São Paulo Things to Do Tips by miromi

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Directions: somewhere on Avenida Paulista, a long long time ago and a long long time to come
Other Contact: MASP is a really important art m

(photo: not in Ave Paulista, but most new buildings look just like this!)

This is the main 'new downtown', one of the many new downtowns in Sao Paulo! AP is also the Wall Street of south America, with all the crazy finance and corporations located here. It was also the only ATM haven I could find in the city--I didn't even bother cashing my traveller's checks. (I had an embarrassing episode when I got stuck in a revolving bulletproof glass door and an armed security guard screamed at me in Portuguese, but Fabiola saved my butt and explained I was just a dumb tourist)

Cris, Tom's comic book drawing goddess friend, drove me around and told me how all these mammoth giant gray skyscrapers were just starting 15 years ago. all the highways and buildings sprang up so fast! just like that.

There's a most beautiful park across the street from MASP, walled and forested with pretty leafy trees and cobblestoned paths where you can eat your yummy Brasilian hot dogs.There were lots of skimpily dressed men walking around and smiling, whichI wrote off to my awful horny imagination. Later on a friend's aunt told me the park was 'horribly dangerous!' for young girls and 'full of gays!' so I guess it was a big cruising spot!

one of the guys in the park rushed up to me and squealed, 'You're filipino! I LOVE MANILA!' and gave me his phone number, which made me happy in a weird way.

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when the urban jungle is wearing you down and you feel in the mood to see hints of green and chase baby ducks, head here! there's a crazy wonderful selection of museums on its premises, but of course I came on the day of the week when they were closed (drrr--but we can never plan breakdowns, can we?). it's far away from the subway, like most things in SP, so wimp out & take a taxi or ride the bus. I saw a giant louise bourgeois sculpture through one of the museum windows and wished sorely I had come on a better day. You can rent a bicycle and go round and round the park, which seems to be full of trees and lots of taut genetically perfect barbie doll types.

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It's a little surreal to stumble into two huge run down open air shopping mall plazas and discover the underground subculture world inside. Each center has about 6 stories of every music movement to hit the world in the last 20 years: hippie record stores, drum'n'bass DJ vinyl shops, a big Brasilian hip hop and rap section, gothic clothing stores, and the original Sepultura fan store. I found shopkeepers incredibly informative about picking out good Brasilian new music. This is the best place to get the latest information about what's playing where, and if you talk to people, they are pretty friendly and will help you out with planning where to go and how to get there. The stoned Sepultura fan club guys pelted me with free Sepultura fan club stickers.

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Address: Praca de Republica

toy-buying is an essential activity. be sure to buy as many toys as you can (but not so many that you can't walk--or worse, so many that the toy population of a particular place is endangered by your ravages)

Capoeira is the most famous Brasilian martial art in New York, and it's become very popular. Any follower can tell you about its romantic, tortured past: terrorized African slaves hid their training forms behind dancing and singing to placate their evil masters. Since then it has become one of the most beautiful martial arts around.

There is also Brasilian Jujitsu which won some kind of ultimate fighting championship and involves holding people to the ground and boxing their ears. I'm not really sure how fun that is, but my friend Tom told me all about the macho Brasilian jujitsu subculture there which sounded a lot like Florida to me: bald, aggressive, muscular guys with purple ears and pickup trucks and little blonde girlfriends.

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