Escaparse de Nueva York

I was going to skip Rio de Janeiro. I’d been there before, seen the town. I couldn’t get ahold of my friend or my professor who both live there. It wasn’t on the way to where I was going. I had a whole host of reasons. What could I have been thinking?

In my book, anyone who doesn’t want to see Rio every chance they get needs to have their head examined. I haven’t been everywhere, but I’ve seen a lot of towns, and Rio is far and away the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen. I won’t go into it again - read the above linked entry for the specifics. Another first-time take on the city can be found here (point by point refutation to come) on Travelvice - a pretty amusing travelog I ran into. Anyone who tells you how to sneak into Machu Piccu is OK in my book.

Anyway, I finally managed to get ahold of my Carioca (as natives of Rio are called) friend. A medical student, it turned out about his only free weekend of the year happened to be the one coming up. 12 hours later I was on a plane to the Marvelous City.

For anyone traveling to Brazil, my advice is this: you’ll probably fly into Sao Paulo’s international airport. Stay two or three days in Sao Paulo, and then fly to Rio. If you fly directly to Rio, or if you transfer from Sao Paulo’s international airport to Rio, you’ll end up flying into Galeao airport, north of the city. However, if you go from Sao Paulo’s domestic airport, you’ll be rewarded with one of the most spectacular flight decents in the world. The ascent from Sao Paulo isn’t bad either - you get to see just how vast the city really is.

Sao Paulo-Rio is the second-most traveled flight pattern in the world (Madrid-Barcelona is number one). Don’t worry about reservations - flights leave at least once an hour. There’s even a dedicated ticket desk for “buy & fly” purchases -which shouldn’t cost you more than $100 US.

Now, don’t get on the next plane - at least not if you can’t get a window (that’s the whole point). Wait until the one after- you should pretty much have your pick of seats. Although both sides actually have great views, my advice is to sit on the left-hand side window. Rio’s domestic airport (Santos Dumont) is a little two-runway job right next to downtown. This isn’t the difference between flying into JFK and LaGuardia - flying into Santos Dumont is basically the equivalent of flying into the Wall Street Heliport. Not only are the views astounding, but you can grab your stuff and walk right into the middle of Rio. The subway - which will take you as far south as Copacabana - is only about a 15 minute walk through downtown.

As for myself, my buddy picked me up from the airport for a great long weekend. I wish I could say I had adventures and saw all sides of Rio. I had taken an entire class on Favelas (which are actually more a result of geography than anything else) the past semester and the professor, who had grown up in one, was in Rio but I couldn’t get ahold of him. But I wasn’t that disappointed. I had had enough nuttiness in the last month (and was looking forward to more in Sao Paulo) to afford me a short vacation. I was pretty exited just to see an old friend and lie on the beach for the weekend.

Oh, and also party. Did I mention it was the weekend before Carnival?

Time moves on. Cities change. As they change, people tend to get nostalgic for what used to be. Today, nostalgia for the “bad old days” of the NYC of the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s has almost reached the level of kitsch, it’s so prevalent. Luckily, your solution is only measured in distance, instead of time. Just hop on a flight to Sao Paulo.

I always describe Sao Paulo as New York in Portuguese in 1982 (and without the great public subway system I suppose). First of all, the town is huge - one of the five biggest cities in the world kind of huge. No city that isn’t at least a few million people can rightfully be compared to New York. Before anything else, the defining characteristic of the city is “big - really big.”

Second of all, like New York, Sao Paulo is an immigrant city. It has the biggest Japanese population outside of Japan, the biggest Lebanese population outside of Lebanon and (believe it or not, New Yorkers), the biggest Italian population outside of Italy. Like New York, anyone can walk the streets and not feel out of place. That is, of course, if you know how to walk like a Brazilian. The immigrant situation in Sao Paulo is different from New York in a very significant way. Sao Paulo is an old immigrant city. While 100 years ago it had a similar immigration story as New York, today it doesn’t attract substantial numbers at all. The Korean, Chinese, and Bolivian populations have all increased somewhat in recent years, but they’re the only newer groups of significance.

It’s similar to the early 80s in New York, when the old immigrant groups had already long since assimilated, but new immigrant groups had yet to arrive in large numbers. It’s as easy to tell a Japanese-Brazilian and a Japanese tourist apart as it is to tell a Italian-American and an Italian tourist apart for us. There is such a universal Brazilian identity and culture (the same as there’s a universal American culture I suppose) that despite the myriad kinds of different ethnicities, I noticed that people were Brazilian first, and only after if they were Afro-Brazilian, or Japanese-Brazilian, or whatever else.

I tried to wander around the town as much as I could, and see the different neighborhoods and populations. But there’s a problems - sizewise, Sao Paulo is ridiculously big, and doesn’t really have much of a subway system. There’s about 4 or 5 main business districts (they keep moving further and further south), which can be miles apart. I stuck mostly to the old downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. One, Bom Retiro, was the old Jewish neighborhood. Similarly to the Lower East Side of the 80s, it seems to be developing into the cosmopolitan neighborhood of the town, with old Jews, Bolivians, Koreans, Chinese, and Yuppies all living there today. The locals I talked to said generally said it was their favorite neighborhood.

Also like New York City in the 1980s, Sao Paulo has a somewhat overstated reputation for being extremely dirty and dangerous. Dirty? Sure - it’s a city. I wouldn’t say it’s any dirtier that any comparable city. Dangerous? Well, that’s always subjective. Generally speaking, if someone runs into trouble in any particular city they’ll say it’s dangerous, and if they don’t, they won’t. I felt perfectly comfortable there - maybe more comfortable than in any city outside of the United States. And I never ran into any trouble, or even felt that I was close to doing so. Still, it’s a far cry from the New York of today, and from talking to most of the locals I gathered it’s reputation for danger was somewhat undeserved - but not THAT undeserved.

Another thing the locals agreed upon was that the city was getting a little better every year. This is why I call it New York in 1982. There was a small period, post 1970s fiscal crisis, yet pre Crack and Aids, where New York - led by a still enormously popular Ed Koch - seemed to be on the upswing. Sao Paulo is better than yesterday - but still has yet to undergo the dramatic transformation that would let it take it’s rightful place as a world city.

Sao Paulo is the financial, and arguably cultural, capital of an entire continent. It’s by far the largest city in South America, and also happens to be one of the leading 4 or 5 fashion cities in the world. It’s cosmopolitan, has great nightlife, amazing restaurants, and every other service an international traveller could want. Yet it has an almost nonexistent tourist infrastructure. And needless to say, Sao Paulo is not exactly the first place off the lips of people when asked where they want to vacation.

Still, I’m betting on the town. Sao Paulo has, for lack of a better term, a certain coolness factor to it. Language is a barrier (who speaks Portuguese?), as is the perceived chaotic and dangerous nature of the city. But there is a certain energy in the town that’s an indescribable draw - an energy all too familiar to the inhabitants of New York City. In many ways, Berlin is the city I’ve been to that is most like New York. But in terms of sheer feeling, Sao Paulo is really the only place that comes close. Give the city 10 or 20 years - if it has a second great immigrant wave (a wave which saved New York City in the 80s and 90s), cleans up a bit, and manages to develop an easily recognized positive identity and character (I’m betting on supermodel paradise), I won’t be that surprised to hear the international jet set talk about it as a destination of choice - much like New York. I wonder though, if it will retain the same edge - if people will pine for the “bad old days” of Sao Paulo like they do for New York.

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