Thomas Locke Hobbs
| Currently: Buenos Aires |
Sao Paulo´s Gay Pride Parade
| Yesterday´s Gay Pride Parade in São Paulo attracted 1.8 million people according to the police. Things got started at 1pm and lasted til well past 10pm. Parade is a misnomer. Massive, wild street party would be a better description. Trio Electricos, 18-wheeler trucks outfitted with massive sound systems, pumped out techno music and inched their way 40 blocks along Ave. Paulista and to downtown while revelers danced and followed in their trail. There were lots of straights just to enjoy the party and spectacle. The cheap booze, lack of open container laws, and light police presence made the party wild and a little out of control. New York and San Francisco´s parades seem small and staid in comparison. |
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And of course there were lots of drag queens:
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Capitalism at work:
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| Dancing on the Trio Electrico. Made in Brazil has lots more photos in daytime and nighttime. Folha de São Paulo has an overview article, in Portuguese. Finally, here are my 2004 NYC Gay Pride pictures. |
Labels: brasil
Gay Pride in São Paulo
| São Paulo´s gay pride parade is on Sunday with 2 million (!) people expected. Half a million tourists, mostly from elsewhere in Brazil have descended upon the city for a weekend of of non-stop partying. Even Cariocas, notorious for their dislike of SP have been showing up. It seems the whole of New York´s DJ scene has also decamped down here for the week. Last night Alex Lauterstein played Ultralounge. Tonight 30,000 (!) are expected for the e.joy party headlined by Deborah Cox with a DJ set by Tony Moran to follow. Also tonight Peter Rauhofer is playing The Week, São Paulo´s biggest gay club. Saturday night Junior Vasquez will DJ a party at Hotel Unique. The blogger Made In Brazil has very good coverage of the events. Of course gay pride means fabulous drag queen pictures: |
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| I shot these photos at yesterday´s street festival on Largo do Arouche in downtown São Paulo. The distant figure on the stage is a drag queen doing Tina Turner. |
Labels: brasil
FAU Building
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| Saturday I went with my roommate Eduardo to this old mansion built by the coffee baron family Penteado in Higienopolis. It´s now owned by the architectural faculty of the University of São Paulo. The place is a great example of Art Nouveau decoration. We were there for a dress rehearsal of a recital Eduardo was to give the next day. More info on the mansion in Portuguese. |
Labels: brasil
Paulista Skyline
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| My square picture format doesn´t really lend itself to capturing São Paulo´s skyline. I´m waiting for a clear afternoon to ascend the Banespa building downtown and take some higher resolution pictures. |
Labels: brasil
Me & Emerson
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| I don´t think I´ve posted a picture yet of Emerson. He´s friends with Jean Denis and was my first contact here in São Paulo. We hang out a lot. On sunday we made the rounds doing social calls, visiting no less than four restaurants. Em´s a popular guy. |
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Labels: brasil
Uma Cerveja Bem Gelada
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| Beer is typically served just below 0 degrees celsius in 600ml bottles. Because of the alcohol it doesn´t freeze. |
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| The bottles are in coolers which prominently display just how many degrees below zero (celsius) they are stored. |
Labels: brasil
Praça Cheese
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| Around the corner form my house in Pinheiros is this quiet Lanchonette called Praça Cheese. I often get lunch there or hang out there in the evening with my roommate Eduardo drinking bottle after bottle of cheap, nearly frozen beer. |
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Labels: brasil
Robocop
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Edificio Cadaver
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| Nearby on the Marginal Pinheiros is this abandoned construction. I´ve always been fascinated by these skeletal buildings. They´re like pure architecture, or some sort of grand sculpture. I´ll be photographing more of this building (and others here in São Paulo) |
Labels: brasil
9 de Julho
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| 9 de Julho is one of the avenues leading out from downtown along the bottom of a valley. Streets cross along viaducts and tall buildings front the avenue and the streets rising on either side. The neighborhood on the right is a good one but on the street itself it has become very seedy with a number of buildings being abandoned, covered in graffiti and filled with squatters. Visually I love it but I wouldn´t want to walk there at night or live in the building next door. |
Labels: brasil
Memorial da America Latina
| You don´t have to go to Brasilia to experience Oscar Niemeyer´s wacky architecture. Right near the center of São Paulo is his Memorial da America Latina. It was opened in 1989, despite it´s rather 60´s Jetson´s look. Niemeyer has never really altered his style. The centerpiece of the memorial is a vast, shade-less, sunbaked, concrete plaza--perhaps not the best feature in a tropical city. The project strikes me as one of those self-congratulatory public projects that don´t do very much good. The quote at the bottom of the bleeding hand is from the then-governor of São Paulo state. The site is located next to one of the major transit points in São Paulo; Barra Funda, where the train, subway and multiple bus lines converge. A shopping mall would´ve been a better contribution to the urban fabric. Instead Paulistas have a vast, fenced-in, ceremonial dead-zone in the heart of the city. I suppose the models at least looked cool. |
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| The Official website. Neimeyer´s website, showing a number of his later projects. |
Labels: brasil
SESC Pompeia
| One of the most interesting buildings in São Paulo is the SESC Pompeia, designed by the architect Lina Bo Bardi in the early 1980s. SESC is this quasi-union organization and has these recreation & cultural centers scattered across São Paulo. They clearly have a lot of money because the buildings are immaculate and interesting.The center in the neighborhood of Pompei is a recycled factory, altho the two concrete stuctures with the walkways were built new for the center. |
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| More info & pictures in Portuguese. |
Labels: brasil
| New buildings don´t quite look real, as if they are really just blown-up maquetes, toy versions of themselves. |
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Labels: brasil
Parque Ibirapuera
| Before Oscar Niemeyer did Brasilia, he designed Parque Ibirapuera in São Paulo. It´s a well laid out park near the heart of the city, sort of it´s central park. Niemeyer´s buildings show is typical curvaceous tendencies. |
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Oca
| His most famous building in the park is OCA, which it this dome structure, like some sphere rising out of the ground. On the day I went children were gleefully running up the side and sliding off, surely not something the architect intended. A security guard perfunctorily told the children to stop but they started up again as soon as he left. |
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Labels: brasil
Post Modernism without the Irony
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| A lot of new apartment towers in São Paulo have this neo-classical detailing. I don´t think the residents who move in have ever heard the name Philip Johnson. I suspect, instead, that they just think it looks cute. |
Crackolandia
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| Here´s a tall and spectacularly run-down building in the heart of Luz, once the belle epoque center of Paulista high society. That was 100 years ago. Now the area is known by the less flattering name, "Crackolandia". I was there to visit the old train station and art museum but I ended up taking pictures of run-down buildings. |
Prato Feito
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| Most days I eat what´s called a prato feito [literally "made dish"] of chicken, rice and beans for $1.50. |
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| In the afternoon I usually have a smoothie made with açaí, a type of dark, tropical berry. The resulting mix looks like crude oil but tastes delicious. |
Labels: brasil
Me & Jean Denis
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| These photos are a little out of sequence but I haven´t had time to post everything. These two are from two weeks ago when Jean Denis was here for a visit. We went out a lot and by Saturday we were exhausted. |
Me & Marcos
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| When Marcos came to visit, the following week, he brought two excellent bottles of wine from Argentina (wines here in Brazil imported from Argentina are 3x the price). The celebrate his last night we had a picada which my Brazlian friends thought was very chique (that´s Brazilian for "chic"). |
Labels: brasil
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 | For more about me, please go visit my old geocities page. |