Riobard

Oh, dates lined up with twinks that are more homosexual than “quasi-gay” [sic], I believe? I wouldn’t particularly recommend any single sauna venue so the details of those places may be moot and the type prevalence is not very much matched with specific nights. The same types of providers proliferate across time within a given venue.

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The two in São Paulo and three in Rio de Janeiro all have Instagram pages that are generally a good up to date source of info, events, etc. These pages are not necessarily all operated to the same standard but give a fairly accurate picture. It takes but a minute to rifle through all five in one sitting. Why seek opinions about the best where’s and when’s? So we can read them over and over and over and over and over again.

FWIW, though the ferry service site mentions only vehicles and bicycles, I recently discovered pedestrians may cross. If you are involving a ride service you would need to allow for the driver to wait and cross (at what price?) or do it in two stages. If you have long stay time on your hands a trip to Santos bus station (from Jabaquara Metro and it’s attached regional bus station) to visit the coffee museum and have lunch is a pleasant excursion. The bus is 70 minutes each way, dirt cheap, some dramatic scenery closer to the coast and glimpses down the estuary zone of huge swathes of beach high rise real estate. WTTW you do need to produce your passport for regional bus tickets, any private bus company for that matter, say, to Rio. The museum was the only place over a full month that requested CoV vaxx proof. Same idea bus service to Guaruja and other more beach-y points south. Personally I think it’s easier to pick between Guaruja alone by bus, or alternatively among the few points west of it, to avoid ferry crossing during any one excursion. One or the other zone different trips, as they are not huge distances or travel time from SP.

São Paulo very much permanently in the rear view mirror. Not enough rear views to my liking.

The part about douching spoke to me. I brought supplies for 4 wks Brazil recently but could not muster the will to utilize. In 70th year but fortunate to have robust tumescence, perhaps partly owing to lifetime healthy nutrition and exercise. Fortunately, about 90% of the time no embarrassing GI-related mishaps upon protected RAI when attempted, and simply avoided or truncated when I thought it might be on the messier side. On a side note, I was violently ill vomiting one day and my tentative conclusion was it followed 2 strong caipirinhas of an evening at Lagoa early in Truvada cycle after having 2 years abstention PrEP. So later re-challenged but then abstemious re: alcohol. I don’t think it was food poisoning. I am not much of a consumer of alcohol ordinarily but was essentially mildly drunk on the cocktails.

Very prudent, if you have the flex to defer and your balanced assessment of personal risk is that avoidance of CoV infection is paramount. What I can tell you from paying attention to some of the local news is that the science-based pandemic management table here is advising a renewed Rio ‘lockdown’ but that will likely not materialize owing to reluctance to again endure the secondary impacts we know to be characteristically problematic viz economy etc. The air is microbially dirty; it’s the new poop. The more people congregating in any human context the bigger the bugger deuce, metaphorically speaking. By now everybody should grasp that observable pandemic mitigation infrastructure and implementation is not a reflection of case incidence and the accompanying risk of infection that necessitates medical intervention for a subgroup of infected.

3 years ago the baths bartender was stunning but aloof. I would have thrown money at him if given some encouragement. But I would wonder how he could cover all stations. There was an undie shop at the front but I don’t recall if it was separately staffed.

I always carry a reasonably decent decoy phone and decoy $bill/card-fold that are both essentially dispensable and in my outside lightweight full-length pants pockets where I hope a thief would consider the logical place for a pedestrian to store belongings but not, to date, any encounters such as requests or demands to have them removed from my person. I assume, possibly falsely, that a robber would not stick around long enough to inspect the contraband. The felon would quickly see some cash tucked into the cheap wallet thingy. The hope is that would be an acceptable tradeoff for my personal security and life to remain intact. My undergarment is a bathing suit or lightweight shorts with pockets where I fold up and distribute some higher denomination cash and functional credit cards. Usually at least one large enough pocket in the undergarment to conceal my true phone. Essentially I would need to be frisked to reveal these genuine valuables.

Apolo … been there dump that; not appalling, but … ———— Juan Bin Bin … Bin there dump that. Don’t wanna go to there again.

Grave worm chow alert: Meatloaf special this week! Messenger ribonucleic acid-free! FullSizeRender.mov

Chatter = “Ele não embalou seu equipamento de autoasfixia junto com seu nitrato de amila e tudo o que temos a oferecer é um pouco de plástico.”

