The Maximus Festival drew me to São Paulo with more than satisfactory results… [check out that unforgettable experience here]   

But there was more to São Paulo than just that, obviously. Time for some exploration-session!       

I jumped on the passenger’s seat of Gui’s car and let him drive me to the Sunday market at Paulista Avenue. Good advice, as the entire lane of this normally insanely chaotic traffic gateway was now completely closed for transport, minus bikers, skateboarders and inline skaters.       

The result was a beautiful scene. 

In the middle of the concrete, capitalist labyrinth that’s called São Paulo, filled with futuristic office buildings and shopping malls, there was this bohemian, socialist vibe of handicrafts, animal rights manifestations, Hare Krishna chanting and an eternal quantity of street artists.   

From clowns spitting fire to bearded men in tutu’s juggling with knifes, imagine the craziest stuff your mind can come up with and I saw it happening that day. Right in my alley!    

I learned soon enough that this contradiction is emblematic for this city. The previous president, a woman, implemented many and very welcome reforms to the country. Improving the level and accessibility of education, supporting artistic and ecological initiatives, enhancing the leveling of income and wealth, fighting the distressing poverty tormenting Brazil… a policy that was also adopted by SP’s previous mayor. Amazing, don’t you think? Well, for sure a certain group of people didn’t think so. Exactly, the rich! Because obviously, you can only be rich if more are poor: you win / others lose, that’s a rule of our current society. And all that leftish ecological artistic bullshit, where’s the monetary profit of that exactly? Unfortunately, even though the rich consist of very few people in Brazil, they do have that one thing that gives them infinite power: money. They can buy the media and as such manipulate public opinion, and man, they even bought all the politicians.    

So right now the right-winged are winning, both in São Paulo and the entire country, and therefore the Earth is losing.       

Source  

The newly built bicycle lanes will soon give way again to the carbon-monoxide-monsters only the elite can afford, hunger will prevail and the biggest graffiti wall of entire Latin America is painted over with grey. A felony! A scandal! And on top of all of that, a crying shame and a giant loss for the city. Because this is what my fellow foreign travelers recommended me to see, the best street art they had ever seen in their lives. Painted in a haze of passionate obsession, transmitting the sense of desperateness, like they’re on the edge of dying with only a brush in their hand to pass on the social, economic and political tension tearing their homeland apart. Luckily, there’s still much to admire in Villa Madalena, but if this is the state of affairs… for how long?      

The paintings don’t exaggerate the intensity of the message. While staring at a representation of a homeless man holding up a carton reading “forgive me for existing”, subtitled 'Proud to be Brazilian', I heard Guilherme’s words echoing in my memory. The current right-winged mayor sees the homeless as a nuisance, an ugliness in the city. He tried to fix this by allowing the cops to scare them away with intimidation and by taking away the few possessions they have, like their warm clothes and mattresses. Well, Mr. Mayor, homeless aren’t the problem: they are the result of a problem. Maybe it’s better to eradicate the roots instead of the unwanted weed you allowed to sprout out of it?    

A few minutes later I passed a man in the gutter, filtering sewage water with a dirty t-shirt so he had something to drink. I walked to the next supermarket to buy him a 2-liter bottle of water including lunch for him and his entire family, in case he had one. The man told me this was the first time in 3 weeks someone had looked him in the eyes. This is happening.       

The strength of the art on the streets is alternated with the delicacy of the works in São Paulo’s countless museums. To see all of them your 90-day visa wouldn’t suffice, but I had the luck to experience a tiny handful. Among which the SESI Centro Cultural, a big melting pot of music, art and theatre (in short: Stephanie’s wet dream). And even better: everything they offer to the public is 100% free.      

The same goes for Centro Cultural do Banco, although you really should consider the amount you pay with hours, minutes and seconds of your lifetime, wasted on that crap. I’m not sure if it was just the exposition of the chromosome-missing village idiot Cicero Dias, or if all exhibitions they attract are of the category I-could-have-done-it better-at-the-age-of-4 (although I would probably have added less penises and vaginas)... But I must confirm, I do enjoy watching those people analyzing those ‘artworks’ with their most sophisticated, intelligent stare. Congratulations, you successfully introduced your mental retardation to the public!      

I know art. This is not it.   

No, then the Pinacoteca do Estado, that was the real deal. Certainly not all was of my liking (cubism alert!), but there is sufficient diversity to please every art-hungry soul. I forgot my 10-year-expired-student-pass that would have brought me a 50% discount, but I made it work somehow by shouting “ew souw estudjantche do intercaaaambio, sim!” and flashing a photo of my passport. Not sure how I pulled it off, but for sure you can too.      

Check this out! This is what Europeans thought Latin America was like, before actually going there:

Of course nowadays people never do that anymore... judging someone else's culture, religion or country based on assumptions and without actually going over there to research reality... [sarcasm trembling in the air]

No, you won’t get easily bored in São Paulo.  

If 20 million inhabitants can be entertained there, so can you.     

Until we meet. 

www.budgetbucketlist.com      

I had the great pleasure of meeting Wes here in São Paulo, a reader and donor of this blog. Not only he offered me his friendship and good company, he also started and financed some great adventures to come… stay tuned for these stories and more!