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 trend, and this is where the foreign happiness of rubber sandals with straps between the toes (arguably the heaviest export scale today) came from, as well as the chain gang scam, the story of Paco, the bank collapse, and now the skit of a motorcyclist who attacks twice, sometimes even four times, with two criminals on each of his two motorbikes. 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, the Uber arrived late at night, and the couple followed another chapter of the jungle survival manual and sped into the ride.
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. Although the couple did not meet one of the requirements when they stepped there, they still had a glowing mobile phone in their hands, monitoring the arrival of taxis and traffic to the show venue. Meanwhile, the bike train was moving at high speed and only stopped 100 meters behind the couple. And they 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 watched in horror as the motorcyclists climbed the 100 meters in the opposite direction, 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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