California Capoeira

Capoeira is not big in the USA. It has been steadily growing for 30 years. But anyone who is trying to run a Capoeira Akademia will tell you that it is difficult to survive in this business. We don't have the national and international organizations that help other martial arts and sports with promotion and visibility. Crossfit is a good example. Individual gyms profit enormously from the marketing and advertising output of national organizations. Everybody in the States knows what Crossfit is.

Ask someone what Capoeira is. Most people don't know and the ones that try, make us cringe with attempts to classify a martial art as a dance. But it's not them, its us. What it comes down to is that we have many Capoeira small schools fighting to survive in an ocean filled with international Karate, Crossfit and Zumba sharks, who are all out to claim the few fitness dollars a person is willing to spend.

But California is different. Here we have UCA and Batuque. Two of the first Capoeira groups in the USA. Founded by Mestre Acordeon and Mestre Amen. Open Rodas everywhere. 'nuff said. Of course there is also Capoeira Brasil, of Mestre Boneco. But although the group is huge and international it is not of California.

So when we travel down the California coast line, while its not Bahia, we still find a lot of Capoeira. And because we have this crazy group of really good Capoeiristas we play a lot of Capoeira. On the side of the road, in parking lots, on the beach, in akademias, in parks and at Batizados. Its totally amazing and I feel incredibly lucky to be here. And its also extremely frustrating. How can that be? Its Capoeira heaven.

Because I can't play. My hip flexor has been acting like a rusted jackknife, although the biking is fixing it. I injure my wrist and the biking is making it worse. But more importantly, I am a confused Capoeirista. Why? I train with Professor Fenix and Candeias in Seattle. We practice a different capoeira than UCA does. Our Jinga is different. Also with only three years in Capoeira I am, and will be for a long time to come, a big capoeira baby. At some point, rolling down the coast on my ridiculous recumbent, I realize that this is a 24/7 batizado environment. I'm a nerd, I over-function. Bebum tells me to STFU and just play.

You know how when you go to another group's batizado you feel like a beginner? In a workshop you learn a kick and rastera combo but it just doesn't compute for you? This happens to everyone and it is why its so important to travel in Capoeira. I have seen instructors looking like total noobs trying to figure out the timing of a rastera option because they have not practiced that particular one all their lives.

Of course this is great. It shows that we are all human and we are always learning. It shows the willingness of our instructors to be beginners over and over again. It teaches us versatility and improves our games. It enables us to go home to our own group and beat someone's ass with a move they haven't seen before. It keeps us real because we know there is always someone out there who is not necessarily better or faster, but who will still be able to put you on your ass. And finally, it continuously challenges us. An important ingredient for my own personal happiness.

All of this is great at a Batizado, but when it is for a month straight... not so much. I let it make me into a confused Capoeirista. Should I do this jinga all bouncy now, so that I can accelerate off my backfoot better? Should I try that esquiva at a martelo even though I feel like its going to get my head taken off? And how the hell am I supposed to do anything without my wrist? The one and good constant that remained was "Arms up Pirata"! I ended up watching a lot of games. And listening. Which is entirely appropriate and not because I got to watch Mestre Beiramar and Mestre Mago go at it every day. Although that's pretty badass. I learn the first of many things about Capeoira on this journey.

"Learn by watching other people play" - not something we like to do. Not something we are often told to do. We are told to play, play, play, because the Roda is where your game really develops. But there is a lot of value in watching other people play. Good players, bad players, everyone. Watch them with your capoeira eyes and learn. No pride, no envy, no stinginess. Capoeira is one of the most complex things anyone can attempt. It behooves us to learn by watching because that's what babies do. I won't really learn anything by playing Mestre Beiramar, other than that I am able to easily bore the shit out of him. Nothing that he wouldn't rather have someone else teach me. But I sure as hell learn a lot by watching him.

I was still confused until I talked to Mestre about it a couple of weeks ago. He said "Well... you can't be confused". Weirdly, probably more to me than to him, that's all I needed. I'll just STFU and play.

leaving town - part 2

While we camped out happily on the beach the more important main group experienced flat tires, broken chains and didn't call it a day until 2am. They wondered briefly about our absence and probably decided that Pirates on funky modes of transportation can be keeled and Bebums can run into poles all day long. We  tend to agree.

A typical San Francisco morning greets us with fog so thick you can wrap it like a cozy blanket. The wood is still wet, but we also still have pounds of crickets to keep our spirits hopping happily. We think we need to make 50 miles today, because the plan puts us to Pigeon Point on the second day of our journey. We move quickly, pack our overnight gear and head back to our bikes. It's a quick hike and we look forward to getting our gear ready, but not the hike up the sand path.

