Sep 3rd, 2008
Clubbing in Leblon
After spending a few days hanging out with some of my buddy’s guy friends for the past few days in Rio I gave one of his female Carioca friends a call who seemed extremely friendly and spoke impeccable English. We made plans to meet at the Astoria and then head to a club in Leblon called House.
She arrived with a couple of her girl friends at about 9:00 and George and I hopped into the car and we headed off to House.
I was a bit skeptical at first because while the club had an extremely cool vibe to it, we were literally the only ones there however the doorman assured us that the place would fill up later in the night. We sat outside on the front deck and had a few drinks while chatting about Rio.
At around 10PM, people slowly started filling into the venue and I became suddenly aware that English was being spoken all around us. George informed me later that evening that we had unwittingly stumbled onto some sort of event being held for American and European students in Rio.
Before long, two floors of the club were completely packed with an international crowd - most of whom were speaking English. It was actually sort of a nice change-of-pace to socialize with people who spoke my native tongue instead of trying to piece together broken Spanish and Portuguese to get things across. I met a group of British architecture students who were doing a semester abroad in Rio as well as several American students who were also studying in Rio.
The night was actually quite enjoyable until about 2 or so, when the place started to resemble a British University club at the end of the night with people stumbling around and making out in corners. I started to feel my age when I realized I was more disgusted by the debacle than amused by it and really started to feel my age when I started contemplating intervening and putting several girls (who looked underage) in cabs home who were making out with a random assortment of young males.
Fortunately, George shared my sentiments as did our hosts so we headed off to indulge in some late night McDonalds before heading home and to sleep.
[...] One of the reasons we had such a great time down in Rio is because I had the good fortune to know a few cariocas beforehand through a good friend of mine in the US. We all corresponded via e-mail before we arrived and the evening of our arrival they drove down to pick us up at our hotel before taking us to one of the more popular clubs in Lapa. [...]
Where exactly is House? I can’t find an address for it on any websites.
Boy, I did some digging and couldn’t find an address. Sucks that the name is ‘House,’ huh?