There's nothing like the smell of hot exhaust in your face to remind you that you're in a Third World country. I'm not sure what the exact definition of a Third World country is, but from what I saw on my visits to Brazil, the traffic was bad and it wasn't a good idea to drink the water. This was my second trip to Brazil. I went there about three years ago–the first time I'd ever left the States–so it was interesting to go back again. This time my mission was to work on a Pro Spotlight with Bob Burnquist, and I figured I'd try to get an article with the locals at the same time.
It was raining when I arrived at São Paulo's airport; Bob picked me up. A pretty shitty feeling, the first day of a trip being doused with rain. I hoped it wasn't a sign of things to come. Since we had nothing to do, we went to see The X-Files. The next day we were going to try to hook up with Lincoln Ueda early because he was scheduled to leave at 2:00 p.m. for Europe. We woke to more rain, and the only ramp to skate was outdoors, so we missed our window of opportunity. Later, we went to Rollerbrothers (an indoor park with a vert ramp) and skated.
Bob had to leave to go to a wedding for four days, but he hooked me up with Fabio Bitao, a photographer for 100% Skate mag, so I stayed at Fabio's place and cruised around with him. While Bob was gone, Fabio and I hooked up with a posse of about two to three carloads of locals and hit street spots or skateparks. The cool thing was that everyone was down for each other to hit the spot they wanted to hit–the locals were down to skate. They'd skate all day, until they couldn't skate anymore. There wasn't a time they didn't land the trick they were trying; even if they got broken off, they'd keep on trying. A lot of the time they'd land it even before I could get my camera out. This kid Danilho landed a double-kink 50/50 before I set up, and then he did it five more times after that. Biano wasn't done with a boardslide on the rail; he did a boardslide shove-it after that.
As soon as Bob got back into town, we started working on stuff with him and mostly shot street photos. We went to this 25-stair rail Biano grinded; he wanted to go back to film it. It was drizzling on and off, but he was still down to try it. He must have tried it fifteen to twenty times before he landed it. He never got broke, he seemed to be able to run out of it easily. And then out of nowhere comes "Street Bob" looking for some action. He tries once, slams, twice slams, three tries a slam, and that one hurt me just watching. Biano made it, and then Bob got up for one more dance with the devil–he looked it in the eye, and went for it. Now you're wondering if he got served up ... well, of course not! He made it perfectly and limped back to the car.
During our stay, Jen O'Brien and Cara-Beth Burnside came down to skate the cement parks and enjoy the sun, even though I think they brought some rain. It was nice having two more English speakers around.
Our last day in São Paulo we skated a really good park called San Kitel. It had pretty much anything you could ask for, from a perfect nine-stair rail to three huge cement bowls. We skated it with Taro, and he zipped around like Speedy Gonzales.
There were five days left in the trip, so we decided to head out to a town called Florianópolis. It was a ten-hour drive on a single- lane highway called Death Road, aptly named because of the number of car accidents. Our posse was three cars deep–I noticed Brazilians roll in clans. We started the drive in the late afternoon. It seemed really sketchy, but at least we could see if death was coming. The drive was like a video game because you could do whatever you wanted on the road without any real consequences. As soon as night came, we went from the first stage of the game to the last stage because of the added difficulty–darkness and rain. For the next three hours, Bob "White Knuckles" Burnquist (the Pilot) and Jen "Never Flinch" O'Brien (the co-pilot) drove nervously with their faces about two inches from the windshield until we finished the game.
We stopped in a town called Curitiba for the night and got hotel rooms. One thing about the Brazilians, they get along really well. There still hadn't been any drama. The next morning we were going to skate this old cement vert ramp in town, but it was raining when we woke up. By the time we checked out of the hotel, the rain stopped and luck was on our side.
We dried off the ramp with squeegees. It took a while, but before we knew it, the ramp was dry. We skated it for about an hour and a half; we left as it started to drizzle. We'd just made our window of opportunity.
We drove for another five hours, reaching Florianópolis at midnight. We stayed in some scary hotel rooms. With the rain and dark night, it reminded me of a Friday The 13th movie. The rain continued for the next two days, so we sat around trying to entertain ourselves.
We left Florianópolis and headed back to São Paulo. Bob, by chance, remembered a park along the way called Itajaí. After squeegeeing the rain from the ramps, we were skating within an hour. Three hours of skating ended when another rainstorm moved in. We headed back to Curitiba.
We arrived in Curitiba by 11:00 p.m. and found out how to get to an indoor park Drop Dead (a Brazilian skate company) had built. This park was set up like your average European contest course–no wonder the Brazilian skaters are so good at contests. We skated until 3:00 a.m. Everyone just charged it trying to get the most out of it. By the time we were done, everyone was beat. We went back to the hotel.
I flew out the next night from the São Paulo airport; we still wanted to skate the Rio Sul bowl. Without enough time to drive to Rio and back to São Paulo so I could catch my flight home, we decided to fly to Rio. We woke up late and only had 45 minutes to get to the airport, which was a half hour away. First, we ended up going to the wrong airport and lost 30 minutes. We finally got to the airport at departure time, and still had to buy our tickets. Somehow we made it on the flight.
We had to hope for nice weather, because it'd been raining the whole time. We felt nervous for the entire hour-long flight, not only because of the weather, but by the time we'd land there'd only be three hours to skate.
We stepped off the plane, the verdict–no rain. So we went to the bowl and took care of business. With an hour left to shoot, we headed to some other bowls, skated for about twenty minutes, and then headed back to the Rio airport. We flew into the São Paulo airport with just enough time to head for to the international airport, so I could fly back to the States in an hour.
Somehow I just made my flight; I guess the moons must have been in line. Looking back on the whole skate scene in Brazil, I decided that the country might be called a "Third World" country, but as far as skating goes, it's pretty much the same as in the States. They have skateparks being built all the time, they have sprained ankles, and they also love to skate as much as anyone in America.
I would like to thank Bob for setting this up, Fabio and his
roomates for letting me torture them, Penguin for the best rice and
beans, and all the skaters for skating so hard and making my visit
a pleasure.