Everything was gone. Bebum's bike and trailer with everything he owned. The saddle bag I left behind, with my tools, clothes and my wallet (yes, I kept it there. Keel me) was gone. At least Bebum had his cash on him. Because the last time he slept in Golden Gate Park he had 1500 stolen out of his bag. That small nagging voice in my head last night was not loud enough when it whispered that it may be a good idea to sleep next to your bike in a bum infested city.

What was still there was my recumbent bike. Remembering the embarrassment of falling over in front of all the cute Berkeley Brazilian girls, twice, at least, I feel conflicting emotions of empathy and anger. TAKE MY FUCKING BIKE, I may scream inside my head. I guess the thief was smarter and didn't bother with it. Or tried and fell on his ass.

Bebum and I go into beast mode. But following bike tracks, calling the police, canceling credit cards leads to no trace of our stuff. The police is out of its jurisdiction, tells us to call Park Services and proceeds to get his pig cruiser stuck in the sand. We offer to call Park Services. One aims to please. The bike, the gear, the wallet, the green card, the tools remain gone. What is left is an 80 year old hippy on his morning walk who offers to take us poor saps to his house to regroup.

David and his peace shirted hippy wife Sherry let us take showers, feed us, commiserate about the evils of the world and lend us their interwebs.

We can a carton of pears with them. Their 92 year old mom comes over, full of chutzpah and admiration for the two crazies riding to Brazil on their bikes. She brings us home-made bread and tells her daughter to offer us pickles made with ancient Austrian kosher recipe. We don't feel at home at all.

I remember Craigslist Joe and ask for a little love in the General Community section. Nada. Not until a few days later when it was too late. But we do find a cheap whip (Bebum speak for rig, or bike). In this global megalopolis-sized city we buy it around the corner from David's place. He takes us in his pickup to pick the bike up.

Mission accomplished he drops us back to the beach and... finally, we get to ride. We link up with Mestre and group at Halfmoon Bay campground and thank the supreme being of your choice for a journey well started.

u-turn

His glasses are like the bottoms of coke bottles. The old kind. The ones you can only get outside of USA. The ones with real sugar. None-regulated and highly caffeinated.

"Que hace este pendejo en bicicleta en medio de la pinche calle en la noche?" He thinks as he yells at the Gringo to get into his pickup and toss his bike into the back.
Gringo from the central cold steppes of the Ukrainian planes does as told.
"Quieres una cerveza?" the weirdly physically oxymoronic 50something yells.
"Si Compadre, Si" says Cantador, polite international traveler that he is, and grabs the two beers offered.
"Quieres fumar mota?" and offers the joint he just dragged on. Cantador wonders if the dark pinche calle might not be the safer place to be right now. But then again, this is his only way to reach our campsite, another incredible natural wonder along the Bahia de Conception on the Sea of Cortez.

We all start checking the broken down Pickup truck as it approaches. Then Cantador, two beers, one case of beers, a reefer and four delicious fish that Cantador organized for all the B2B Riders emerge. He must have forgotten his wife Diana somewhere along the way. Before we start grilling we need firewood. U-Turn offers his, way too many (all) of us jump into the back of his tailgate-less truck. Maybe looking for U-turn making adventures. Would you rather be Sean Penn or Jennifer Lopez? Billy-Bob Thornton is taken.

U-Turn jabbers a million miles an hour as we rock past the beach and the gringo trailers at the end of it. I know that kind of jibber-jabber. The Shabu does the talking. Embracing the world and everyone in it, for days on end. The paranoia comes later.

perfect pix thx Balao

Stops at a gate to open it, drives on his on personal beach to his trailer. The stars stream their light in perfect silence. Geese and Chicken chill on the beach. Unbeknownst to us hordes of bloodsucker lick their chops at the fresh white meat. We help him unload his truck after he turns on his generator and Christmas lights, offers two joints, drives us to his firewood, yells at us about the pinche corrupt Mexican government, drops us off to our campsite and disappears into the night after he invites us out to his place for whenever.

We need to be friends with U-Turn.

B2B grills with the help of Diana and Cantador. Little do we know how good they are at Seafood. He trains with Mestre Mariano in Santa Barbara and moonlights as Evolutionary Biology and spear fisher. Yes, Cantador is a badass. We all pass out with food coma. Arroz con Leche over Campfire with Cinnamon lastet shorter than U-Turn's supply to build a Palapa.

