....’cause we’re not as smart as the “girl from Ipaneema”?
All about the Girl from Ipanema:
http://sprezzatura.editthispage.com/garota
The truth
From Bossa Nova: The Story of the Brazilian Music That Seduced the World, by Ruy Castro
It has already been explained, but people find it hard to accept the truth: Jobim and Vinícius did not write “The Girl from Ipanema” | “Garôta de Ipanema” in the Veloso bar (today called Garota da Ipanema), which was on the street that used to be known as Rua Montenegro and is now Rua Vinícius de Moraes, at the intersection with Rua Prudente de Moraes (no relation). It was never the duo’s style to write music sitting at a table in some bar, although they had probably spent the best hours of their lives in them. Jobim composed the melody meticulously on the piano at his new home in Rua Barro da Torre, and it was originally intended for a musical comedy entitled “Dirigível” | “Blimp,” which Vinícius already had worked out in his head but had not yet committed to paper.
Vinícius, in turn, had written the lyrics in Petrópolis, near Rio, as he had done with “Chega de Saudade” six years earlier, and it took him just as much work. To begin with, it wasn’t originally called “Garota da Ipanema,” but “Menina que passa” | “The Girl Who Passes By,” and the entire first verse was different.
As for the famous girl, Jobim and Vinícius did in fact see her pass by as they sat in the Veloso bar, during the winter of 1962— not just once, but several times, and not always on her way to the beach but also on her way to school, to the dressmaker, and even to the dentist. Mostly because Heloísa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto, better known as Helô, who was eighteen years of age, five feet, eight inches tall, with green eyes and long, flowing black hair, lived in Rua Montenegro and was already the object of much admiration among patrons of the Veloso, where she would frequently stop to buy cigarettes for her mother—and leave to a cacophony of wolf-whistles.