Guys Wearing Ladies Underwear

game struggle and Sao Paulo, ... Music

*** (Alfredo narrative Freesia agulha.com published in the magazine under the title "The messages of Calle San Pablo and the lives of others).

Read this article will be an unforgettable virtual tour of this city filled with life, smells and perpetual images portrayed and felt by Alfredo Freesia, forever reminding people that survive in this city so great, so special, so diverse, so diverse and so beautiful.

Outside the door of my building there is always a truck full of coconuts and boys. Each week is a different truck and the guys who sell wholesale coconuts are also different every week, so that one day I asked one of them what happened, why it was so. "We come from Pernambuco, sell load and go, then another truck is there." With other coconuts and other Pernambuco, of course. The truck is always in place, the boys should be seen, napping on coconuts, indolent, indifferent to those who can watch from the upper floors. They are and are not. Impossible to identify every week.

is very different from the seller of cigarettes, Bagay of Paraguay, who installed his picture, painted and decorated, in a neighboring building, one of the highest in the city. The building on Avenida da São João, Aurora Street, and third, cortita, called Pedro Américo, as the painter of Emperor Don Pedro. Caught fire in 1972 killed 16 people, and nobody wanted return to work in this place full of evil spirits. Ended desks occupied by the quartermaster, there was no other choice. The boy is smuggled cigarettes Bitupitá, a town north of Ceará. Is thrilled with his work, without pattern and with a clientele of quality, buying it by the carton, and he also sells lighters. Employees of the Quartermaster they buy on credit. It is true that lives far away and has to come to the center by train, but worth it, and hopes one day to rent a kitchenette. It is a charlatan, and so it has very romantic.

Under the part of the building that faces Avenue, sleep at night about thirty, maybe forty homeless people da rua. A dirt lot to do, says the surveyor. He asks why not go to sleep in hostels in the quartermaster in the neighborhood of Brás. But ask questions or to show that he is clean and tidy, as Paraguayan cigarette cartons. Everyone knows that if they do not want to go is because they can steal the carts where paper and cans together. In addition to the shelters can not get drunk, and some take. You also can not take animals, and several have a dog or two. Non-governmental organizations, some churches and other secular, leading every night the soup, the soup kitchen, for 10 000 inhabitants da rua (the figure is from 2001; in 2000 were 8,704, according to census accuracy disconcerting that year, but it is perceived that the number increases). In any case, do not walk crowded suburban trains as the Ceará romantic, nor are all from the Northeast (48.4% is from San Pablo and neighboring states, the Northeast is 42.1%, according to the census).

In the next block, corner of Aurora and Rio Branco, there are two hotels "three stars." Looks are good because they always come catarinenses trips, families, people in the south. Below is a brothel, undisguised and overt, rather propaganda ads neon. But apparently the coexistence is peaceful. And so there are always two cities, horizontal, at the Centre. One is the street, the urban floor, very colorful, full of smells, fruit in every corner, noisy. The other is the upper floor, calmer, and more conventional. Neighbors who live in the Centre and those who work here, enjoyed a highly equipped city where never lack water, electricity, fiber optics, banks, schools, buses and subways, markets, including imported products, police officers called "community" as they guide, protect, and now people are treated well.

But the "floor" is broken every year, and today some roads are simply impassable. Getting to the Municipal Theatre, for example, is an adventure, the kind that deserves the theater, with its past modernist art of weeks, so beautiful and provincial, with those hanging gardens on Anhangabaú Valley, those imposing bronze statues Ceci immortalized, to Peri, the Portuguese and the Indians, all from the opera Il Guarani Carlos Gomes, Sao Paulo-Campinas, who died gloriously in 1896 and lived monarchy and national pride. To go to the local temple of bel canto, in my house, I have to go, whether to follow the logic topographic by pedestrian on May 24, which runs from the Place de la Republic to the theater.

It is a sacrifice in that market walking Arabic, Korean (South), China (Formosa) and Paraguay. The quartermaster tolerate the invasion of street vendors, smuggled tolerated, tolerates stalls are cemented to the ground, immovable, day and night. Everything is tolerated, perhaps because of lapses in tax over the last two municipal administrations, or by a paradoxical social sense, in the case of Mayor Marta Suplicy. The grands magasins of once disappeared, swallowed by trade "poor" comes from Paraguay. It may be that a street named May 24 deserve it so blithely to mention the War of Paraguay. Not only that is the date of the Battle of Tuyutí, the terrible, the slaughter of 1866 that killed 6,000 soldiers Paraguay (Uruguayans were 133, and 737 Brazilians dead all this accuracy comes from A batalha do Tuiuti e uma "The Lesson civics, Abid Nurad, Biblioteca do army, Rio de Janeiro, 1957), but also Tuyutí is the name of a building pedantic, self-righteous art deco, a few meters from the theater.

