Lapa: From Sociability in the City to City Sociability

Abstract

Since the mid-1990s, the area encompassing Lapa neighborhood has emerged as a highly attractive area for night life in Rio de Janeiro. On weekends, thousands of people hailing from the most diverse points of the city, the state, Brazil and the world gather in this small portion of a peripheral zone of the city center and produce a spectacle of public life. Its streets, squares, bars, nightclubs, concert halls and stores have been turned into one of the most disputed nocturnal points of Rio de Janeiro, in other words, as suggested by the geographical vocabulary, a central place for Bohemian sociability.