Thomas Locke Hobbs
| Currently: Buenos Aires |
My Havaianas
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| I picked up a pair of the ubiquitous Brazlian flip-flops at the beach for about $4.50. These may still be trendy. I´m not sure. They are, however, very soft & comfortable and I wear them around the house. |
Labels: brasil
Tanned Thomas
| The result of all this sun has been my first tan in 8 years: |
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Here, for comparison, is how I looked in December:
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Labels: brasil
Parati, Pt. 3
| On our last day in Parati, Marcos and I went to Trinidade, this small hippie beach community fronting three of the most perfect, tropical beaches I have ever seen. I´m rethinking my long-standing aversion to sand & sun. |
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Labels: brasil
Parati Pt. 2
| There´s no beach in Parati, so a popular tour is to go out in a schooner around the bay to various secluded beaches with emerald waters. |
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Labels: brasil
Parati, pt. 1
| Parati, in the state of Rio, was used as the port to bring gold from Minas Gerais to the crown in Lisbon. Since about 1800 not much has happened here and so there´s a really charming colonial center that is very well preserved. Marcos was visiting from Buenos Aires and wanted to see the coast. I don´t have any commitments so we took off together for three days last week. |
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Labels: brasil
Messy Façade
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| This building in downtown São Paulo is really out of control. I feel strange posting these photos because I´m currently in the colonial paradise of Parati with my Argentine friend Marcos. None of the netcafes here will let me plug in my flash drive to upload new pictures. Not to worry, I´m returning to São Paulo tomorrow and I will post pictures of beaches that have made me reconsider my long-standing hatred of the sun. |
Labels: brasil
Galeria Rock
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| Downtown São Paulo has this shopping gallery that is filled with rock t-shirts, tatoos, piercings and other paraphanelia for the rock "tribes" of Brazil. If you are looking for that Judas Priest t-Shirt this is the place to go. |
Labels: brasil
Water Filter
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| I drink the tap water here in São Paulo. Most of my friends don´t. I figure it´s safe because I can taste the chlorine. |
Nescau!
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| People really seem to love their powdered drink mixes here. |
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| Just a random space between buildings. Luc has finally published some hot photos of his straight roommate Romain. |
Labels: brasil
Electric Shower
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| In most of Brazil, it being a tropical country, there´s no hot water tank. Most showers have this electric water heater shower head that heats up the water as it comes out of the pipe. The slower the flow, the hotter the water. Since I like hot showers, even in a hot climate, I usually find myself standing under a dribble, albeit a hot dribble. |
Real Estate Ads
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| Real estate ads. There´s lots of new construction around São Paulo. More 20 story apartment buildings to extend out to the horizon and fill in all the gaps in between. |
Cellphones
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| Our cellphones on Sunday. I bought a used Nokia, unlocked, GSM tri-band phone on ebay for about $50 before I left the US. I use pre-paid cards. If someone calls me it´s free for me, altho ruinously expensive for them. If I call, it´s ruinously expensive for me; about $.30/min for a mobil-to-mobil call. I´ve discovered that text messages are very cheap. I sit on the bus, in traffic [São Paulo´s subway is a joke that doesn´t go awaywhere, at least not to my neighborhood], and slowly peck away. |
Labels: brasil
Jean Denis in Brazil
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| Jean Denis is visiting São Paulo this week on business. This past weekend we went out and spent our days taking pictures and eating croissants. I first met Jean Denis in 1999 when we were both living in Buenos Aires. Here´s a picture of JD from back then. |
Brice
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| Brice is a French Expat here in São Paulo who, like everyone it seems, I first met thru Jean Denis. |
Brice & Milton
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| I stayed with Milton and his boyfriend Emerson when I first arrived in São Paulo in the middle of March. |
Labels: brasil
Telenovelas
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| I´ve been trying to get into the current big Telenovela on Globo, America. It´s about Brazilians emigrating to the US (and a lot of other typical soap opera drama). Of course, I have a hard enough time following soap operas in English so for the moment it´s close to hopeless not knowing any of the characters, their connections or the backstory. Made in Brazil, my source for all the fabulous events in São Paulo has a couple of posts on the [male] cast of the telenovela [one, two] |
Labels: brasil
Downtown São Paulo
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| Downtown São Paulo has been on the decline since the 60s. Today it´s seedy with lots of discount stores and street vendors. At night it´s a dangerous place. Dividing the two halves of downtown is this narrow valley in which there´s a park. Running under the park is a freeway. Streets connecting the two halves cross the park as viaducts. It´s an odd sensation. The streets are basically flat but occasionally you get these vistas of multi-level chaos. It adds to the whole science fiction, Blade Runner feel of the city. Update: I should add this area is called the Valley of Anhangabau. My friend Aaron sent me a link to some old photos of what this area looked like in the 1930s. |
Labels: brasil
One Last Shot from Rio
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| I didn´t spend all of my time looking at buildings. This is from the gay section of the beach on Ipanema. I didn´t take this picture. Credit for that goes to Ben. |
Labels: brasil
More Rio Buildings
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| Since this is the tropics, lots of buildings have interesting sun louvres. |
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| Older buildings don´t have central air. The result is a very uneven façade as some tennants put in AC and other´s don´t (I´d hate to be in those offices) |
MAC
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| I think because I spent three years living in Mather House I have a soft spot for Brutalist Architecture. This is the Museu de Arte Contemporaneo. |
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| Parque Flamengo on a rainy and deserted Good Friday. |
Labels: brasil
Petrobras & Catedral Metropolitana
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| Two loveably hideous buildings in downtown Rio: the Petrobras headquarters (the rubik´s cube) and the Catedral Metropolitana, which looks like some Vegas Strip volcano from the outside, altho on the inside it´s cool and breezy and the stained glass is beautiful. |
Labels: brasil
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 | For more about me, please go visit my old geocities page. |