The long haul

Sao Paulo is probably the hardest city to get around in, that I have ever visited. For starters there is its size; like Tokyo its a clear two or three hours to cross. And unlike Tokyo, it wasn’t designed with public transport in mind. Blocks are long, funky shops and interesting attractions are thinly spread. Like Los Angeles, its a city designed to drive through. As a result, there is almost always the whiff of petrol fumes in the air, which makes the long walks even more unpleasant if you do decide to try it.

There is a subway of course, and it is super-efficient, if not pleasant. The fascist-feeling stations – hewn from angular slabs of concrete and lit with fluorescent lights – are brutal and depressing places, that make you feel like you are being chewed up by some vast, indifferent, underground machine and spat out at another point in the metropolis.

But they do their job; trains are super-frequent (amazingly so, there is a train about every 90 seconds), clean and safe. But the problem is, the subway doesn’t go everywhere. (Its currently in the middle of a 19 billion dollar expansion which will help things, but until then it actually makes it worse, because the subway maps are confusingly full of stations that don’t exist yet).

Which leaves the overland trains (which I had several times been warned against ever taking on security grounds). And buses.

Buses are the backbone of public transport in SP and one of its great mysteries. Where do they come from, and where are they going? The bus stops have no information of any kind, and the buses themselves will usually list only three of the stops along their route on the windscreen – not really helpful in a city this size. Being unfamilir with the city I often don’t even know which direction bus I should be taking. And in a city like SP, its just not safe to “wing it” and hope for the best. Before you know it, you could end up in the middle of a favela.

The other day, it took me the whole morning to get to Ibipuera Park – a welcome patch of green that is often refered to as the city’s “Central Park” – and yet it was next to impossible to find a bus to take me there.

(The park contains monuments – see below – the fabulous new “Tongue” Auditorium, the Museu Afro-Brasil (but of course, closed that day) and the Bosque do Leitura, the screamingly “Sao Paulo” mutant offspring of a forest and a lending library, where you borrow books to read under the trees. )

In the end I was so tired from the journey I had to junk the rest of my day’s plans – a visit to the parkside Unique Hotel, shaped like a half-moon or a slice of watermelon, with a blood-red rooftop pool, and on to Daslu, the famous department store for the super-rich where I would have needed a taxi anyway. You are actually forbidden from entering on foot and must come by helicopter ( there is a pad on the roof) or private car.

But, with my helicopter in the shop, and knowing it would take me several hours to get home by bus, I decided to scale down my sightseeing ambitions, and kissed these sights goodbye.

The Bandeirantes

Like other New World countries, Brazil has an ambivalent pioneer history. The Bandeirantes were great explorers and pioneers who settled much of Brazil. Often the children of European/native unions they were what is called in Brazil cabocolos (copper-colored) and usually spoke Guarani as well or better than Portuguese – one of the first flowerings of a distinctly Brazilian culture.

They were also slavetraders. The Bandeirantes would set out in huge caravans, going overland for years at a time to make war against the native peoples (and the Jesuits who tried to “protect” them) and bring them back as slaves.

Ever-enterprising Sao Paulo was the main base and market for their slave trade.

Today this controversial monument stands for them in Ibipuera Park.

STOP PRESS; Kelis to play Rio favela.

And I just miss it, I’ll be in Argentina. Kelis has just announced she will be playing next week (why such short notice) in both SP and Rio, where my friend Junior is going and the concert will be held in Madureira, home of the famous Portela samba school, presented by “Favela Music” promotions. Goddamn, that sounds good.

Sampa Soul

A mini-special on the art and music of South America’s most super-kinetic city featuring; Cibelle, assume vivid astro focus, Maria Rita, Bruno 9Li and Currumin.

