The city

Sao Paulo is the largest city in Brazil, the largest city proper in the southern hemisphere and Americas and the world's eighth largest city by population. The metropolis is anchor to the São Paulo metropolitan area, ranked as the second most populous metropolitan area in the Americas and among the ten largest metropolitan areas on the planet. For comparison, New York City, is none of these things. The city is so big that it could be raining in one section and the rest of the city would have clear skies.

I have been trying to find a metaphor to describe Sao Paulo, I have not been able to. The writhing, befuddling, thriving, astounding, beautiful living mass of human endeavor that is Sao Paulo is beyond comparison.  Its might is measured in raw numbers not in influence or political importance or cultural history but in pure measurable space, and staggering numbers. My closest frame of reference is Asheville, North Carolina. The weight in difference between what I know and don't know about this city could stagger a team of oxen, 1000 head strong.

I gonna tell you about my little corner of Sao Paulo. I live at the top of a hill in a quiet artist's district in Butanta, Sao Paulo east of city center. from its outside appearance it looks a whole hell of a lot like the river district in Asheville. Living ruins is something that comes to mind. The houses here are tiny, and all smashed together next to each other. most of them are literally sharing walls like apartments without the apartment buildings or landlords. Everything here has gates and locks and bars and barbed wire. Sao Paulo feels like a city of walls, and gates and barbed wire. to an american with no previous experience it look slike these places are the most unsafe but it is actually the places without walls and gates and barbed wire that are the most dangerous. The favelas are places where locks and gates are a luxury.

the people in my neighborhood are from what best I can gather middle, to lower middle class and working families. they are poor, they don't have a great deal but they are not impoverished, they are not despondent. Living in the city is expensive and they do the best they can with what they have. There is a lived authenticity in this neighborhood that is really cool for me to see. it is also safe enough for me to walk to and from the store at night. there is a dead end at the corner of my street that opens up onto a huge vista of the center of the city. I like to look at it at night. all the skyscrapers are filled with their lit windows. you can't see the stars here in the city but the cityscape at night is a close second.

it is the little things that are most striking to me when thinking about Sao Paulo. America seems to have an aesthetic of sterility. Everything is whitewashed and right angled and neat and clean and organized, everything gives off a don't touch me vibe. there is a little bit more love of chaos in Sao Paulo. the houses are a little off. things are clean but not setril. things look well loved, lived in, touched. things look like they have a history  and want to incorporate that into their future.

Not to romanticize the city too. there is trash everywhere, litter seems to be as much a part of the streets as the concrete. the streets are in a constant state of disrepair, and there is construction everywhere on every street corner. I will be walking down the streets to the stop and be greeted by the smell of the local bakery, with stuffed breads, and greasy fried heaven wafting from their open shops and then turn a corner or the wind will change and I am met with the smell of open sewage. the streets are lined with huge eucalyptus trees and other trees in bloom whose names I don't know, and next to them are broken down shops or broken street lamps or tangled clumps of power lines.

The city is sprawling in every sense of the word. open and free, and natural but also a little vulgar, and blunt. Every inch of usable buildable space is occupied either by street or house or business. there are no suburbs they have long since been consumed by the mass that is the city.

I haven't personally visited any of the favelas, but the school that I work at is located very close to a major Favela. they look exactly like they do in the movies and on the internet. they are almost impossible to describe without having seen them in person. It is like impacted despondence. Poverty so real, so all encompassing that it is like water to a fish, you can't really conceive of it. I would be a liar if I said it didn't scare me.

the idea of a hole in the wall or greasy spoon in america is put to shame in Sao Paulo. There are bakeries on almost every street corner and they are only a little bigger than my house. at one point they probably were a house. there are shops running out of dorm room sized spaces, where the the checkout counter is also the entrance to the shop. there are mechanics and bike shops that have a work space the size of a dorm room. Shops are fussed with homes, where they only thing that differentiates most of them is that the shops are open.

Open air and natural light are standard  Almost all the shops and business open out to the street and open air. restaurants are almost always open air. It doesn't get very cold in Sao Paulo. I am here for their winter season and it feels like summer in Boone. the lowest it has gotten at night is about 57 and I have already experienced to days where it got over 85, while the average is about 75. The cold is not a major problem here. especially for someone who has lived in Boone. 57 may be cold for a Brazilian but it doesn't stop being shorts weather for me until about 49. Most of the houses and buildings use passive solar ideas to help cool their houses, and to much success. the houses have tile floors and the windows are often closed or tinted, or have slats. My house has no air conditioning and even on the hottest day it s still nice and cool when I return.

Pictures and words are insufficient to describe the city.  I think it has to be lived in to be fully understood. I love it here. I love the city. The public transit puts most others to shame. The food and the people are hard to describe and constantly keep me interested. I am slowly step by step becoming more familiar with this massive thing that is Sao Paulo.

I have always been a little afraid of cities. I am a rural boy, by nature. I like the wild places, and spaces where you can be the only person for miles. Cites are not my natural habitat. I am adapting, and I know that if I can thrive in Sao Paulo almost any other city will be a breeze.