I am neither a phone lover nor at all umbilically tied to mine beyond the basics of postmodern convenience. Or necessity, eg Über in Brazil. But if you haven’t been to, say, 555 on a Friday night prior to the late evening stage circus you haven’t experienced the equivalence of essentially watching paint dry when you could be catching up on written word news, other reading, etc. If you haven’t laid eyes on your new obsession, IMHO these environments are among the least interesting and stimulating settings I have encountered. Of course, there can be exceptions where at times things get more dynamic, even outside the tricking component. But phones are the new books at those times a Plan B comes in handy while biding time. And I am someone that can happily sit on a nice park bench in a regular square for long periods of time without being glued to my device.

To navigate via ride platform(s) between Guaruja and points west, and vice versa, Über to short ferry and complete the transaction, cross as foot passenger and order a new ride, correct? To avoid the very long circuitous route points north and so as not to unrealistically impose on a driver to navigate the crossing? I tried to use Über estimator without success. Maybe somebody knows. The only reference on our board was a traveller with a private vehicle utilizing the crossing which I understand to be no more than a few hundred metres.

That’s not a stretch. And it is a stretch.

Thanks, it’s a bit misleading due to surveillance methodologies in Brazil. 95 Sunday likely a data dump of several prior days where reported incidence was in 0 range; essentially off-duty sitch. 16-17 Monday (as in this table) perhaps reflective of trend of day of rest affecting reporting. 35 Tues perhaps another retroactive catch-up from weekend. Remainder of week could tell the story better. The astronomical percentage increases in the table are also reflective of previous testing hiatus situation many regions. The true 14-day change should eventually be better representative of reality in a few weeks if testing and reporting stabilizes. But the temporal curve trajectories tell that part of the story as well. Hospital admissions a good indicator as population testing accuracy, as you know, has thrown up its hands.

So now São Paulo city and state COVID hospitalizations have quickly jumped up to 25% the pandemic peak, when the situation seemed dire. This current trend does not appear to abate, and this is a context of very high levels of full vaccination, unlike said peak of Spring 2021. Less disease severity coupled with higher case incidence, albeit proportionally less CoV morbidity, does not portend less strain on the health care sector or improved net absolute population consequences unless the Omicron variant quickly burns itself out.

@Novarunner, do you know the app Subtitles Viewer? You can sync written subtitles to just about any movie or TV program. You won’t get the auditory Portuguese language but you may find it useful to see the text play out in concert with English soundtrack.

Unless I’m mistaken it’s the actual epidemiological surveillance tracking that underpins the assumptions about seriousness you yourself are making, so that piece is surely progressive, ongoing by necessity, and far from superfluous. I don’t think N of 1 anecdotal tells the story. Glad you got through, though, as would be now thankfully expected. Naturally the hope for better days is shared, although the limbic brain activated on alert with recent bloodbath memories is surely functionally adaptive.

Now apparently startling upswing in new case growth to 100/100K on Saturday. Not sure if it’s a retroactive data dump following holiday reporting lapse. I think not. Likely an absolute .1% per capita single day tally and most probably an extensive undercount. Upcoming week should help reveal trend. Progressively increasing hospitalizations. 40% probability of at least one active CoV case in a random group of 10; 99% probability of at least one active case in a group of 44.

* simple [spell correction]

There are dozens of legit areas and endless choices. I have done 5 neighbourhoods and happy with all. How long visit? What activity focus? Proximity to spa brothel ‘sauna’ venues important, ie, to avoid really long distant ride platforms? Preferred mode of transport? I do Über but often Metro subway as it’s good quality and I ride free as senior. The thing I try to avoid is virtual biometric registration check-protocol if the host is not on the spot to facilitate this … face and fingerprint scans etc. The tech can be dysfunctional and you might be talking through an intercom to a static-y voice in rapid Portuguese. The last time this happened I was on the phone with the host’s subhost’s sub-sub-host to trouble-shoot and it took an hour following an exhausting trip just to get from the street entrance to the elevator, to the unit keypad that itself was the easy-peasy part. Many places indicate this mode of check-in after you have committed and paid. Not always simole; never again. Some hosts are just fucking morons and don’t advise you ahead of time what all the steps will be. They consider it part of the adventure; I don’t.

And a lead at the Gloria Metro entrance as you head to Clube 117. They were one of the international sites for a CoV vaccination trial in which I participated: