What, Me Worry? Not in Rio : Lifestyle: Inflation and crime are up, industrial production is down, and even the soccer teams are playing badly. So how do they cope in Rio de Janeiro? They go to the beach, of course.

RIO DE JANEIRO —  It’s a sizzling Sunday afternoon, and an old panhandler known as Nilson is hanging out on a busy corner in the beachside neighborhood of Leblon. His shirt is open at the chest, his cheeks bristle with white stubble, and he is wearing a funny-looking pair of rose-colored glasses slightly askew on his nose.

Approaching a parked car where a man waits impatiently for someone, Nilson says: “Look at this.” Then he tilts his head toward the ground, holds up a plastic pistol grip connected by a tube to his colored glasses, and gently pulls the trigger.

A spray of water from a small nozzle in the bridge of the glasses glistens in the air and sprinkles the ground at Nilson’s feet. He turns with a happy smile to the man in the car and laughs an infectious laugh. Soon they are laughing together.

“Life is bad enough, but if you don’t play around, it’s worse,” Nilson says. “You have to keep laughing.”

The panhandler earns some change in return for his simple reminder of what, in essence, is the driving spirit of this great city.

Now is a good time to sample that spirit. Summer has come to the Southern Hemisphere, and summer is when Rio dedicates uncommon zeal to play. This season, life is bad enough to make it seem worth some extra effort.

Brazilian inflation for the past 12 months was an exhausting 1,700%, and it continues to race at double-digit monthly rates. Rio de Janeiro state’s industrial production fell by 10% in 1990. Anti-inflation austerity measures are dragging the economy into a recession that promises to further shrink purchasing power and increase unemployment.

Perhaps nearly as bad for soccer-crazy Cariocas, as Rio natives call themselves, the Brazilian all-star team finished a winless exhibition season in mid-December, while none of Rio’s vaunted local teams made it to the recent finals in the national futebol championship.

Crime is epidemic in Rio. On the weekend before Christmas, for example, police reported 20 homicides in the metropolitan area, which has a population of 11 million. Rio robbers stole the station wagon of President Fernando Collor de Mello’s mother the other day, making headlines, but robberies and muggings are so numerous that no one tallies them up.

What to do about so much trouble?

Go to the beach, of course. At this time of year, a visitor driving along Rio’s famous beaches on a weekday morning might wonder how it is that so many people don’t have to go to work. With any sunshine at all, the sandy shorelines of Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon are packed with people.

It has long been so, but each summer brings its little variations. For example, Rio’s super-skimpy “dental floss” string bikinis have fallen out of fashion this season. You still see them, if you have good eyes, but the trendy set now prefers a bit more cloth in the still-revealing “sunkini.”

In another development that offers testimony to the recessionary summer, many Carioca beach-goers are bringing their own refreshments rather than buying from vendors who ply the sands and sell at marked-up prices.

Rio the sporting city is reflected in the surfboards and bodyboards that have become so thick off Rio’s shores that at some places there is no room for bathers. On the sand, games of volleyball, soccer and futevolei , a combination of soccer and volleyball, compete with sunbathers and vendors for coveted space. Bicyclists weave through the dense flow of joggers and strollers on sidewalks along the beaches.

Jet skis are now seen and heard buzzing over the waters of lagoons behind Ipanema and Barra de Tijuca beaches. Liberalized government import policy, and a much-publicized ride on one by President Collor, have made jet skis the water-sport sensation of the season.

Rio the partying, dancing city this summer has embraced the luau, borrowed from fun-loving Hawaii. It’s a cheap way to have a party at Rio’s favorite location, the beach, with plentiful music and fruit. About 4,000 people showed up for one luau early in December.

Last summer’s musical fad, the lambada, has become suddenly passe. Sebastiao (Tiao) de Almeida, disc jockey at the People Down discotheque in Leblon, said young Cariocas this summer prefer a Jamaican beat.