GREEN GRASS OFFICIAL VIDEO – CIBELLE

Cibelle is a former model, turned singer, who first found the spotlight on the classic Brazilian-electronic album “Sao Paulo Confessions” by a Serbian immigrant to the city, Suba. Tragically, he died in a fire in his home studio, but Cibelle has gone on to record a new, English language album called “The Shine of Dried Electric Leaves”. Its kind of Bjorky, with not one but TWO Caetano Veloso covers, and this lovely Tom Waits track.

assume vivid astro focus

Assume Vivid Astro Focus was born in Rio, lives in New York and exhibits worldwide, (and sometimes confusingly refers to himself in the plural). But his/their first artworld exposure was in Sao Paulo, through gallery exhibitions and club flyers; what could be more Sampa than this?

Cara Valente

A very “Sao Paulo” clip, shot in the city centre with a cast of Paulistanos, for singer Maria Rita and her song “Cara Valente”.

Bruno 9Li

Pronounced Bruno Novelli, he is an Italian-Brazilian illustrator who has made the leap from street art to gallery walls. I am currently on the hunt for a souvenir Sao Paulo Bruno 9Li Tshirt; if anyone has any ideas where to get one , let me know! 🙂

Curumin – “Samba Japa”

Song from the Sao Paulo native Spanish/Japanese singer Luciano Nakata Albuquerque (aka Currumin).

Big city life

 

Modernista?

Sao Paulo has made me reconsider my interest in the Brazilian modernist movement. At its best, it can be beautiful and radical, like the 1946 (!) Edificio Louveira above. (Its located in the bluntly-titled -and presumably well-drained – neighborhood of Higieneopolis). But it doesn’t always work so well.

This is Oscar Niemeyer’s Latin American memorial, a bleeding hand in the middle of a barren concrete plaza, next to a library and an exhibition hall. Unlike the Louveira building, couched in a lush tropical garden, there is nothing to soften the concrete here. No vista of the sea, as at his museum in Niteroi. Just hard, modern lines – in a city that is already hard to the point of being bleak. No contrast, just concrete on concrete.

I also realised that while many of these buildings look great from a distance, up close they can be less impressive. The concrete cracks, and stains, like the hand above; now a dirty grey rather than the original white. Its oppressive to see these hard, super-human monuments cracking and peeling. They are not softened by age.

Another minus-points was for the Memorial’s exhibition hall, in a rubbish-strewn reflecting pool, which was hosting a surprisingly fourth-rate art exhibit. The artists had apparently collaborated by email. Maybe next time they should meet in person? (Althoug the hall was also screening a gay Israeli movie called “Antarctica”, which I thought was a very “Sao Paulo” combination.)

Another Niemeyer landmark, the Copan Building, has also not aged well. The huge serpentine tower sits in the heart of the city. Its an icon. Interestingly, it was built as an experiment in mixed-income living;  apartments in the building go for all different price ranges, and there are so many that the tower has its own postcode. But these days, the building is dominated by low-income tenants (including, it is said, many of the city’s transsexual hookers).

But then, there is this: Sampa’s newest modernist masterpiece and a building that is hard not to love; the Auditorium in Ibipuera Park nicknamed “Linga”, the tongue.

The Jardins

The Jardins is the collective name for  Jardim America,  Jardim Paulista and their surrounding hoods. They are Sao Paulo’s most sought after address. Tucked just behind the corporate powerhouse of Avenida Paulista, (so close to work for high flyers),  they feature blocks of luxury apartments in gardens of palm trees and frangipanis (with security, of course), and plenty of cute cafes and nouveau riche shopping. The consumer orgy reaches a screaming climax on Rua Oscar Freire (apparently the eighth most expensive street in the world by retail rent). Here, a handful of shops reach Aoyama-like fabulousness:

This is a shoe shop, where the shoes (which are all colorful and made of moulded plastic) hang suspended from the ceiling in bubble-like pods.

Club Chocolate, a few doors down, features an indoor grove of palm trees and a winding metallic staircase, leading ( I’m told) to a fake beach area with sand and more palm trees and an aviary of macaws. But frankly, I didn’t have the nerve to go up, after being stared at by the intimidating shop assistants. (Thoughtlessly, I had done Oscar Freire on a whim, and not dressed for the occassion. I was in my Sao-Paulo-public-transport-don’t kill-me dressed down look, not my blinging yes-I-want-to-spend-300-dollars-on-a-pair-of-shorts Jardins look.)

