A Vida É Bela

The Pride Parade Formerly Known as the Biggest in the World

Last weekend was Corpus Christi (an official holiday and four-day weekend in Brazil), which always coincides with São Paulo’s pride weekend, the second-largest tourist draw after Rio Carnaval.  Last year 300,000 people visited for the weekend (really just a drop in the bucket in a city of 20 million!) and the pride parade was crowned the biggest in the world.  You’re wondering why São Paulo and not Rio or Buenos Aires (or San Francisco for that matter)?  Well São Paulo’s size lends itself to variety in the clubbing scene – and space to accomodate all those visitors.  Plus we have a bigger street – the Avenida Paulista.

Sunday was the parade; I live about six blocks from Paulista and starting around 10am I could hear costumed groups shrieking on their way to the parade, and a palpable energy build in the air.  Avenida Paulista, although it has been replaced by Faria Lima as the banking center still retains the 1950s concrete towers (many of which are now occupied by cultural centers and theatres), has been deemed the “praia” (beach) of São Paulo, since it serves the same function as a public space (except for the six lanes of traffic part) and on this warm sunny day I enjoyed being part of taking back the streets.

Lots of colorful costumes, having grown up in Portland, transplanted to San Francisco and spent a little time at Burning Man, I felt right at home!

The parade was Carnaval-style, each float a trio elétrico – a semi with a platform and a DJ on top, and huge speakers.  Part of the reason the parade was smaller this year was that the men’s clubs didn’t have floats, just NGOs – and dating websites.

We watched the parade across the street from a church which led to all sorts of interesting visual juxtapositions with the cross.  Homofobia mata - homophobia kills.  But Spiderman?

This float was sponsored by the “Center of Courses and Research of the Occult Sciences – The Pink Wicca Coven of Witches.”

I like this: “It’s not enough to be beautiful, you have to have content!”

Jane and Tarzan?

My buddies Gaby, Anne, Laura, and Todd (visiting from Montevideo!) – and a very cheerful onlooker.

The great thing about this parade – anyone could join in!

Longe das Estrelas, Mas Perto Ao Mar (Far From the Stars, But Close to the Sea)

There is a saying that Brasília (the inland desert capital) is “longe do mar, as perto as estrelas” (far from the sea, but close to the stars). São Paulo is the opposite – insulated from the heavens with a continuous haze of smog and light, but just a hop over the coast range from the Atlantic. (Ok, am I just cynical, or does São Paulo from space look strikingly similar to cancerous mole?)

I haven’t traveled outside of São Paulo since mid-April, gearing up for visitors in June and July and trying to get some work squared away first. But all work and no beach made me sad (or rather, all concrete and no green stuff – it’s just that in the tropics, the beach is the most accessible kind of nature, since it’s often impossible to navigate the jungle on your own). So I recruited a friend and decided to find the most remote-feeling beach within day-trip radius of the city. The bus ride to the port city of Santos is spectacular, slicing through the Parque Estadual Serra do Mar (where you can’t hike on your own because jungle trails overgrow rapidly, and snakes).

From Guarujá, a resort town just north of Santos, we switched to a local bus and strolled along the downtown beach of Enseada. Unable to control ourselves any longer, we ran into the ocean – only to get stung by jellyfish – agua viva - literally “living water”.

Spirits hampered a bit and blood sugar dropping, we took the bus further along the peninsula to Perequé, a fishing beach nestled in calm bay surrounded by rainforested hills. And at the far end of the beach – a restaurant, complete with fresh water shower in front fed by a stream on the hill.

We ordered the whole fish.

Just gloating some more about the whole fish.

This beach seemed to be primarily populated by Brazilians under 12, who we termed minisurfistas.

The six-year-old-or-so daughter of the restaurant owner shyly brought us our menu, then plopped herself down contentedly in the muddy sand to roll mud balls, singly softly to herself. That could have been the six-year-old me – except for her string bikini! How different it must be to grow up in São Paulo…

I don’t think we moved from our chairs for about three hours, sipping endless bottles of ice cold beer. While we were not moving, a guy drove up on a motorbike, selling cakes and chocolate which with our stuffed stomachs we politely refused. Noting my lack of pigmentation, he asked me if I was Italian, from the South. For variety’s sake, I replied that, no, I was German. Amazingly, the guy was a German-indigenous mix, he muttered a few words in German and then raised his arm in salute – Heil Hitler! Baffled – clearly he thought he was helping me feel at home – I changed my answer, saying I was from California (which is so much better, because then people think I am a sexually-liberated surfer chick), at which point he showed us his green card, social security card and driver’s license from when he lived in LA for four years. Why, we asked, did he return from California to sell cakes on a beach (surely nowhere near as lucrative)? Too much prejudice in California, he said. Or, we wondered, legal troubles exacerbated by prejudice?

