OUR MAN IN

SO PAULO
DESPITE BEING FOREVER IN RIOS SHADOW, SO PAULO HAS A NIGHT-TIME RHYTHM ALL OF ITS OWN

ts hard being the sensible one and even harder when your sibling is a unanimously acknowledged, e ortless beauty. While visitors thrill at the beaches, lush green hills and brooding peaks of nearby Rio de Janeiro, hardworking ber-metropolis So Paulo has struggled to attract tourists beyond a growing stream of industry, service and nance visitors drawn to its thriving business culture. But as every paulistano knows, beauty is skin-deep; and beneath So Paulos serious monochrome veneer, theres plenty of substance. The citys self-assured, urbane inhabitants are a testament to that; and a night spent down on Baixo Augusta, the rocknroll heart of So Paulos buzzing nightlife scene, is cast-iron proof of it. Here on the gritty, northeasterly stretch of Rua Augusta a street that also continues south-west of skyscraper-clad Avenida Paulista theres not much to write home about in the way of looks. But for those in search of late-night excitement, music and street life, or an insight into some of So Paulos more colourful urban transitions, its one

of the most interesting spots in town. Stretching back to Rua Augustas chic 1950s incarnation and on into the 1980s, when the roads fortunes took a dive as the shopping scene shifted to the malls, every hick cousin up for a visit to the big city has found their way to Augusta to gawp. First at its ne shops; later at the adult clubs that replaced the boutiques. Many of the clubs American bars, as some of them call themselves are still there, with neon signs and seedy entrances promising even seedier interiors. But these days, Baixo Augustas main attractions are the dozens of bars, nightclubs and music venues that have increasingly colonised the street, and the hipsters and the cool tattooed girls, the goths, the emos and the rockers who pack them out on weekend nights, spilling out of them and into the road, where hawkers sell cans of beer and sizzling meat skewers. Vegas, Studio SP, Z Carniceria: for every one of these, Augustas best-known nightspots, theres a half-dozen smaller, edgy joints also pulling in the crowds, plus a scattering of the kind of old-fashioned, strippeddown bars and diners botecos and

lanchonetes that grace every other So Paulo street corner. Ibotirama, at the intersection of Rua Augusta and Fernando de Albuquerque, is one of Rua Augustas nest. A crush of party people table-hops there nightly, gearing up to head to late-night spots on Augusta and on its surrounding streets to slick Sonique on Bela Cintra, Astronete on Matias Aires, or neon-lit Volt on Rua Haddock Lobo. But even as one more club closes (its currently Maison, with a Closing For Demolition Everything Must Go sign up) and a new bar opens (LAB Club, raising the tone and the price with a menu of molecular cocktails), theres a new tribe in town. Rua Augustas excellent location, linking the citys power avenue sleek, high-rise Paulista with the run-down city centre, plus the gentrifying trailblazed by the moderninhos hipsters who frequent the area, some of whom have settled there, has led to a mini property boom. Maison is to be replaced not by another grungy club but by a brand new residential building, just one of 11 currently being constructed in the area. And so the wheel turns again.

Claire Rigby is a writer based in So Paulo. You can follow her at: www.twitter.com/saopaulo_claire
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