Barra was once only for lovers

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    Someone once told me, pointing the distance on the other side of the road while we enjoyed drinks and seafood snacks in a group table at one of a rustic line of restaurant and bars at Barra da Tijuca, in the West Zone (do not mistake by the neighbourhood of Tijuca in the North Zone, where what was left of Rio's native Atlantic Forest remains): "By the time I was young, that and these bars were all that existed in Barra".

    It was night, but one could distinguish sleepover motels in the line of modest buildings. She went on: "Barra was a remote place by then. If a young couple decided to have sex, those were the only motels available within the whole city and almost nobody owned a car by this time".

    Of course, those were not her exact words, but that's what I recall from this enjoyable evening out in my early teens. By this time, Barra was still a bit remote, but two tall buildings at the shore differed from the rest of the low buildings of this neighbourhood.

    Few years later, when I came back to this point of Barra's beach, there were plenty of buildings of the same height. The older ones were still standing and I could only recognize this place by their shape.

    In high school, the geography teacher told us Barra's native species were only thicket due to its sandy type of soil, adverting that the heat could become unbearable because those tall buildings would block the wind from circulating. He was already worried about its growth.

    And there was already the mall. By the time I was a child, Barra was a synonym of two things: going to the beach and fun in the shopping mall. The inauguration of the second shopping mall of Rio de Janeiro, the first one was Rio Sul, in Botafogo, both still open, produced a kilometric traffic jam, with people coming from most diverse neighbourhoods in Rio, specially from the North Zone, which didn't have any shopping mall yet, and so did its huge sales by the beginning of the year for the following years.

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