So, instead I went back to the juice bar Junior and Fillipi had taken me to the night before, and drank the almost unbelievably delicious juice of the Amazonian cupuacu fruit, with a crowd of modelesque Desperate Housewives,  gaggles of middle-aged Japanese women, goodlooking upper-class gay couples and Jewish teenagers ( the boys all in skullcaps).

Around the corner, Paulista roars with traffic and bustles with yuppies on dates, Japanese teenagers and businessmen striding around in suits. Almost always refered to as the “Fifth Avenue of South America” it is the home of banks and large corporations, but unfortunately more impressive for its obvious financial might than its aesthetics. The big companies are all housed in a long line of mundane 70s highrises – no Brazilian modernist flair on show here. About ten of the towers are topped with impressive mini-Eiffel radio transmitters (giving those wealthy enough to live in million-dollar Paulista apartments high rates of brain cancer). The highlights of the street for me are; the Libraria Cultura bookshop (below),

And a vast bakery open 24 hours a day ( just off Paulista on Frei Caneca, on the way to the gay mall and the Syrian hospital) where you have to line up at 2am.

There is also the MASP,  Museum of Modern Art Sao Paulo – the best endowed in Latin America. Its housed (but of course) in a hulking modernist monster suspended from bright red pylons over a reflecting pool full of plastic shopping bags. Last year two thieves walked out with a pair of paintings worth 55 million dollars, one of them a Picasso.

At the end, the street peters out unexpectedly with a bunch of entirely Asian-run mini-Akhibara electronics malls (I’m not sure which Asian though, because they were all speaking Portuguese!)

Funny bird! commercial airline from Brazil

Gol, Brazil’s “budget” airline (although I still think its pretty expensive) is currently running a great ad on the Sao Paulo subway. Unfortunately its not on youtube (yet?) but I found this other cute one.

Totally f@*%ing hardcore – Sao Paulo

Sao Paulo is the grimiest, most intimidating place I have ever been. Its the biggest city in the Third World, and it feels like it. Imagine a sprawling Tokyo-sized monster, with 20 million people hardened by poverty and violence. In 2000, the United Nations Human Development agency named the suburb of M’Boi Mirim the most violent place in the world that was not actually at war. Even in the decaying city centre, it can feel nightmarish. Whole skyscrapers have been abandoned and reclaimed by squatters, with laundry fluttering out of what were once thirty-storey office windows. Homeless children sleep rough on median strips, while huge raw concrete buildings march on and on, covered in spidery grafitti, under humid, often gloomy skies.

And yet it is also an economic giant. Sao Paulo is the engine that drives Brazil, the place where money is made, power sits, trends are created and new ideas are born. You would never know it from vast stretchs of the city, but Sao Paulo is rich. Its economy is bigger than any other country in South America; Sao Paulo is not just richer than Buenos Aires or Santiago, its richer than Argentina or Chile (or Hungary or Egypt). For the middle classes (which are large, and growing) this means Sao Paulo is where the jobs and the opportunities are, in neighborhoods themselves the size of smaller cities, packed with luxurious apartment blocks and malls. The best clubs, shops and restaurants in Brazil are here (not surprising when there are 30,000 millionaires.)

The classic image of Sao Paulo, taken by a Colombian photographer from a helicopter, shows the swirling, towering condo blocks of the rich (with a pool on each floor) right next door to the slum known blackly as Paraisopolis; Paradise City.

Not surprisingly then, Sao Paulo is a city where danger is never far away. Its now legal here to drive through red lights after dark (people do it anyway, for fear of getting jacked) and you can’t take a cellphone into a bank. Its the number one market in the world for bulletproof cars, and there are supposedly surgeons whose fulltime job is reattaching the severed ears of kidnap victims. So….why go there?

