By Amaral Cavalcante *
It was the city guerrilla bar in the 80s, the apparatus of the discontented, the bar of the hipsters. A political activist bar knows what it’s like: it takes its conscience and leaves it all together on the same palate, in a gustatory and supportive brotherhood where dreams of justice and slogans mix, where revolutionary loves meet and political/electoral expectations are in their infancy.
In the photo, among others, the late former governor Marcelo Déda, president Lula da Silva and former state deputy Renatinho Brandão (Click on the image to enlarge)
We went to Gosto Gostoso because it was there that subversion worked, where decrees were challenged and, without bourgeois modesty, they fixed the world, put an end to oppression, resisted drinking and vociferating against the dictatorship. , until sunrise.
Well… the cruel world returned at dawn in the scribbles on the bill, in the waiter’s yawn, in the betrayal of the sun whitening everything. We had to return home without so much revolutionary heroism because our neighbors didn’t know us like that, so different from them.
– Corina has a communist son, poor thing! And besides, he smokes marijuana!
The late former senator Zé Eduardo Dutra – white shirt – was a regular at Gosto Gostoso (Click on the image to enlarge)
So, didn’t it become an obligation for anyone who wanted to be engaged to attend Gosto Gostoso? It was in the Grageru neighborhood, the end of the city because from there you couldn’t go anywhere, as there was no street. The end of the line was 100 meters from the Bar, in the “Cidade dos Employee” Housing Complex, built in the 1960s by governor Seixas Dórea. It was an urban development with a circular shape, with parallel and concentric streets surrounding a small grass square. Little pigeon houses in the same shape, fragile walls and asbestos roof, certainly planned by a modern, innovative engineer.
Gosto Gostoso was also a place to catch up on conversations (Click on the image to enlarge)
The first time I went to that concentric housing complex, I felt like the dizzy “preá de bazaar” at Christmas markets, when we bet on which house, among those around him, he would enter.
After that, it was just a huge yard of free manjelões, guavas and cashews, a land of pagan fire and wild little streams on the final border of the city.
Let’s go back to Taste Gostoso.
Mainly on Wednesdays, the bar stretched across the asphalt, with small iron tables blocking the street. A noisy crowd was looking for a table, there was no room for anyone who wanted one.
You could eat well at Bar do Fernandinho. The main delicacy was Maniçoba, a delicacy for men to face without hesitation, made from cassava leaves, poisonous if they were not treated with the centuries-old care that only the people of Lagarto maintain, coming from indigenous culinary ancestors.
Fernandinho, from Lagarte, took responsibility: – “We can get rid of the poison easily!” But he also had toasted pork tripe, chicken and a supreme Sarapatel served generously, which was enough for three. After all, the owners had it much more as a political apparatus than as a way of life.
Live shows attracted people to Gosto Gostoso (Click on the photo to enlarge)
Let’s photograph the bar: a sea of Trotskaian goatees, pale and monosyllabic bearded men, serious gentlemen full of wisdom and beardless teenagers coming to the cause with complacent ears, eager for justice and celebration.
Also notable were the raw leather shoulder bags. Each one carried in them their war arsenal: loose sheets with crazy drawings, doctrines, Guevarian diaries, manifestos, the latest edition of Carlos Zéfiro and, deep down, perfuming everything, the providential joint – that no one is made of iron!
The high from marijuana was the support of war!
Life, hope of justice and suffering. I think we were all like that, beautiful and revolutionary, at that time of Gosto Gostoso.
Without him, our political history would be different.
* Journalist, poet and chronicler (Photos: Fernando Magalhães’ personal archive)
