lamento

praça da se, salvador da bahia


for those of you that: 1) know me and 2) have been to salvador, will you kindly allow me to kill your buzz?


for all that i heard about this tropical city, this home of capoeira, this birthplace of bahian culture, i was expecting a go-and-never-come-back type destination. instead: eh. before you indulge me in my negative elaborations, keep in mind that i have only been here for three days and don't really know any locals.


for one, we are staying near the pelourinho. the architecture is wonderful and the history is soberingly fascinating, but it fits every definition of a tourist trap (my definition definitely includes any place that sells t-shirts with cheesily localized top ten lists). each block offers a multitude of capoeira pant purchase opportunities and the restaurants where staff beckons you to dine at their establishment in full costume. add the street kids and you have a sick version of disneyland.

the history of the peculiar institution makes this place even more uncomfortable. as i remarked in my previous post, i am glad that it is not pushed under the rug. but still, do the waiters and waitresses need to wear head garments while standing with their hands behind their backs? i know that capoeira originated here, but does the town center really need five studios and performances in every public space? i also haven't missed the irony that at a place where people were once bought and sold, there are people who are being bought and sold. that, or else the beautiful, young, local women i see at all these bars lust after middle-aged, potbellied, balding gringos. stranger things have happened, i suppose.

to get to the grande questão: is this the local culture, or just the local niche within the global order? if there were not cameras and gringos, dollars and reias, would you still be banging the drums in the praça da se? do you really want to make replications of beautiful paintings and wood carvings all day? i wanted to come to salvador to see all these things, but not to be clubbed over the head by them.

to avoid being entirely negative, there have been some peaks as well. the olodum show (dozens of young percussionists, dozens of vibrant line-dancers, hundreds swaying to the beat) was out of this world. the são joaquim market (you can buy a peacock!) was a trip. and, i have moderate-to-high expectations for what's going to go down in the terreiro de jesus tonight.

yet, all the praise i have heard for salvador is developing an insecurity within me: do i not know how to travel? am i not cool? why don't i get it? or, did i just come a little too late? i'll let you judge that one and chalk it all up to staying in the wrong part of town. anyway, i'm glad that there are so many others who have enjoyed themselves here, except those who have purchased humans for the fields or the bed, depending on the era.

atenção gringos com dreadlocks: i don't care how long they are, how many hemp harvests it took to make that shirt, or that you made your own jewelry; you look like as much of a tourist as a middle-aged japanese businessman in a sun hat with a ten-inch superzoom lens on his nikon.