Nowhere to go but up

WITH bearded baristas and furniture cobbled together from wooden crates, Curto Café in Rio de Janeiro is a typical outpost of Brazil’s nascent hipster scene. Aficionados of its organic coffee do not pay set prices; instead they pay what they think reasonable—or what they can afford. This, says Gabriel Magalhães, one of Curto’s founders, is less and less. Like other Brazilians, cariocas (as Rio residents are known) are pinching their pennies.