Rio Redux and Life in Sao Paulo

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That night I took Phillipe to Lapa, and back to the same venue I had visited two weeks ago. The street party was buzzing, but after Salvador I’ve had my fix of drunk, loud locals with no concept of personal space and a penchant for peeing on cobblestones. Fortunately, the Estrela featured a fantastic 8-piece band performing an acoustic Dave Matthews tribute. This sing-along was followed by a quality rock DJ, and we danced and drank and, for the first time in weeks, held our own to tunes that did not require us to dry-hump our dance partners. I regret that after a month in Brazil I have not mastered the traditional fohhro dance…in public anyway. And thus ended Rio de Janiero. I had hoped to get a private tour of a favela with a gang overlord, but my connection into the paramilitary underworld called in sick. It is always important to leave something for next time.

The six-hour bus to Sao Paulo was memorable only for my popping my first Imodium. I had picked up a bug in Rio, which, like most bugs, was a nuisance and needed to be squashed. Or plugged, if you will. A city of some 17 million people, the third biggest in the world, Sao Paulo is the New York of Brazil, where people work hard, play hard, make cash, and would love to live in Rio but would never say so. A cab driver told me there are over 5 million cars in the city, and traffic was every local’s constant woe. “Look at the fog,” said Phillipe, his island upbringing denying him the joys of rush hour. “That’s smog!” corrected Juliana. We met our hosts, Juliana and Camilla, in Jericoacoara and they did a great job schlepping us around the city. It was wonderful just to drive in someone’s car and not watch the meter tick over (I realize how paranoid I have become of taxi drivers, which does not bode well for the journey ahead). “This is how we live,” said Juliana. “We work, we eat out, we party, we go the beach, we go to the park.” Other than the beach (about an hour’s drive away), that’s exactly what we did too. The wonderful Ibirapuera Park was so alive with people and pets it reminded me of Central Park on a Sunday, without a New Yorker’s pretension. It was winter, but we had missed the flooding and the sunshine was baking. Here is a guy doing capoeira, to the amusement of a poodle with a blue bow in its ear. Here is a street performer dressed as an angel, heavenly music drifting from inside the box he is standing on. He gave me a precious stone, and just for a moment, I believed he was the real deal.

Paulista Avenue, Sao Paulo’s main drag, crackled with life. Modern apartment blocks were everywhere, or being built where they’re weren’t. Girls handed out promotional pamphlets for new condominiums at traffic lights. On Friday we went to an underground samba rock party in an old theatre, with the feel of an underground rave except the band were rocking out the kind of music you hear in Nike soccer commercials featuring Ronaldo. On Saturday we went to a yuppie club where people queued for four hours to not get in. Of course, nobody denies Modern Gonzo, and inside the club was an upscale sushi restaurant adjacent to a dance-floor pumping remixed 80’s music (Right Said Fred?) It was like a gay bar full of beautiful women, with the subtle odor of raw salmon.

I was looking through Phillipe’s Lonely Planet (something I regret every time I do it) and came to Sao Paulo. Under their ever-prominent Dangers & Annoyances, it mentioned the horrific crime in the city, the carjackings and gang wars and prostitution. “Take special care of your belongings! Muggings, even worse, have been reported in the downtown area!” Which is where, according the book, I was staying, and where I walked alone at night to the Internet place and alone by day to the mall, and not one person bothered me, and I never felt the slightest bit threatened. Sure, in the land that produced Ayrton Senna, people drive like lunatics and the traffic is horrendous. But I found Sao Paulo livable and likeable, a South American New York, with all the pros and cons that title brings with it. Something in the wind and the stars tells me I’ll be back.

Sao Paulo Airport
Sao Paulo, Brazil

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