Loni was itching to do something and get out of the apartment so we went to have a drink at one of the little outdoor bars in our neighborhood. At nine p.m. on a Friday in Pontal, the night's activities are still well in their infancy. Restaurants and bars are setting up their plastic chairs and tables on the sides of the street, mobile food vendors are pushing their carts to claim a certain corner, and cars are parked strategically so that they provide the requisite blaring music for the crowds of drinkers and diners.
Since it's only 9, we have our pick of tables at one of the bars known to serve the cheapest beer. Here in Brazil your main affordable and widely available choices are Skol, Brahma and Antarctica. Beers are served in liter bottles always in a giant coozie where the weather is hot. As I've mentoined before, nobody orders their own beer but rather the tables share each liter until it's time to order another.
The first time I went to an outdoor bar like this in Brazil I wondered what the small, locked boxes were for on each table. I learned that they were a simple but effective way to keep track of every table's bar tab. When you sit at your table, the server comes around, takes your order and then opens up the box to show you it's empty. When they come back with a beer and some glasses, they put the bottle top through the slot in the box. At the end of the night, the server simply unlocks the box, counts the tops and tells you how much you owe. At some of the bars that aren't this organized, each table just has to keep the empty bottles under their chairs and then the server counts them. This has created some confusion and fights in the past, however, as sometimes people try to sneak their bottles in with yours. It's been known to happen.
After a couple of hours at the bar and plenty of people watching, the locals are finally starting to emerge. At 12:30, Loni and some other students are heading out to an all night beach band reggae party and I am heading home to bed. For some of us the night has only just begun.
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