already a few blocks, Calle del Triunfo, a part of Aurora Street (from imperial morning, which ended in Republic) and Victoria Street are not invaded by Paraguayan products, but by the crack, a degraded cocaine mixed with baking soda, children and poor adults smoke in makeshift pipes. Rectangle are called "Cracolandia" and there are different horizontal cities. There is one city and is also the saddest part of downtown San Pablo. They invaded decrepit houses, hotels paupers, where assaults, kills and dies for the drug (and corrupted the fragile Narcotics Police, whose officers, they found and filmed secretly judicial prosecutors in November 2001, exploit traffic .) In this decade apple, place names exposed triumphant slaughter somberly at his sarcasm.

Despite reducing the number of inhabitants at the Centre (in 2001 there were only 60,271 in the districts Republic and I know), overlapping cities coexist. Millions of people go and work at the Centre. Rise hotels "category" (and "executive", says the ads) with the remainder of the big cinemas, luxury, exhibiting from the fifties his whimsical architectural motifs, sometimes Eastern (film Morocco, by example, Spooky), and rooms have become pornographic "24 hours", a kind of shelter to sleep on winter nights and for the adventures of the dark rooms. Metro Cinema no, that is now International Church of the Grace of God.

Large galleries, five or six floors spanning entire blocks, so elegant until the seventies, had more luck: entertain young rockers, punks and Goths, with their record labels (only heavy metal), clothes and piercings aggressive. They are one of the visible parts of another city over: the youth. The galleries overlooking the square Paysandu, a redoubt of black culture, the Church of Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Homens without statue Pretos Tamandaré Admiral offer a beautiful view and bars with perfume of incense, beer and marijuana. And from time to time offer also fights, epic, long prepared, the anarchist punks against neo-Nazi skinheads, these bare, literally shorn, which come from the "ABC", the urban cities of São Paulo also have names of saints: St. André, São Bernardo do Campo and São Caetano. And they are murderers, on February 6, 2000 killed a young homosexual clubs in the Republic Square. A week later he performed in the same place a tribute to the man. Speakers included representatives of the gay movement and an old militant feminist Marta Suplicy, the current mayor. Those skinheads are in jail. Many others, too, are loose, prisoners of intolerance, its myth of racial purity and family.

You know, can not live without myths. In St. Paul, for example, 5 million vehicles moving. As is intolerable, some stories refuge in the first, the steam Daimler Henrique Santos Dumont, Alberto's brother, who invented the airplane (for many, another monstrosity). Exhibit and walk their old cars. Have fun. Or the mythical culture of these reports helps to resist air pollution? They are also those who know that the poet and English priest José de Anchieta founded San Pablo de Piratininga on January 25, 1554, under the sign of Aquarius. He climbed the Sierra del Mar, liked the climate, slightly cooler than the beach, and founded a college, which left the yard. He learned the native language to teach the catechism. The Indians, who were good and obedient, became, got dressed and were hardworking.

For centuries St. Paul was a town full of very lively rivers. A Levi-Strauss and those who do not believe in myths perplexing the topography of the city. "Few cities were built in such rugged terrain," anthropologist was shocked. And it is true, are plains cut by innumerable rivers, some very mighty, others less. To found the villa with the school, Anchieta chose a plain girl, between two rivers, the Anhangabaú and Tamanduateí. Today, that plain is a ghostly place, the "Old Center", where buildings still living in the early decades of the twentieth century with some modern architecture. By day, the stock market, huge banks, the movement in the narrow streets, pedestrian (hubbub of the "ground floor"), all given a cosmopolitan air, almost joyful, light. At night is eerie. When I was young was that ride, sometimes until dawn: walked through these winding streets, which might be medieval, but the castle was uninhabited, containing the power of kindness, "cleansed", neutral, odorless, which slips on documents, checks, transactions. A phone had not rung, and if anyone would hear sound, pick up a fax that message as if it had human recipient. I got lost in the maze, and walked, excluded as a planet without gravity.

the other side was the other center, combined, or separated by viaducts over the Valley Gardens. Back to my Centro with some relief, as he returns home, his eyes clinging to the Teatro Municipal the Plaza of the Republic, São João Avenue. That was the reality. On the other hand, was the abyss, the wreck of the myths of Anchieta, the danger of fantasy desert, the sea that Paul does not have. Many poems were born in these night walks, adventures beyond everyday life and shareable. Can not tell.