Walking back into town at sunset, we passed some ladies quite efficiently gutting fish, and a canoe cradling half a cubic meter of fresh shrimp. Next time I’m bringing an ice chest.

I still wished I lived on the coast, but I do feel better about living in São Paulo to know that there is a place I can get to in a couple hours, any day that I need to recharge on direct sunlight, salt water and fresh fish.

A Cidade É Bela (The City is Beautiful)

Today we took the elevator up to the balcony in the Edifício Altino Arantes, which is the headquarters of the State Bank of Brasil and the 2nd tallest in SP (only 34 stories – skyscraper sprawl indeed!).  [You can hang out in the bar on the 45th floor of the Edifício Itália, but it will cost you R$15 and the day we tried to go it was closed for being too windy.]  The balcony is donut-shaped so you can walk around 360 degrees, and today was spectacularly clear so you could literally see skyscrapers to the horizon in all directions.

On the way down, I chatted with a guy toting a serious-looking camera.  He was from São Paulo, but had never been up before because he used to work afternoons, when the light is best.  Then with a glow in his eyes he says, “São Paulo is the most beautiful city.”  “Don’t you like the beach?” I prodded (I do :).  “Yeah, well anyone can go to the beach and take a pretty picture, here you have to look for it and it is that much more beautiful.”

Amen.

Although I certainly miss the raw energy (and clean air) of the coast or mountains, I adore big cities for the sensory overload, the tiny snatches of human creativity glimpsed by simply walking down the street.  And São Paulo is surprisingly pleasant at the street level, shady and cobblestoned and vital, despite the best efforts of modern concrete architects.

Perhaps it’s because I didn’t have much opportunity to travel until I was in my 20s, I learned to seek the exotic and beautiful in everyday things (of course, it helps if you are in a foreign country such that everyday things are somewhat exotic.  :)  At lunch today in an ordinary lanchonete (across the street from the Colégio São Bento, such that the counter was populated by guys in rough brown robes), I fell mesmerized by the choreography of the guy making orange juice, grabbing fresh orange halves and thrusting them down on the electric juicer, sliding the plastic cup out and onto the counter without sloshing, every movement efficient.  Yes, perhaps I was partly tripping out on sleep and food deprivation, but it’s these small moments of beauty that make me so grateful to be in Brazil.  Amidst my urban frustrations I harness energy from light and colors and shapes that catch my eye.

The Word on the Street is a Picture

The arrival of the cold snap a few weeks ago forced me to seek an alternative to the non-heated outdoor swimming pool at USP (oh it was glorious while it lasted!), so I joined the SESC, which are community centers in São Paulo state, kind of like the Y but they also host music/dance/theatre/cinema. I’ve enjoyed the move because the closest center is in Consolação, to the north of Avenida Paulista, close to the Centro and a more middle-class area than Jardins. One consequence is that street art is embraced – in Brazil, mural-style wall art is termed graffiti and tagging is called pichação. The other day I started walking down Rua da Consolação instead of taking the bus, and recorded some of the graffiti I saw along the way.

Odeio seu odio means “I hate your hate.” This is in the style of Os Gêmeos, twin brothers who created a distinctive style and have been commissioned to paint all over São Paulo, and there’s a lot of imitation.

Another one in Liberdade:

On the side of a lanchonete:

On the side of a religious school. I haven’t been able to figure out who the friar is, but I want to know why the guy didn’t feed these poor kids. And below – that’s pichação.

And my favorite – a defaced María Virgem, guarding the entrance to a parking lot.

Where I Work

So what do I actually do all day?  I am working on a project at the University of São Paulo, modeling air pollution from fires in the Amazon (or at least I will be once the parallel computing cluster I need to run the model comes online – more on that later).  Yes, it’s a perfectly logical question why I am doing this in São Paulo and not in, say, the Amazon – basically, because a group of very smart air pollution modelers (from whom I have a lot to learn..) are at USP, as is one of the lead professors on air quality experiments in the Amazon.  And while I haven’t yet been to the Brazilian Amazon, I’m pretty sure I’d rather live here – less humidity and bugs, an international cosmopolitan city, and critically, closer to the sea.

