Thomas Locke Hobbs
| Currently: Buenos Aires |
Flickr Pictures
| Some great pictures of São Paulo that I've found browsing Flickr: Edificio Viadutos [2], an eclectic looking 1950s apartment building. Cadaver Building, the abandoned construction of Electropaulo's pre-privatization headquarters. Paulista & Rebouças at night [2], two of the cities busiest avenues. Edificio São Vito, a previously blogged vertical favela. Backside of Niemeyer's Edificio Copan, nearly a vertical favela in it's own right. Its efficiency flats supposedly home to many of the Centro's trannies. |
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| A few months ago I posted on Oscar Niemeyer's Memorial da America Latina. The day I visited the library was closed. I returned yesterday and took these shots of the interior. |
Cabelereiros
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| For once I wake up early on a Sunday morning and go walking around my neighborhood. All the shops are closed and outside on that roll-down thingie they all have painted murals of the shop's function. There's a lot of hair salons near where I live. I liked the awkward yet idealistic representations of the perfect haircut. |
What's for Lunch
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| The yellow-background with red or black lettering is popular. I'll be posting more examples soon. |
Estrada de Santos
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| The southern end of São Paulo, which sits at 2500ft, peters out into the forested hills of the city's watershed. Suddenly the plateau ends and the Serra do Mar plunges quickly to the ocean and the state's main port of Santos. There's actually three "estradas" (highways) leading down to the coast; a small two lane road from the 1920s, a twisting four-lane expressway from the 1950s, and [pictured above] the six lane Rodovia dos Immigrantes whose dual tracks interleave like strands of bomfim ribbon with no regard for which direction is on the right. Of the three, I'm not sure which one Roberto Carlos sings about, tho I suspect it's the 1950s version. Kevin Kelly's notes on producing his book, Asia Grace: 1 change of clothes, 300 rolls of kodachrome. |
The Street Next to My Street
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| The street next to my street is a seedy dump, an inter-municipal bus stop filled with graffiti, trash and broken sidewalks. I took these shots at 3am when the buses aren't running. Despite having a population of 18 million, Sao Paulo has no public transportation from midnight til 5am. I believe this is for safety reasons. |
The Beach at Guaruja
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| Guaruja is 90 minutes from Sao Paulo, 60 if you own a car. I normally hate the sun and the beach but it's nice once in awhile, especially now during winter when you're likely to get cool, sunny days. Sitting in the reclining chair and drinking my third caipirinha I thought perhaps this isn't so bad. |
The Brutal Metro
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| I've blogged before about the consistent brutalist aesthetic used throughout São Paulo's metro. These pics are from the Santa Cruz station. |
Parque Trianon
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| Right in the heart of São Paulo's financial district are two blocks of thick "mata atlantica" or coastal tropical forest. The density of the park and its lack of a defined center give it a feeling of being very isolated from the city. As the description "densely wooded urban park" might imply, it's very cruisy. |
São Paulo Skyline at Night
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| Avenida Paulista & Bela Vista from the roof of a friend's building on the lower part of Frei Caneca. |
Higienopolis
| The hot new neighborhood in São Paulo circa 1910 was Higienopolis, literally "Hygiene City". The name sounds strange but at a time when Yellow Fever was a leading cause of death I'm sure it sounded like an attractive place to live. The neighborhood is still posh altho it has been completely verticalized. The first transformation came in the 1950s with "tropical modern" apartment buildings like Edificio Louveira (below) and Parque das Hortensias. More recently the noveau riche have been moving into Fake-French Neo-Classical high rises (which I suppose are the apartment building version of McMansions). I ended my walk and the neighborhood's new centerpiece: a shopping mall! Actually, Patio Hiegienopolis is the nicest mall I've seen here. I would've taken more pictures but the security goons told me to desist. |
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Soviet-style Building in Downtown São Paulo
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| I was first taken by the scale of this building. Then I noticed the clothes hanging out to dry from some of the windows This clear is or was an office building and the clothes don't belong, so I wonder if it's another invasion. |
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| The intersection of Consolação & Itu at night. The site is a huge empty plot, soon to be a luxury hotel. Previously the block was filled with small bars and restaurants filled with a mostly gay clientele. People still hang out at the street corner on weekends, perhaps out of inertia. |
Mercado Municipal
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| Marta Suplicy, the previous mayor of São Paulo, paid a lot of money to have the Municipal Market building renovated an upgraded. Inside there's a mezzanine level with chic restaurants. Having just seen Batman Begins, I was reminded of Gotham City. Inside the well-off eat expensive lunches while outside is a gritty comercial district of counterfeit goods, graffiti, neglected buildings, and the previously blogged vertical favela across the street. Blender Magazine has an extensive article on Rio Funk, a whole musical genre inspired by 2LiveCrew; "The only concern for these artists is, ‘What’s gonna make the girls dance, throw their clothes onto the stage and wanna have sex?’" |
More "Petroglyph" Style Graffiti
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| I like how the graffiti traces a circle, the radius of a human arm, around the window. |
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| These last three are from my neighborhood, Pinheiros. I have to give credit to my mom for saying the local style of graffit resembles petroglyphs. Update Jan 06:The name for this style of graffit is pichação. I learned this while browsing the book Graffiti Brasil in a museum's bookstore. Of course there's lots of stuff on Google and Flickr about this such as an article from Eye Magazine from 2001, this fantastic photo of a building covered in pichação, a whole flickr set on pichação, and more generally the flickr photopool Brasil Graffiti. |
FAU
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| FAU, or Faculdade de Urbanismo e Arquitectura, is part of USP or Universidade de São Paulo. The building is a charming brutalist structure, if that's not an oxymoron. Lit from above by a grid of skylights the place feels as warm and cozy as is possible for a harsh concrete structure. |
Another Favela Vertical
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| Another posh building from the 1950s fallen on hard times. I'm not sure if this precisely fits the definition of a favela as it may simply be caught in a downward spiral of bad up-keep and cheaper rent. I believe the building is popularly known as the "pombal" but i'll have to do more research on this. It's located in a nice area of Bela Vista near the shopping mall Frei Caneca. I wanted to stay and take more pictures but the area immediately surrounding the building, not surprisingly, is dodgy. Quite coincidentally I came across a gorgeous photo spread in the July/Aug. issue of Wallpaper of Ponte City, a 54 story residential tower in downtown Johannesberg that has also fallen on hard times. The magazine doesn't have any of the gorgeous pictures online so I could only find this crappy photo, and this page discussing J-berg landmarks. |
Santos
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| Santos is the port for São Paulo, a city of a million reached by a spectacular freeway that drops 2500ft. in a few short miles down to the ocean. Downtown has charming ruins from the coffee boom days. The flat and muddy beach extends forever and its lined with middle class apartment blocks, some of which are sinking into the sea. |
Paulista Sidewalks
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| I look down when I'm walking so I don't trip on a broken sidewalk. I kept noticing this pattern repeated everywhere. I asked and was told that its an abstraction of the shape of São Paulo state. |
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 | For more about me, please go visit my old geocities page. |