The Five-Dollar Umbrella

I refuse to pay more than $5 for an umbrella (just to show that I am still flexible, the $5 can be either Canadian or US). This price cap isn’t because I tend to lose them, as I do with sunglasses, but rather because I tend to get caught in the rain without one and then want/need to buy a new one without significant investment, since in most cases “a perfectly good umbrella” is waiting for me in my hall closet back at home.

I’ve discovered over the years that the going rate for basic street-sold umbrellas around the world is somewhere between C$5 and US$5, and my collection includes editions of these $5 specimens from New York, Hong Kong, Paraguay, and now Brazil. It rains a lot in Brazil during the raining season (November – March) and I am getting much better at never leaving the house without an umbrella no matter how promising the weather looks in the morning. Invariably, it will cloud over and start to pour just when I am leaving work or wanting to walk outside.

At the beginning of December, I took a week off to travel to Rio and Parati with Mark (visitor #2) who was here for a two-week visit. We were pretty good about the whole umbrella thing, although we did get caught one afternoon in a downpour in Rio. Even though we had not one, but two, umbrellas back at the hotel, we found ourselves sans parapluie and getter wetter. Finally we decided to bite the bullet and purchase a third umbrella. As it turned out, the going rate in Rio is not $5 but R$5 (reais). Now, at the moment, the real (singular of reais) is worth approximately C$0.44, making the umbrella worth C$2.25! Who knew that the $5 barrier could be broken? Makes me wonder i) how much umbrellas actually cost to make; and ii) how much the people making them are being paid.

Three days later in Parati, we got caught in another torrential downpour (you would think that we would have learned our lesson by now, but no ....). A small sidebar – Parati, for some unknown reason was built to glorify the torrential downpour. The transition between the ocean and the town is quite fluid (pun intended) and the town literally floods every time it rains, regardless of the amount of rain that actually falls. It makes for very photogenic conditions as the historic buildings are all beautifully reflected in the flooded streets. It also creates fairly challenging time for pedestrians who need to hurdle rather large bodies of water to cross from street to street, but I digress. So when we found ourselves caught in the storm we ducked into a bar to wait out the storm and have a drink before dinner. Well, there was no sign that the storm would let up, so Mark ran across the street to buy yet an other umbrella (number four, for those who are counting). He came back a few minutes later with a rather large, walking umbrella. Incredulous, I was sure that we had broken the barrier. But no, the umbrella cost R$15 equivalent to US$5! My faith in the umbrella industry was restored! Although I must admit that I was feeling rather silly now having four umbrellas between the two of us. With our new gear in tow we leapt from sidewalk to sidewalk and made it to the restaurant for dinner (where I was about to discover the banana-stuffed squid, so all was soon to be well). Of course, the rain stopped fifteen minutes later and we were feeling even sillier!

Now two nights ago, Claire (visitor #3) and I were in a cab heading from Jardins to the Ibirapuera Shopping mall. We hoped out of the cab unexpectedly since we found ourselves very close to the mall, but still miles away due to the traffic in which the cab was stuck. We realized it would be a whole lot faster at that point to hop out and walk. As soon as we were out and the cab pulled away, Claire realized that she had forgotten one of the umbrellas on the backseat. Feeling terrible and promising to buy me a new umbrella, I tried to explain that in fact I had many many umbrellas at home and that the particular model which had just been donated to the cabbie, was in fact the Paraguayan edition, which was worth exactly what I paid for it a year ago. Ten minutes after purchasing it, the wind blew it inside out and permanently bent the shaft. I guess you get what you pay for! In the meantime, I will try to remember to take my one of my umbrella’s with me so that I don’t acquire yet another one here in Brazil.