While working at home recently during a sunny four-day weekend, I was startled to realize how much I had been taking for granted the option of taking breaks by wandering outside and stretching out on the grass in the sun.  There is nowhere within a 40-minute trip of my house to do this!  You can see why in this map – the sole green patch is USP, A is approximately the center of downtown, and B is my apartment.

My advisor is actually in the department of Applied Physics, and so is my office.  The nuclear sign is everywhere in Física (as the Institute of Physics is colloquially known), most notably on this tower on the hill.  Someone dead-panned that the tower used to be blank, but they put the logo on it so that absent-minded physicists could find their offices – I admit I leaned on this technique for the first few weeks!

Now for my office – note multiple Linux windows open on my screen, iPod for NPR podcasts, tree flowering in winter outside, and penguin photos to motivate to solve this global warming thing.

Lots of green stuff as I mentioned – tree arbor with the Applied Physics building on the left:

Pretty courtyard, key make-out spot:

and the physics department cafeteria – I love outdoor living.

Narrow

I often describe São Paulo as “skyscraper sprawl,” as it lacks the packed-in city block planning of San Francisco, New York, or Buenos Aires.  However in my neighborhood there’s distinct evidence of infill – namely these super-skinny apartment buildings that shoot up in the cracks between older larger buildings.

This is my favorite (two flats wide!):

Not-So-Central Park

I’ve lived most of my life in the suburbs, in the best possible sense – within reach by public transit of an urban center, yet quick to escape on foot or bike into at least a semblance of countryside.  Even carless and bikeless in San Francisco, I could get a reasonable nature fix by walking through Golden Gate Park to the ocean!  I am having a hard time with São Paulo and its lack of hiking options.  Sure, there are endless hours of stimulating urban walks, but concrete and smog doesn’t exactly restore the body, and the regional parks that are day-trip material require guides (tropical trails overgrow quickly!), groups, and extensive prior planning.

But at least there’s Ibirapuera, Golden Gate Park style in its curving roads, fake lake, and art museums.  It’s to the south of the city, so getting there from my house requires a 20 minute lateral walk to the bus and 10 minute bus ride.  Yesterday I did my best to circumnavigate the park (about an hour), there’s a nice shady dirt trail along the fence about half the way around, the rest of the time requires picking your way through throngs on rollerblades, bikes, skateboards and high heels, lined up to buy agua de coco and fresh pastels and hot dogs.  This is about as romantic a setting you can get within the city limits.

There are certainly plenty of megacities without expansive green public areas, and it’s actually quite a democratic space.  Today is a holiday, and as I work in my nicely-naturally-lit living room, I am missing the university and its trees and lawns, where I can lay out for some Vitamin D when I need a break.  The things you don’t appreciate until they’re gone..

Cheating a bit, this is a photo from when I was there before in (southern hemisphere) spring, a woman is actually sitting under a blooming cherry tree and painting watercolors, in the middle of São Paulo!

And a reminder that it’s the tropics – ficus!

And that you’re in Latin America…drum group, led by a 13-year old girl with an extremely chirpy whistle (I must say, the Centennial High School drum line has it much more together – go Eagles!)

A Frente Fria Chegou (The Cold Front Arrived)

Since the weather is, well, kind of my thing, please indulge me while I talk about it a bit. :)

As I write this, I am huddled under my 4 degree polyfill sleeping bag, wearing: fleece hat, two longsleeve thermal tops, a fleece hoodie, thermal pants, and wool socks.

Winter arrived a couple weeks ago, unexpectedly (well, probably not to good meteorologists). The sky was literally cloudless in the morning when I left the house, in a skirt, sandals, and tank top, and without an umbrella. (Some of the best advice I’ve ever been given came from one of my high school teachers: carry a swimsuit with you wherever you go. It doesn’t take up much space, and you’ll never regret having it. Addendum for the tropics: carry an umbrella. At all times.)

At four p.m. the sky went pitch black (sunset is at 5:30), the temperature dropped about five degrees (Celsius) and it started to pour. For hours. Alcides, who works in the aerosols lab and comes around regularly to bug me about working or not, whichever I’m doing at the moment, announced like a good meteorologist: “The cold front has arrived.”

That’s right, it gets cold in Brazil. Specifically, cold fronts like to wander up from, um, Antartica

Ok, I can hear you Boston and NYC types muttering about what a wimp I am. You’re right, it’s not that cold – and no snow – since I arrived at the end of February the temperature range has dropped from 20-30C (68-86F) to 10-20C (50-68F). Fine. Except that there’s no heating here (and closing my office door and window and waiting for the two servers and two computers to heat things up doesn’t count; neither does holding my MacBook on my lap). So we’re back to “kwitcher bitchin and put on a sweater!” – which does make me feel a lot less sillier about having dragged here a suitcase full of winter camping gear. You know, in case I go camping. In the snow. In Bolivia?.

