50mm, f/2, 1/125 sec, ISO 800
Marcos drove my family and me from our hotel on Ipanema to the Rio de Janeiro airport. Along the way, he told us that he bicycled from New York City to Panama in 1975 and was hoping to spend the summer of 2014 in Italy where he would “ride a scooter and drink wine and eat food and get fat. If I die there, this is a good way to go.”
As the drive was long and winding, we talked about a great many topics. His thoughts on alcohol: “I don’t drink the cachaça, but talking to people is my cachaça. It makes me drunk on life.”
When asked what he thought of New York City: “I lived in New York, but the people- they don’t talk, they don’t even walk, its run run run. It kills your spirit. Rio, Rio lights a fire in my spirit.”
On Brazil’s economy: “People say Brasil is a developing country and I say this is lie. Brasil is corrupt. The politicians steal, the rich steal, the poor steal. There is no middle class. A country must have a middle class to be successful.”