Proverbial

I still don’t know what to make of it, and curse myself for not having a video-capable cellphone at hand. Last monday night, walking away from Via Funchal in search of a cab after the My Chemical Romance concert, in São Paulo, I passed by various street vendors selling water, soda and other liquids. All of them with the usual “água, refri, cerveja bem barato” yells.

One of them, though, caught my attention as he would intersperse these yells with their equivalent in a surprisingly comprehensible English, something like “water, soda, beer, very cheap”. Unusual, but unremarkable, this being São Paulo - and a very wealthy neighborhood of it. But what he said next made me stop, and make sure I was listening correctly:

“Barack Obama, man, ‘Yes, we can’”.

If I were to honor my journalism degree, I should have stopped right there, turned around and asked the guy’s name, cultural background, and how the hell did he come up with that line. But I didn’t. So if someone sees him after some other gig at Via Funchal, please ask him these things and share it us.