Cow Culture

A couple weeks ago this foam-and-PVC creation appeared near the bus stop at Avenida Paulista and Consolação.  Plastics..

I couldn’t help but be reminded of the cow parade that I saw the last time I passed through São Paulo, in 2005.  Basically how this works is that molded fiberglass cows are distributed to artists in cities throughout the world, who then paint them in a way that tributes the local landscape and culture, and they are then stationed on the streets as public art.

Hence, Samba Cow…

Caipirinha Cow…

Caipira (countryside) Cow…

and MASP Cow…

inspired by the Modern Art Museum of São Paulo, under which it was stationed.

and finally this one, chiling out on Avenida Paulista (where the pink foam creation appeared), perhaps evoking smoggy rain?

Nescafé No Es Café

In case you were wondering what fuels all this blogging (besides solar power and lots of love, of course), I have a confession to make.

During my various travels in Latin America I picked up what you might call a bad habit.

This is hard stuff; it will give you a hangover.

I started drinking Nescafé instant coffee in Ecuador, where the little jars of the stuff can be found on every restaurant table and counter. It does the job, but it’s not coffee, as the title comments (a pun in Colombia, according to a friend of mine). Nescafé, and Nestle products in general, are immensely popular in Latin America (even the Mexican grocery store near where I lived in the Mission in San Francisco featured a five-foot stack of jars Nescafé). This is probably just due to intensive campaigning, but I’ve often wondered if the seeming Spanish-ness of the brand (which is actually from the French, since Nestle is Swiss) contributes to a sense of local authenticity (and tradition, like it says on the jar), rather than a manifestation of an international megacorporation.

Brazilians like their coffee strong; the most common format, at least the places I’ve been in São Paulo, is just to drink straight up shots of expresso.

The more traditional form of coffee is called cafezinho (the dimunitive of coffee), and consists of maybe a quarter-cup served in little plastic glasses, brewed by pouring hot water multiple times over the grounds in a filter. It often comes already syrupy-sweet. (My apologies for the blurriness of this photo, I was trying to be discreet.)

Unfortunately, there is a cafezinho machine right outside my office door. I am like one of those lab rats who get to self-administer drug hits and punch the button over and over.  I’ve sworn off cafezinho many times since it’s so strong it quickly clouds my brain. When I started a job in Brasília a few years ago, I got terrible headaches for the first few weeks, which I blamed on the flickering flourescent lighting, until I realized I was majorly overdosing on cafezinho.  (Yeah, the fact that it was served in cups with a volume of about two tablespoons should have been a clue.)  American-style coffee, you know, the kind that comes in full 8-ounce servings, is called fraca (weak) here.  I stumbled upon the Jardins Starbucks the other day (it looks exactly like any other Starbucks anywhere in the world – I suppose that is the point), but I find it hard to imagine Brazilians drinking a kind of coffee where the smallest size is a “tall”!  Still, I’m a fan of cafezinho’s powerful sleep-schedule regulation properties, essential in a country where live music doesn’t start until after midnight and usually more like 2am.

Now I’m not a particularly discriminating coffee drinker (that should have been obvious from the start), at least not against anything that can’t be masked with a spoonful of sugar, but after years of training in the hip coffee shops of Portland and Silicon Valley, even I can tell that most of the coffee here is…not terrific. This might seem paradoxic, considering that Brazil is the world’s largest coffee producer. (São Paulo state prospered on a coffee boom in the early 20th century, and today specializes in immense mechanically harvested fields of the more bitter robusta beans which are mostly processed into…Nescafé). My experience in Ecuador, as well as assembled anecdotic evidence from friends who have spent time in other major coffee exporters (Costa Rica, Guatemala, Colombia, Panama) is that these countries, naturally enough, tend to export most of the best stuff and charge a ridiculous amount for the rest in chique cafés, but even those tend to feature fancy desserts rather than coffee persay. Coffee shops, at least of the sit-by-yourself-and-read-the-newspaper variety, are not really a traditional part of Latin American culture. A friend lives near a theater district in central São Paulo filled with hipster cafés – on first glance they look like rosily-lit, art-deco San Franciscan cafés – but everyone is drinking beer.