Because Sao Paulo is also one of the most thrilling, creative and important cities in the world. Having spent much of the twentieth century absorbing immigrants – from Asia, from Europe, from the Middle East, from all over Brazil – the city is now a simmering melting pot of different cultures and new ideas. Its the biggest black city outside Africa, the biggest Japanese city outside Japan, with six million Italians and (its said) more Lebanese than Beirut. Its a totally 20th century city, living in the here and now (although its history actually stretches back 400 years old, but you’d never know that.)

Its a city of suburbs and skyscrapers and shopping malls, connected by freeways. Sao Paulo doesn’t care about history. Its not pretty, its not “quaint”. It doesn’t give a shit about tourists ( and it must surely be the last major city in the world without an English language guidebook. There is no “Lonely Planet Sao Paulo”). Most of foreign visitors are scared off by the crime anyway, or the dearth of discernable “attractions”.

But what the city has is sheer energy. Its a city thats always mutating, evolving, developing in unexpected ways.

Its a city of Japanese pop stars and grafitti artists called Lovefoxxx and Titi Freak. It has Thai-Bahian fusion restaurants, department stores with their own heliport on the roof, love hotels for dogs and Amazonian fruit bars with kosher menus. There is a neighborhood called “Armenia” – which is full of Bolivians – while the Armenians live across town in Nova Zelina. The district of Brooklin is home not only to Jewish immigrants but also (formerly) Nazi death-doctor Joseph Mengele. Mick Jagger and Nick Cave both have children in Sao Paulo via leggy Brazilian beauties. And the former “Little Italy” of Bixiga is now swamped by black immigrants from Northeastern Brazil, who speak Portuguese with an Italian lilt.

Its also one of the gayest cities in the world; with gay shopping malls (below) and Communist bars and the biggest Pride party in the world, which last year drew three milion people (including a few Clockwork Orange-inspired anarchist gangs who ceebrated the event by stabbing to death random gay peope). And its the most visibly lesbian city I´ve ever seen. You see pretty rich girls holding hands in cutesy bakeries and ghetto mamas making out on the subway. I went to a gay club and it was about a third women (much higher than in Australia), most of whom spent the night making out with a ferocity and passion I’ve never seen before.

This is is a city that has elected as its mayor Brazilian presidents, two wealthy Arab immigrants, a (female) sexologist and a rhinoceros.

In 1883, an Italian priest named Dom Bosco had a dream; he prophesized the birth of a new civilization, somehwere between the 15th and 20th parallels – the interior of Brazil . This new civilization, he said, would change the world.

That is why Brasilia has always attracted New Agers and cultists, who see it as the fulfillment of the Bosco prophecy – the birth of a new world power. But what if they were wrong, I wondered. What if it was not purpose-built Brasilia, but haphazard Sao Paulo that had been promised. Maybe that strange, spidery grafitti scrawed over town really did mean something. Maybe it was a próphecy too, and Sao Paulo – with its slums and factories, thrusting midde classes, poverty, steroid-pumped party boys and bulletproof traffic jams, blood, money, Arab mayor and Japanese rockstars with porn star names – maybe it is Sao Paulo that will see the birth of a new civilization, something thrillingly different, that will change the world?

For Narcissus finds nothing beautiful that is not a mirror…

Caetano Veloso – Sampa

The ultimate Sao Paulo anthem – that gave the city its nickname – “Sampa” by Caetano Veloso. The great singer lived in the city during the 70s, joining the exodus of Northeasterners to the cities of the South for greater opportunity. He had just arrived from Rio and the Northern, very African and historical city of Salvador. Sao Paulo was something totally different.

In his autobiography he talks about looking out over the city under the influence of the Amazonian psychadelic drug ayuasca, and seeing the city lights turn into dancing Hindhu gods.

