Wonderful Wonderful

On July 7, 2007 ( 7-7-7) -- a Swiss-based organization called “New7Wonders ” made their long-awaited announcement of the SEVEN NEW WONDERS OF THE WORLD. This list was the result of popular global vote, and from what I’ve read so far, the vote was skewed by certain highly enthusiastic city and regional populations, most notably the Catholic citizens of Rio de Janeiro, who went on a manic religious campaign to collect as many votes as possible for the Christ the Redeemer statue.

Reading this story I was reminded of the problems of trying to select the “best” Major League Baseball players to participate in the annual All-Star game. At certain times in baseball history it was entirely by fan vote. In 1957 the baseball fans of Cincinnati “stuffed the ballot box” -- and elected their beloved (but mostly mediocre) Cincinnati Reds players to comprise almost the entire starting line-up of the National League All-Star team.

The Commissioner of Baseball was annoyed. Legendary great players like Willie Mays and Hank Aaron were relegated to being substitutes on the All Star team, and other great players were left off the team entirely. Clearly the fans could not be trusted to do the right thing. By Executive Order, the Commissioner of Baseball pushed aside the obviously faulty voting rules, and personally placed Mays and Aaron as starters in the 1957 game.

The fans were further punished in the following decade, reduced to minimal influence in the voting, as sportswriters, managers, coaches, and the players themselves got involved in the voting. Eventually the fans were let in again to a certain extent, and the present system is nicely tweaked and balanced, and everybody seems to be happy with it. And perhaps the New7Wonders people could have learned something from it. Officially naming the Seven New Wonders of the World is pretty epic stuff, you can’t change it next year.

The Egyptian pyramids are the only surviving thing from the Seven ANCIENT Wonders of the World, and happily they got enough votes to make the new list. Also making the new list were the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, the Colosseum in Rome….

…and the Christ the Redeemer statue, the unquestioned icon of Rio, a 130-foot structure standing on top of 2300-foot Corcovado mountain in Rio de Janeiro harbor. Among the things that DIDN’T make the list (placed in the #8 to #20 category) were the Statue of Liberty, Stonehenge, the Acropolis in Greece, and the Eiffel Tower. The argument could go on all day, but there is a general uneasy feeling that the Christ Statue didn’t quite deserve to make the list.

No matter. One should see a big icon when one gets the chance, especially if it’s been declared one of the Seven New Wonders of the World. So I paid $48 to be part of a crew excursion to The Statue, and also a drive-by of Ipanema Beach, where that tall and tan and young and lovely girl drove Jobim nuts 50 years ago.

We piled into a chartered bus on the dock, and wound up an hour early for our 1PM train. The area was crowded with others waiting to ride the train, milling about, buying souvenirs -- little Christ Redeemer Statues in particular -- also posing for idiotic pictures with the Brazilian flag.
The 1PM train ride up the mountain ride took about a half-hour, and it provided a wonderful view of Rio de Janeiro. Arriving at the Statue area, another 70 or 80 steps up the pedestal finally puts one at the base of the statue, in a throng of camera-happy tourists. It was a gorgeous day, and the view of the harbor was exhilarating.
The Christ the Redeemer Statue was finished in 1931 after 9 years. It had to be an ordeal getting the materials up to the top of Corcovado mountain, so maybe it really is a Wonder. The outer covering is soapstone, an insulator which completely protected the statue from a direct lightning hit 2 years ago.

There was little time to hang around, and within an hour we were back down from the mountain, on the bus driving along Ipanema beach. Having been told that Brazil boasts the most beautiful women on the planet, I craned my neck, and saw the beautiful, the not-so-beautiful, and the downright ugly, the Best and Worst of Bikinis. As I see proven constantly on this ship, many people have no idea how bad they look in a skimpy bathing suit.

It’s been said that the great majority of New Yorkers have never bothered to visit the Statue of Liberty. It’s a tad difficult to do, involving a trip to lower Manhattan, a ferry ride and some cash. I went there once when I was ten years old, taken there by an adult. Forty years later was my second visit, as an adult, taking a ten-year old kid. Without the adult-kid dynamic, maybe I never would have gone there at all.

And perhaps it is the same in Rio, where residents maybe never take the train ride up that mountain. But tourists will always visit iconic things, egged on by books, TV, and hype machines like the New7Wonders. And for me there’s no escaping being a simple tourist, camera hanging from my neck, intrigued by foreign currency, foreign storefronts with signs in foreign languages, foreign license plates, and foreign statues on foreign mountains.