Thomas Locke Hobbs

Currently: Buenos Aires

On the Bus

São Paulo has just over 1000 bus routes, not counting the various suburban lines that feed into the city. The lines are identified with four digits which I find to be one too many to easily remember. What's more they tend to be concentrated on avenues. Where I live, for instance, there are 30+ separate lines going up Rua Teodoro Sampaio. Of these, probably 10 will take me to my destination. You have to quickly scan the small plaque on the side which lists the major avenues the route travels over. You thus need to know the major avenues of pretty much the whole city and to be able to scan them in a quick second to know where the bus is going. It's taken four months but I'm pretty good now with the center, southern and western parts of the city. Drop me off somewhere else and I'm lost. My upper-middle class Brazilian friends are impressed with my knowledge. For those who have money, São Paulo is a car city and most of them wouldn't dream of riding the bus.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Hi. I'm a 32 year-old American currently living in Buenos Aires. Before that I lived in California, Sao Paulo and New York and if you browse through the archives below you can see photos of all those places. I also have an old geocities page with some outdated information but also more photos of Buenos Aires, friends and my 9/11 pictures.