One

that cities would be like the truck, coconuts and Pernambuco in the door of my house, always different and always the same. They changed the actors, but not the stage. It is also a myth, of course, and even more versatility in San Pablo. Paulista Avenue, for example, was hateful. The Agronomist projected the Uruguayan Joaquin Eugenio de Lima in 1901. In 1986 I published a book, Destination Rua Aurora, where he spoke contemptuously of the Paulista and elegant slum coming "after", and called Jardins. The book sold out, a second edition, and I called the newspaper O Estado de São Paulo: they wanted the authorization to publish a certain page on the avenue. The highlight came on a Sunday (June 7, 1987). I liked it because it spoke ill. Saying things like: "The opposite of sleep is the Paulista Av. So real that Av is written without point, as on certain computers. She threatens even those who live in the Jardins, when they need to come to the facility have to go through it. And what do you do? "Close your eyes? But what about the smell? Paulista Avenue because it smells, even subtle toothache of a computer. To tell the truth, everything is fine in Paulista Av. The sidewalks, for example, are a distant memory lane. You walk zigzagging because of the quarry and that gives a slight dizziness dentist. The benches, round and public, are not to sit in them. Served only in case of an accident (which is why they are always away from the bus stops). Trianon Park, ah, he who was so beautiful, now opens its decline towards the Gardens with a fence. And the height of subtlety is curved Ave. Slightly, of course. No you can see the beginning nor the end. It has no beginning or end. It is the repetition of itself as a recording. Or perhaps not appropriate to talk about recording?

The Paulista Avenue has no voice. It was a long, silent scream. Is the gap between two words. Paulista Avenue Crossing "is something magical? Or maybe never cross? Nobody is going to Paulista Avenue, all pass. And it is a pass without consequences. It is free as calculating memory lost in a bank, but not distracting the officer lost: is that the device ran out of ink. Are inefficient, you, Avenida efficiency. Not that she committed error-ever: its inefficiency is that it always comes at a bad time. Osvaldo Cruz in the square there is a shoeshine seat with a white and green plastic karmic. I asked him why the seat was well, and he answered me. Put face of those in a hurry and do not want to be bothered. Naturally, no one polishes the shoes in the plaza Osvaldo Cruz. Paulista Avenue is not pathetic, such as Avenida São João. "Pathos in the Paulista? She is not even ugly. She is as she has no gender: it is not. At certain times when it seems that it will become a place with recognizable identity (at 6 pm, between dentists and staff dressed in white in a hurry), she is powerless. Is that why it is a challenge? No, she has no mysteries, no secrets because he has no nostalgia for the coffee and mansions of the past. She always lived her present and no past, meekly accepts his sentence to have no future. The test is the Bank of Tokyo.

Today the painting of the "deslugar" sounds quite false. Paulista Center is too close not to have been his influence. His "ground floor "was filled with street vendors Northeast, which are knowingly bringing more joy to the city, the cinemas of the region became more accessible, the bars are multiplied, as jugglers popular and statues, students take account of a good stretch of the avenue, and life resumed its course. He said: those who do not like, let them go. (And indeed many left to Berrini Avenue, the "new Paulista", far, far away).

Chapter XI of Tristes Tropiques (1955), Lévi-Strauss met his impressions of San Pablo. Many years later, in 1996, returned to the subject in Saudades de São Paulo. Chapter One, 1955 began with this statement: "A malicious spirit defined America as the land that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization known. We could, with more reason to apply this formula to the cities of the New World freshness go to decrepitude without stopping in antiquity. "True, but you must add: the San Pablo met the anthropologist in the thirties, with a million inhabitants, had demolished and rebuilt several San Pablo. The process has continued since then, and the human landscape also continued to change. When I could not get over (million), Italian, Japanese, English, arrived immigrants from Eastern Europe, fifty, and the northeastern flow never stopped over. So fortunately there is no "face" of São Paulo. changed the Pernambuco, coconuts and the truck. And most of decrepitude, was and will always be unpredictable change, from the "implosion" violent, buildings to dust in a second, as in the square, to more subtle tropism.

Maybe changing that landscape comes from the generosity of St. Paul with the poets. In my opinion, was the major poet Mário de Andrade, who requested a street, neighborhood to bury each body part. And his ears, he said, which put them near the Post Office Plaza to hear the messages. Mario knew that violence and intolerance of the messages are not heard. St. Paul seems to work as an antenna, captures and spreads through the south of Third World news coming from the exclusion, ears deaf to the clamor. Should hear these messages. And the poet, of course, who gave his body through the streets:

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