Bar #8, and Samba.

The other Saturday I met friends at Bar #8, a hipster micro-brewery that used anarchy- and labor-class imagery as a consumer choice for the bourgeios (sp.?) of my generation.

The place was leaping and pleasantly full, and the microbrews were quite good. The food looked a lot better than it tasted, though; the cheese soup (which everyone but me loved) tasted like that squirt cheese from a can, and a (Brazilian) friend-of-a-friend's hamburger looked great but didn't taste that good, and these sweet potato cakes had a wonderful sauce but were themselves kind of bland.

And, the service was scattered - 3 separate people helped our party (we were at the bar) - and the wooden posts in the bar were expensively-carved forearms with clenched fists.

VERDICT: I'd buy their beer elsewhere and wouldn't be opposed to meeting friends there if they suggested it, but it's not on the top of my list to go back to.

Afterwards, we went to a Brazilian Carnaval party that was in this giant ballroom. There was a live samba band and this (Brazilian) dance leader and 3 former samba queens of the city and some other assorted dancers (in those constumes with the giant feather head-dresses!) dancing on stage before every set of the band, and sometimes out in the audience, which was mostly (Brazilian) immigrants of all ages, including one delightful older woman dressed up in a leopard-skin pant suit with a cat mask on.

The decorations were very scattered and just random Mardi Gras decorations gotten from a drugstore, but the band was awesome, with guitar and drums and even a guy playing a whistle. People just danced and danced and danced, and no-one was obnoxiously binge-drinking, and people were quite inclusive; a few times when a conga line formed, people (incl. one of the samba queens) reached out to draw me into the line once they saw me smiling and clapping my hands and enjoying the music.

Brazilians are quite nice; I'd be interested in seeing what their national culture is like.

I find it very funny that half the men have these names that sound old in English, though, like "Bruno" or "Walter".