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The Rio-Copacabana Beach (1987)

Should you ever do a feature on great public beaches (or great promenades), please consider me for the Copacabana beach that runs for four miles along Av. Atlantica in Rio de Janeiro. After a week there, as an experienced beachgoer, I'm prepared to declare it the world's most civilized democratic beach. Between fifty and eight yards deep, it is separated from a main traffic street by only a sidewalk, perhaps twenty-feet wide, whose floor has a handsome black and white undulating pattern (worth photographing). On the beach you find, especially on weekends, thousands of people, rich and poor, of all ages, colors and sizes. Most sit or lie under umbrellas, as the Brazilian sun can be brutal. Others are walking along the water. Some engage the waves (but no one is distance-swimming, curiously, even in this body-conscious milieu). The audaciously skimpy stringsuit is so common among women (of all sizes) that no one should feel afraid of wearing one here.

There is a continuous stream of hawkers, most of them simply announcing their stuffs: ice cream, peanuts, crackers, beer and soda, caps and sun lotions, "natural" sandwiches (composed of carrots and cream cheese), and especially marvelous little shrimp served on a barbecue stick (for less than a dollar). Other hawkers come to the beach with coolers filled with beer and soda, putting up a tarpaulin to protect themselves from the sun and then placing samples atop the coolers, sometimes with prices, in this unlicensed market. (My practical advice is never buy anything before establishing a price; failure to do so is an invitation to gouging.) In my experience, if you plan to return to the same beach, it plays to establish a handshake relationship with one of these vendors; he or she can often be asked to watch your stuff when you go into the warm water.

The greatest surprise was the complete absence of boom-boxes. It seems that Rio in general, and the beach especially, has a reputation for fleet young thieves, and the general sentiment is that portable radios would be stolen. As a result, all you hear at Copacabana is the "natural" beach sound of happy people. Incidentally, in a week of beach-going, I never saw any of these thieves. Indeed, the only time the beach police, who are armed young men in shorts and tank tops, ever got off their fannies was to break up a private squabble.

Up near the sidewalk are permanent poles from which can be hung volleyball nets that people bring to the beach along with the volleyball and string to mark the perimeters of the sand court. There are continuous pickup games, with four or sometimes two to a side, for players for all ages. Should you want to play, as I did, simply stand at the end of the court and look appreciative; and once a game is settled, usually at eleven points, the losers give way to a new team. Look eager, as I did (even at fifty and portly), and you will be cut in, to play until your team loses. In the wider parts of the beach are similarly continuous soccer games, largely with younger players, sometimes between goalposts that are firmly anchored into the sand; other times between makeshift markers. One recent innovation, unique to Copacabana, is the installation of high banks of powerful lights shining directly down on the beach, along the roadside edge, allowing these games to go into the night. Even after midnight, at least in December, people are walking and talking continuously over the mosaic, for the Copacabana beach is the center of the culture.