And he also wrote this. The lovely, lilting tune might seem completely at odds with the abrasive city it celebrates, but the beautiful lyrics say it all;

Something happens in my heart
Only when I cross Ipiranga and Sao Joao
When I arrived here I knew nothing
Of the hard concrete poetry of your corners
Of the discrete inelegance of your girls
Of Rita Lee; your most complete translation
(Rita Lee was a then-teenage singer with punky psychadelic band called “Os Mutantes”, the mutants)

Something happens in my heart
Only when I cross Ipiranga and Sao Joao

When I was confronted with you and did not see my face
I called it bad taste what I saw, bad taste, bad taste
For Narcissus finds nothing beautiful that is not a mirror
And the mind cannot understand what is not yet old

Here there was nothing of what was not before,
When we were not yet mutants

You were a difficult start
I drew back from what I did not know
and he who comes from another happy city dream
quickly learns to call it reality because you’re the opposite of the opposite of the opposite.

Of the people oppressed in the lines
In the villages, slum quarters
Of the force of money that raises and destroys beautiful things
Of the ugly smoke that goes up erasing the stars
I saw appear your poets, De Campos, spaces, your forests of workshops, Your gods of rain, Pan Americas, of África, Utopia
The tomb of the samba,
More possible new quilombos of Zumbi,
And new natives from Bahia go by in your drizzle, your flurry
And new natives from Bahia can like you just fine.

The Ravaged Downtown – The writing is on the wall

Sao Paulo is an extremely photogenic city. Its not beautiful – not by any means – but it is full of fascinating images; many of them, sadly, of urban blight. Grand old buildings with broken windows, piles of rubbish on the pavements of once-elegant streets, and everywhere – everywhere – the unique form of grafitti that is one of the city’s gifts to the world; a weird spidery kind of writing that looks like some strange alphabet but actually means nothing (or does it?) It is called pichação, (google image it!) and it scrawled all over the city, covering whole skyscrapers, forty floors up into the air. I have never seen anything like it.

The problem is, that many of these places that would make great pictures are not the best places to be flashing around a camera. As a result, Sao Paulo is a frustrating city to photograph. If you could hire a bodyguard and walk around for a day, you could shoot a mindblowing coffee table book I’m sure, but as it is there are lots of pictures you just decide not to take, and when you do, you have to point, shoot and run. No taking your time to set up the picture. Its click, slide camera away, and go.

The most mindblowing part of the city for me is the “Centro”, or “Downtown”. Or it was the downtown, anyway. Sao Paulo – embracing change like few other cities – has sprouted four of them. Every decade or so a new one will fall into favor, boom, and then be slowly infiltrated by crime and poverty, to be abandoned. The Centro, although full of stunning art deco towers, has long been out of favor. In the 1970s the money and the big companies moved out, to Avenida Paulista to the Southeast, and now they are moving again, to the exclusive neighborhoods of Morumbi and Itaim. The Centro has been left to languish – and its astonishing to see the extent of its fall.

The whole once-glorious business district belongs at night to the homeless and the ever-present porn shops ( I have never seen so many). During the day it bustles with street markets and downmarket shoppers. And everything is covered in grafitti. If not a no-go zone, the Centro has become a place to go if you must, and hurry out of, certainly not a place to linger. Many well-to-do Paulistanos will tell you they haven’t been there for years.

And the thing is; its beautiful. Or it could be. Centro is the only part of Sao Paulo that has consistently great architecture. It has buildings that Melbourne or Sydney would kill for, like its iconic Empire State Building knockoff the Edificio Martinelli, or huge art nouveau apartments, slowly rotting away.

And yet it also has buildings like this; right outside the central metro station, and opposite the main headquarters of the Sao Paulo state government. How could this possibly happen?

(A security guard angrily told me to put my camera away here – whether for my own safety, or out of embarrassment, is unclear).

Sleeping rough – one of the city´s thousands of homeless children

Even the footpaths here are sharper and more angular than in  sensuous Rio – the white imprint here is actually the same shape as a map of Sao Paulo City

Nature in Sao Paulo

Party City

Brazilians are famously party people, and with more than twenty million of them, São Paulo is one of the nightlife capitals of the world. Locals will tell you the city is only equalled by London, New York and Ibiza in the Summer; and I can believe it.

