Cliché: Rio is the city of contradictions. Botafogo is the cliché squared, the cliché of cliché. Botafogo is the district king of contradictions. Botafogo is so ugly. dirty, noisy, full of traffic, ugly buildings, dangerous roads that you can’t go through because they are highways in the city, pedestrian tunnels you don’t want to go because you don’t want to know what lives inside there.
I love Botafogo. Botafogo is Beautiful! Botafogo never sleeps (New York, come here to learn how to do!), botafogo is alive, cozy, hospitable. Here in Botafogo you feel at home. In Botafogo you make friendships, meet everybody, match all, each type of person, object, shop, tree.
There are buses of each number and color for each place, the Metro, thousands of cars and yellow taxis in a single glance. Bars, little bars, micro-bars, restaurants, cinemas, sidewalks full of small red plastic tables, full of empty bottles of beer, growing growing growing endlessly and if you come back after an hour you find them tripled and quadruplicated and centuplicated.
Botafogo is full of words. Millions of words said and listened, which grow together with the empty bottles of beer over the red tables up to 3 in the morning. In Botafogo you are never alone. It’s impossible to be alone in Botafogo. People everywhere, always, at any time. Ipê trees, small bars, red tables, beer bottles, carts selling everything, fruit, pineapples, eggs. Husbands selling, over the bars red tables, the crochê creations of their wives.
In Botafogo there is everything. Noise, traffic jams, dirty, dangerous people, young people abandoned in the ground. I love Botafogo. Botafogo is the most beautiful place in Rio. Botafogo is not a district. Botafogo is a window.
