Coruja

---

Written 02/20/07 by Leroy, 02/21/07 by Meli

The Party Routes
There are three Carnival Circuits: Campo Grande-Praça Castro Alves, also called Avenidas or the “Osmar” route; Barra-Ondina, or “Dodo”; and Pelourinho or “Batatinha.” Avenidas is the original Salvador Carnival circuit—more traditional, more of a cultural orientation, streets lined with stores and apartment buildings on both sides, a more intimate feel to it in terms of partying with the locals. It’s where the blocos are judged and where political big shots sit on the first day of Carnaval, when the mayor hands over the keys to the city to the Carnaval king. Barra was added in the 80s and follows a path along the ocean. There is a tendency for bigger names to play this circuit and it is more popular, though popularity varies year to year. Pelourinho is a “throwback” (no puns intended Milt) circuit where a more traditional carnival is celebrated (i.e., no moving soundtracks). The entire area is festively decorated with light and banners streets surging with costumed revelers. Huge papier maché dolls bob and dance their way through the throngs. The music is provided by New Orleans type brass bands (horn players accompanied by marching drummers).

On to Coruja
We have spent the past 3 nights on the Barra Circuit, so today we head to Bloco Coruja, which is playing on Avenidas. They start early on Sunday compared to other nights. We have to be there at 12:30pm. Dressed and drinks in hand, we bounce. It was humid and gray outside…very reminiscent of Florida summer days. The cab let us out about 500 meters from the start of the circuit. The large boulevard looked like a tunnel with trees arched overhead. There were beautiful white buildings and museums, street peddlers, and people. First, I felt a drop or two of rain. Ten seconds later, a freaking monsoon swoops in. Not a dry person or spot anywhere. I ducked under the umbrella of one of the vendors. There were about 8 of us crowding out the vendor. The gutters alongside the road started filling with water, bottles, paper, and trash. I watched it rise rather quickly and I knew my feet were about to get overtaken. So I jumped over the gutter and dashed to the next vendor across the street. In the 20 seconds it took me to get there I was wet down to my underwear. The rain was no joke. The rest of the crew had continued to walk in the rain, although Brandee also found shelter once she decided the rain was “too much.” Melissa and Delene just danced in the rain, figuring they had gotten soaked in the first 10 seconds of torrential downpour, and thus it was a lost cause. A few minutes later, the rain let up and I found the rest of the crew. The lead singer for Coruja, Ivete Sangalo, arrived with lots of guards, quickly changed and got things cracking.

Coruja is Fun at First
Melissa here… I am continuing the story, although Leroy will also have to give his version as we have two different experiences for Coruja! Ivete is well-loved by Salvador and is a queen of Carnaval. She sings mostly what seem to be Brazilian pop songs, avoiding the repetition of popular Carnaval songs that other blocos tend to do. She does, however, appease the crowd with a few of them. One of our favorites was a song called “Ela é problematica” (She’s problematic), which we found catchy and hilarious. Unlike Timbalada, Coruja was packed to the hilt. The Avenidas route is narrower than Barra-Ondina, so we feel even more like sardines. Also, this route is about 4.5 miles, about 50% longer than the other one. We are in for a long day! We do our usual bloco thing. Delene and I dance frantically, while Leroy shuttles back between buying drinks (must stay hydrated!), going to the bathroom (because we’re staying hydrated!), and dancing with us. Because it’s so early in the day, Delene and I are sober. The bloco experience without the effect of alcohol is pretty different. The wetness bothers you more. People bumping into you is more annoying. And you start to check your watch when the crawl seems to be taking too long. However, we were still having a blast - dancing and music is all we really need. I like to look at the people in the old buildings along the parade route - they are hanging from their windows and holding up signs for Ivete. And so the story goes - we sing, we dance, we jump. The only breaks from this routine are to go the bathroom, which is surreal. The girls’ bathroom had multiple stalls with no doors and just one roll of toilet paper at the start of the row. While doing your business, you can see the ground moving underneath you as the support truck rolls along the parade route. You wish for no sudden stops or lurches!