The club I really wanted to visit was “The Week” – perhaps the hottest gay club in the world, and famous for its luxuriousness, its go-go boys, its top-of-the-line lasers and DJs, and its daytime pool parties. I had been to the recently-opened franchise in Rio and was blown away. It was so much better than anything similar we have in Oz, but everybody told me the São Paulo parent club was bigger and better. I couldn’t wait.

As in Rio, the club is located in a happening nightlife district that was until (very) recently a dangerously derelict industrial área. Cruising in a táxi through empty streets of vast, crumbling warehouses, I was starting to feel nervous.

But then the táxi pulled into a courtyard, and suddenly it was full of people – Índian princês and French maids, Heath Ledger-like Jokers, zombies in bloodied bandages. It was a dress-up party night and everyone there had pulled out all the stops (I guess when you have Carnaval in your culture…) But I soon realised something was very wrong;

a) everyone was straight

b) everyone had a ticket to get in. I didn’t

The club had been rented out that night for a special occassion. It wasn’t “The Week” I had come to see at all.

Bitterly, bitterly disappointed I left. But as luck would have it, I remembered there was a small cluster of gay bars just around the córner from where I was staying. I went into one, to find it crowded with a much less “beautiful people” crowd, going crazy for 80s music. New Order, the Pet Shop Boys, Cyndi Lauper; everyone was smiling and laughing, sometimes they would sing along to the choruses in hearty, Brazilian-tinged English. Despite myself, I found a smile on my face. I had missed out on “The Week” but I still found that legendary Sampa party spirit.

The next night was the party I had really come for ; Kylie Minogue playing live in Sao Paulo. The city is a major stop on the world touring circuit; it is  also playing host to REM and Cyndi Lauper in the next week, Kelis on November 19th – one day before a massive hiphop festival in the city square for National Black Consciousness Day -then Madonna (who is not coming to Australia), with Bloc Party, Kanye West, the Klaxons, MGMT, Gogol Bordello and Yo Majesty having just left.

I went to Kylie with a friend I had met in Rio through Couchsurfer, Junior, and his friends who had come from all over Brazil to see the concert. It was held in a big convention centre on the outskirts of the new “Downtown” area at Morumbi. The taxi-ride there was mind-blowing. We drove on and on, through wealthy suburbs, past huge office complexes, and malls inside glass pyramids. We passed the city’s brand new and beautiful landmark suspension bridge, and two of the most luxurious malls in the world: Cidade Jadim and Daslu. It was a whole new side to Sao Paulo than the one I had seen, modern, rich and internationalised. I had had a stereotype in my head of the Paulistano rich living lives of cloistered luxury, locked inside their gated compounds, but now I realised that I was wrong. The “nice” parts of Sao Paulo are themselve huge, as big as an Australian city. Its not that the rich or middle class are terrified to stray from them, its just that they never have any need to. Everything they could ever need is here, why go to Centro? (The same way that I would never visit far-flung residential suburbs in Melbourne).

The concert was great. I’m happy to report that Kylie put in a stellar performance for the Brazilian crowd, starting with a charming “Boa noite Sao Paulo. Tudo bem?” and ending with a very creditable samba, draped in a Brazilian flag. The stage setup, infront of a giant, flashing screen, was simply awe inspiring. The images were stunning , Kylie looked and sounded great, and the crowd didn’t want it to end. After the second encore, they started chanting “go-st-oso!” (we like it) and “Come into my world! Come into my world!” Kylie, looking physically exhausted, decided to oblige (much to her credit) and sang it acappella in front of the now-switched-off black screen.

The next day was the night for “Alocha”, another of Sao Paulo’s nightlife institutions. Its a Sunday night alternative/80s (retro is big in Brazil)/emo party. I would have loved, loved, loved to have gone but by the end of the day I was exhausted. Next time.

