, and she had a storefront restaurant, and was hugely successful. She was Afro-Brazilian, and her servers wore the traditional turbans and big shiny skirts. They looked so hot. I mean, like it would be hot to wear them. It made me kinda queasy in a way, which is weird.

I ordered a water right away and chugged it. Then we ordered our food. They cook it under the tents, and the waiters bring it to you. I wonder who gets paid for them to do this here. It’s like “their spot” and no matter if somebody came in earlier and set their stuff up, I think Dinha would run him off. WHO GETS PAID? We ordered the blackeyed pea fritters stuffed with stuff. It’s called acarajé and abará. They were stuffed with vinaigrette salad and pepper, called vatapá. It was marvelous, and the beer I had was marvelous, but I did not possess my traditional gusto. The little knot in my stomach kept reminding me of everything bad I had ever eaten. Crazy.

Regardless of the knot, we had a fine, fine time, and in retrospect, I hate that I was such a puss to not bring my camera. The waiter was charmed with Patricia (as were most of the young men in Salvador), she laid some REAL Portuguese on him, and we headed to the SUV to go up the hill a few blocks and prepare for our first night at Carnaval!