Coruja is No Longer Fun for Meli
About three hours into the route, we are all near the center of the bloco when Leroy has to make another bathroom stop. We won’t see him for another three hours. As we danced and waited for him, thirty minutes pass. There seems to be forward movement of all the bloco members, such that our spot is twice as crowded as before. We start getting pushed and shoved, and it feels more like a trampling than a party. We start to use our elbows to protect our space, just leaving them pointed out so we don’t get shoved as hard. At one point, a drunk man lurches backward as he tried to maintain his balance, and Delene gets hit hard and loses her balance. I pushed him back to his space and told him not to push girls. This is just the beginning. The shoving just gets worse, and Lou is trying to protect all three of us women. I get hit in the chest and face hard at one point. Delene finally turns to us and asks if we can move to the back, where we hope it will be less crowded. Leroy is still nowhere to be found. The back was less crowded, but not enough so. We head toward the front again, staying on the right side because that’s how we have been able to find each other. No Leroy. Once at the front, we notice that the bloco is turning a corner and that we are on Avenida Sete de Setembro (7th of September Ave). This is the way home. It’s been an hour since we’ve seen Leroy, and we all know that he is the only one who doesn’t need help getting home. The four of us can’t take the trampling anymore, and definitely not for another two hours, and we decide to enter pipoca and try to make a break home.

Wading through pipoca took over an hour, and I wonder if it would have been better to get smashed inside the bloco instead. We literally got squashed. We got rope burn whenever the big rope around the blocos would get pushed outward toward pipoca. Lou had to barrel through some unreasonable men in yellow shirts (they worked for the city, but they were not maintaining order). When I say barrel through, I mean it. They refused to let us pass, so he rammed through a defect in their wall of men, and Delene and I ran through. It was awful, and the whole time, I’m wondering when Leroy will realize that we have left. When we finally get home, we’ve decided that if we ever give advice about Carnaval, we’d recommend one bloco in the Barra-Ondina route and camarotes the rest of the time… especially if you’re a woman.

Coruja is Still Very Fun for Leroy
In the meantime, Leroy is looking for us at the bloco after his bathroom break. After two hours of looking, he figures we are gone and continues dancing. I’ll let him write this part…Ah yes, Sir Lee back on the black and whites here. My experience was nothing like theirs. No shoving, no obnoxious behavior towards me, just dancing and having a good time. I searched in vain for the crew for a while. I managed to walk from the front, to the back, to the font, to the back. I must have done this four to five times. After that last time, I gave up and kept partying. The place where the bloco turned the corner was the best spot. A beautiful panoramic of the beach, myriad locals in pipoca coming inside the rope to dance and party it up with you, a strong, friendly party vibe. I’m loving it! There was this one guy who was dressed like a security guard/rope holder. He left his spot to get a light from someone smoking a cigarette. He was not smoking tobacco though. He had something it looked like Bob Marley himself handcrafted. The guy had long natty dreads like Bob to boot. He gets his light and life is all good…that is until he is approached by real security either asking him to put out the huge J he’s puffing on or to get back to his rope duty. Either way, little Bob was not happy, so he pushed one of the guards. Four more scooped him up, literally, and put him out. The J hits the ground and is tramples on. The guy takes off his shirt and throws it at the guards. Bad move! One of the guards jumps over the rope and gave him the illest left hook I’ve seen since Mike Tyson in his prime. And hommie fell like a Tyson opponent. One hit is all it took. The call the ambulance over because he got knocked the ___ out. DeBo is in the building!

After that brief interlude, I get back to the party. I do my thing for another hour or so, when a humungous hunger wave hits me. At that point, the party is no longer fun. I’m focused on one thing only. I leave Coruja and make my way through pipoca. In front of us, the next bloco is jamming, so I detoured for a couple of songs. I’m only here once…I guess my belly can wait a bit more. Jump, jump, dance dance, stomach growl…oh I forgot about the food mission. At this point, I’m nearly running, because the hunger pangs are working me. I get back to the tree lined boulevard and immediately stop a peddler pushing a cart of corn. It smelled so good. Kinda the way the Church’s Chicken smell comes in your car as you drive by. Yep…more salt…oh yeah, more butter…aiight, just a little bit more of both. Ah…..that hit the spot momentarily!