Beco do Batman

All of the South American cities I have visited – Valparaiso, Rio, Belo Horizonte – have been richly decorated with street art. But São Paulo is the region’s undisputed grafitti capital, the heavyweight champion of anarchic urban self-expression, and one of the most vital centres of the “art” in the world. Its best known artists like Os Gêmeos (“The Twins”) have become fixtures on the contemporary art circuit, recently being paid large figures to paint a Scottish castle. Titi Freak, Nina and Nunca and Zezao are not far behind. The city even hás reverse grafitti, created by cleaning the grime off of tunnel walls.

 

The most famous place to see the city’s vibrant street art– although its everywhere – is in the “bohemian” neighborhood of Vila Madelena, in a small street called the Beco do Batman (“Beco” I think means “sidestreet, but I have no idea what the Batman connection is. I didn’t see any pictures of him).

 

I had heard that Vila Madelena was a lively and alternative bar neighborhood, so I decided to go in the evening. But when I got there, I found a quiet, very upper-crust residential area, with streets full of apartment blocks for the well-off, and the kind of home furnishings stores they might kill time in, on the weekends. Of course, now shut.

 

It was rainy and the streets were dead quiet.

 

I made my way into the Beco do Batman, but it was dark and it suddenly occurred to me that being by myself in a dark alleywey in São Paulo taking pictures with a flash (here I am! And I have  câmera!) wasn’t really a great idea. So I just took a few pictures, and then left. But here is one I took from flickr to give you an idea;

As I was leaving, I noticed a more lively bar street. One place was even projecting random images onto the wall of the apartment block across the street. So I guess I was just in slightly the wrong place!

Gay mall, music mall

Shopping Frei Caneca, located on the street of the same name ( Rua Frei Caneca) is Sao Paulo’s “gay mall”. It was the centre of a controversy a few years ago when security guards threw out a male couple for kissing in the food court – which is perhaps the cruisiest mall foodcourt on earth. I have never seen so many single men sitting at each table, eating their pasta and eyeing each other. Gay rights campaigners, outraged that the management had turned on their most loyal clients, staged a protest “kiss-in” (apparently a favorite tactic in Brazil. There was another one at the University’s Faculty of Vet Science the week before I arrived, after two guys were thrown out of a student party there for making out).

I was a little disappointed though. I don’t know what I had really expected; but it was just … a mall. With lots of gay people in it. Nothing really that special. Although I did like how this store had arranged the male mannequins in pairs, almost holding hands.

Tomorrow I want to go to “Galleria Rock”; a shopping centre entirely devoted to music, CDs, goth fashion and band T-shirts.

24 hours in Belo Horizonte

Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais state, is Brazil’s third biggest and most economically important city. But its not the kind of place tourists go.  Brazilians will tell you its boring. For a one-day visitor, this doesnt show. With its forest of skyscrapers and crowded footpaths, it feels much more vibrant than say, Melbourne.

Perhaps the problem is not that it is boring, but that it is undistinctive. BH has none of the flair of Rio or the cosmopolitan hugeness of Sao Paulo. Nothing in its architecture or ethnic mix sets it apart from the national norm ( as opposed to Brasilia’s 60s futurism, or Prudentopolis in Parana state which is 70% Ukraininan, or Salvador which is heavily black and 17th century). Belo Horizonte is just a generic mid-sized Brazilian city, a kind of Brisbane of Brazil. Probably not too bad a place to live, but a city to go through rather than go to.

For me, that meant staying in a youth hostel where I was not only the lone foreigner, I seem to have been the first foreigner ever. There was come confusion about what paperwork I needed to show since I had no national ID card. In the end a passport was fine. And I got adopted by a bunch of local university graduates, in from neighboring provincial towns to attend a conference in the big city on “tourism in the age of the new media.” They took me out to a bar where their friend was singing – she was awwwwesome! – for a night of samba and cachaca. It was great,  but ended badly when one of the girls had obviously developed a crush on me and I spent the night being chased around the dancefloor before lettting her down gently. “You have girlfriend?” “No, not exactly….” Hahahahahaha. That will be my memory of BH!