And, of course, rock ‘n’ roll is here to stay--much more so this summer because of a huge music festival scheduled Jan. 18 to 27 in Rio’s Maracana, the biggest soccer stadium in the world. Hundreds of workers are preparing the stadium for the event, called Rock in Rio II, and Cariocas have been lining up to buy tickets for concerts by Prince, Guns N’ Roses, George Michael, A-Ha, Robert Plant, Judas Priest, New Kids on the Block, Run-DMC and many more.

An obvious reason Cariocas love the summer is that it is vacation time. Even the lowest-paid workers get a month of paid vacation and a “13th” month’s salary to spend.

Not content with the fun to be had in their own city, upper-middle-class Cariocas, seemingly impervious to the straitened economic times, are traveling abroad in droves. The U.S. Consulate in Rio reports that requests for tourist visas, especially to visit Disney World and other Florida attractions, have been at least 50% greater than last season despite the current recession.

Rio is a city where the wealth of a few contrasts sharply with the poverty of the many, where public health and education are dismally inadequate, where under-financed and badly disciplined police forces largely fail to enforce the law. Yet Cariocas tolerate most failings with grace. Anthropologist Gilberto Velho says Rio has developed a system of interrelations that helps diverse social segments function together despite their differences.

“There is a kind of plasticity that facilitates coexistence,” Velho said. “That doesn’t mean this is a tropical paradise. There is conflict, there is violence, crisis. But in spite of the wear and tear, in spite of the violence and conflict, the system continues to function.”

Thus, Rio drifts from one summer to the next--neglecting some things to the point of ruin. Famous landmarks deteriorate for lack of maintenance, transportation problems grow, the natural environment suffers.

The city’s magnificent Guanabara Bay has become alarmingly polluted by sewage and industrial waste. Ocean beaches also are seriously soiled, and Rio’s abundant mountain greenery is trampled and torn. Unchecked crime has hurt the vital tourist industry.

But this summer there are signs of renovation and repair all around Rio. The national, state and municipal governments are making special efforts to spruce up the city for the Second United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, scheduled here in 1992. Scores of world leaders are expected to attend.

The week before Christmas, Collor announced a $1-billion Environmental Quality Recuperation Project for Rio de Janeiro that will include new sewer systems and other work aimed at cleaning up Guanabara Bay. Sanitation authorities say Rio’s sometimes-polluted beaches already are cleaner, thanks to new sand-cleaning machines and improvements in the sewer system.

“We will have the best summer of the last 10 years,” declared Fernando Almeida, president of the State Environmental Engineering Foundation.

The municipal government announced a $17-million project to plant trees, improve health services and schools and install water and sewer lines in 14 hillside slums. It also is planning an oceanfront public works project that will widen sidewalks along the beach, put in new landscaping, reorder parking and regulate often unsightly sidewalk refreshment stands.

A special summer police program for patrolling the beach areas has been started, aimed at protecting tourists, but the Rio hotel association does not expect much improvement this season in the city’s depressed tourist market.

“We’re thinking ahead, really, to ’92. We’re quite optimistic for ‘92,” said Philip Carruthers, president of the hotel association and manager of the Hotel Copacabana Palace.

And workers have finished massive repairs on Rio’s 125-foot statue of Christ, overlooking the city and the sea from atop Corcovado Mountain. The famous statue, one of Rio’s best-known symbols, had seriously deteriorated in 60 years of tropical heat and rain.

For some foreign observers, such long neglect is hard to understand. But for Cariocas, preoccupation with such mundane matters as maintenance is strangely foreign.

While many foreigners living here chafe against the laid-back spirit of Rio, others have come to terms with it. Christopher Pickard, a long-time resident and a columnist for the English-language newsletter Rio Life, offered this year-end advice to uptight readers having a hard time fitting in:

“If you are still thinking of what to make as your New Year’s resolution, may I suggest ‘to enjoy life’? Far too many people I have come across actually seem to go out of their way to have a miserable time, and it seems such a waste, as you have to put exactly the same effort into being miserable as you do into being happy. Sure, 1990 wasn’t a great year, but that did not mean you could not enjoy parts of it.”