Every day, that scene arrives on my phone. It should also arrive on your mobile phone. A new stale classic from the urban jungle. When I went for a walk on a moonlit night, suddenly I was there, no longer a spectator, but a character active within it. I was about to become the next victim in the most infamous scene of Rio’s current criminal movement, a staple of urban violence – I was surrounded by a pair of notorious bikers.
Rio was the beginning of the fashion, and it was also here that the foreign happiness of rubber sandals with straps between the toes (perhaps the heaviest in today’s export scale) came, as well as the chain-gang scam, the story of Paco, the story of bank-breaking and now the sketch of a motorcyclist attacking twice, sometimes four times, that is, two criminals on each of his two motorcycles. That was my case.
It was a moonlit night and I was out for a walk with my bud. More precisely, it was to go see Marisa Monte with the orchestra at Jockey’s. In the first scene of this movie, which I reluctantly entered and I’m sure is playing on your phone, I’m next to a sprout. At the time, they were both still wearing their “I’m Connected” T-shirts. They followed the latest citizen guides and paid attention to the need to protect themselves from recent forms of violence.
From inside the apartment gate, surrounded by electric fences and green-light surveillance cameras, the couple waits for a taxi, knowing that they should only leave this comfort zone when the car is already parked on the sidewalk and the license plate confirms the one on the app. According to Marisa’s song, an Uber arrived late at night, and the couple, following another chapter of the jungle survival manual, hopped in quickly.
But here’s the “however” thing to keep in mind when driving on the sidewalk: The ring where everything God desires comes true is huge. A couple didn’t meet one of the requirements when they walked in there. And they still held luminous cell phones in their hands, through which they monitored the arrival of taxis and traffic to the show location. Meanwhile, the motorcycle train was moving at a high speed and only stopped 100 meters behind the couple. And the couple had already regained the smarts needed for anyone trying to survive in Rio.
— Run, run, run — they shouted in unison to the taxi driver, threw themselves into the back seat, slammed the door, and looked in horror at the motorcyclist as he climbed the 100 meters separating them from the victims, or… the alleged victims.
Was it really an attempted robbery? A drawing of a scene similar to the hundreds already published seemed like a yes, but not when you were asking the question. The taxi driver sped up and the motorbike driver drove the wrong way. Perhaps the other victims further down the street, or even Rio! They were probably keeping an eye on the daily free movement of miscreants in traffic jams. I don’t know. It might have been a panic attack, given the general expectation that bikes and time would arrive at any moment on the sidewalks of life in Rio. I’m sure Marisa Monte’s songs are getting better and better.
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