The next day most of the crew rolls to catch up with Mestra and Mestre after a good Capoeira session on the beach. Mariano, Bebum, Cantador, Diana, Pirata as well as Yola ride out to U-Turn' s beach.

We ride to his RV. Shockingly his coke bottle bottom glasses are gone. What? He doesn't look like he will shoot and feed us to his pigs anymore (not out of malice, but pure sense of economy, you understand).

We want U-turn back.

He lets us have one of the Palapas and goes back to leveling half his ground BY HAND! En el medio pinche dias caloroso. Which he was also doing last night after he dropped us back. Soon he will have the flattest flat on the block.

We set up and Mariano and Cantador head over to pay him a visit and invite him to lunch. They return with a full set of spear fishing gear.

And "Man, his name is Marco  He used to be the Chief of Staff for the President. For 17 years. Then they framed him for murder, threw him in jail and the key away. He just got out last year after 10 years. And bought this place to get away."

The level of crazy in this desert is quite outstanding, even by desert standards.

U-Turn!

"And, he said all of that after he invites me into his funky Tarantino like trailer - light streaming through fucked up blinds 'n shit - then tells me to find his spear fishing gear somewhere in one of the closets and proceeds to smoke crack out of a light bulb right in front of me and Cantador while we go through all his shit."

Two hours later

Exhibit 1 for Badass (Cantador)

Life is like Capoeira.

We go back to borrow a grill for the two Halibut etc that Herr Badass acquired in the bay, and come back with a grill and lemons. U-Turn is still leveling. And he won't be eating any time soon. We settle in to sleep after a righteous meal and our host swings by to drop of some mosquito coils. He was taking a break from leveling. But not for long. Two of his friends show up and they go to twork until sunup. At which point the spread is flat. And so is U-Turn's earth. Or so we think.

Despite his tweaking days and yelling ways, he is another example in a long list of voluntary local Mexican hospitality that we are forced to compare with the local gringo kind, which usually goes down like this:

"Hey, that's great you guys. What a journey, to Brazil, huh? Is there anything you all need? Can I help with anything?"
"Hmmm, no we are fine... Well, maybe some eggs?"
"Oh... how many are you thinking?"
"Up to you."
"We juuust came back from the store, well, we have some, but..."
-
"You guys look like survivors, you'll get on. Yeah, sorry, no can do."

No matter how poor, no matter how deported, no matter the motives of the locals for helping us consistently it seems that Mexican hospitality is rather outstandingly great. The B2B crew has an ongoing discussion about this, trying to figure out if its us, our story, the locals, the gringos or any combination thereof. What do you think?

Finally, U-Turn is apparently not another crazy Mexican dude mad at the govern'mint. We googled him - and the interwebs never lie. His name is Marco Antonio Daccarett Habib. He did get thrown into jail for murder and seems to have been involved in a murky real estate transaction back in the day with government officials. Far be it from us to know who is guilty of what, but in prison everyone is innocent. You would be too.

Should we be glad we had the spear in our campsite over night? Hindsight is like wearing glasses the size of coke bottle bottoms. The old kind.

i saw a Mestre cry today

I saw a Mestre cry today. A man who has taken life’s full measure and came away humbled yet spirited. Mestre Acorden, more symbol than man, who tries desperately to remove himself from people’s greedy eyes and the emotions they attach to their idea of him. So desperate that he will sit his weary ass on a bike for one year. To get away. To find himself once more. And to connect to a past he may have lost long ago.

Mestre Acordeon shed tears of regret and missed opportunities, reading "The Making of a Mestre" to a bunch of kids. We can not adequately describe what it feels like to witness this openness of spirit, this living with your arms stretched to the horizons. Sucking the marrow out of each moment given. Each moment of truth, of sadness and happiness, of failure and accomplishment.

What was this story? This power? This allegory and evaluation of one person’s life? What moved Mestre so much that he spent an evening exercising his human right and duty to simply feel? No matter what the circumstance. No matter who the audience. No matter how much water had flown under the bridge of Mestre Bimba’s life and death.

Do we attach undue greatness to a moment of public introspection because to us Capoeiristas it is as if the President spoke of meeting the Pope - and regretted not having washed his feet towards the end? Maybe the greatness of the moment is a natural result of the greatness of the man living that moment? Or is there really nothing special about this at all - just an old man considering the pages of his book?

For us B2B Riders many questions remain in our overcycled and dehydrated minds about this moment. Questions that Capoeiristas and others may be able to answer one day in a far away and hopefully wiser future. For our pasts recede from all of us.

The Making of a Mestre” pg. 131 in Mestre Acordeon’s book “Capoeira, a Brazilian Art Form”.