Leroy Comes Home
I sit in the living room anxiously awaiting his arrival. I know he’ll be fine, because he’s the only one with a supernatural sense of direction, his Portuguese is good enough now that he can ask questions and understand responses, and he mixes in well with the crowd. I know he’s having fun somewhere, but of course, I still want to see him because I want him to be okay. He walks in 1.5 hours after we got home, singing and smiling. He thought Coruja was great, even better than Timbalada. I, of course, disagree. The bloco was good, but the trampling… not so good.

Leroy here again: It was not “better” than Timbalada. It was the intimacy of the party that I liked, especially how there were many more people outside the rope keeping the party lively. The party lasted longer and people were feeling it. There were lots of kids there dancing and samba-ing. So cute. Three year olds moving their hips to the reggae/samba beats. Timbalada was cheaper and just as fun, thus better in my opinion. So there Meli, I said it, Timbalada was better, but only by a little bit.

Napo in the Face (pronounced “NAH-poh in the fah-CHEH”)
Jak and three of his friends (Adam, Chris, and Roget) stop by that evening. Leroy is in a great mood, while the rest of us are just sitting (or lying) around recovering. We all decide to go to dinner (Dolce de Vita, again!) and get a table for nine on the second floor. Dinner is a blast. The New Yorkers are telling their Carnaval stories, complete with Canadians, charades, Germans who say “shut up,” and the now famous “napo in the face” story. It starts with their first night, which they spent in Pelourinho. It was raining, and as Ro tells it, the acidity of the rain was making his eyes burn. He wanted a napkin, and did not know how to ask for one. He kept pointing at one, and a local said “guardanapo?” which is Portuguese for napkin. Ro calls it a napo after this point. Natalia, who is in their group, was having a miserable night in the rain, and to cheer her up, Ro put the napkin on her forehead and said “napo… napo napo… in the face” (and do please call it fah-CHEH). And so began their theme song for Carnaval. While at dinner, they tell this story, and somehow, it snowballs. They’ve decided they must make a real song of it, complete with video and world tour. Lou’s disbelief, or hating, of the “napo in the face” phenomenon only eggs them on more. By the end of dinner, they’ve assigned Chris (an emcee) the job of writing the song. Leroy, somehow, is outside with an American from Chicago he just met (also an emcee), and they are freestyling on the street. We all head toward Jak’s place to hang out.

The Making of the Video
At Jak’s, we chill with their crew of eight. Natalia and Lauren tell us the horror of their return home from Timbalada, which was the last time we saw them. They apparently made a wrong turn with Rob (Jak’s brother) and ended up back on the main parade route, smashed by pipoca. Rob was holding their hands as they tried to wade through, but the girls got pick pocketed and felt up. They were furious when they got home, but seemed to have gotten over it when they told us the story. The boys head to one of the bedrooms to compose their song, which they already started on our walk to Jak’s place - at least four bars were already in place at that point! Pretty soon, I hear percussion coming from the room. They have closed the door for their “recording session.” After an hour, we all go to the room to see the finished product. Leroy is providing the beat. Chris is the main emcee. The boys have it choreographed to perfection, along with Robbie’s whistling at the end. We film it, we tape it. It is… napo in the face!

We hang out for a little bit longer, but I get antsy. I can’t drink any more alcohol… my body just says no. I’m also suffering from some kind of rash all over my legs, stomach, arms and face (what else is left?). We hypothesize that it’s a heat rash, since I used to get them all the time as a kid. I am miserable, of course, wishing I brought my Protopic or had some Benadryl. We head out at about 1am and hit bed.

---

Photos

Coruja
Eight hours after Camarote Salvador, we take to the streets again! Lou needs a drink, Meli wants to protect her feet.

So fresh and so clean
The plastic bags are to keep the apartment floor clean! My Carnaval shoes are nasty!

Searching for a mixer
That's not gel keeping my hair flat. That's sweat. H.O.T.

Hungry Jak
Jak's antsy to hit dinner

Blue Bottles
Water... or beer?

Party Foul
Ro broke a glass

Comments

[meli's mom]

napo in the face
i found it! tee hee....