Back with Ernesto, our bad tour guide. He picks us up at 10 am, so we can go hear Gregorian chants at the Monasterio/Convent in town, which start at 10:30.
We arrive, and stand for a bit and listen to the remainder of the service. The monks are evidently seated up in a balcony, partially hidden by some gold silk curtains. They sing a short bit, and then there is more service. I go outside to inquire with our guide about the singing (it’s after 10:40), and he asks a monk, who informs him there will be no chanting today due to the big election. Good job, dude!
Back into the car, we head further downtown, in front of the museum, and enjoy walking through a small handicraft fair on one side of the street,
and an antiquities fair on the other, right underneath the museum. After that, we’re back in the car and on to our lunch and visit to Beco de Batman, known also as Batman’s alley, famous for its graffiti artwork.
We’re dropped off at the exit from the alley, and walk up the steps to eat in the restaurant from the day before, La da Venda, at Rua Doutour Diago de Faria, 558, in Vila Clementino. It’s a quaint as ever, and we order one of the items we saw the day before, and their feijoada.
It’s a lovely meal, and we’re delighted to be served a green salad in one of their cute little enamel bowls. Of course the food is more than we can eat, but nonetheless we order desserts to try. Fully stuffed, we head outside to wait for the tour guide we arranged through Vicky (our guide from the day before. She pointed out to us the advantage of taking the tour with an actual graffiti expert and found an artist/english teacher that her niece knew). She’s a bit late, but we are, after all, in Latin America!
We walk a few blocks away as she explains to us the origination of graffiti as an art form in the city, the government’s policies (they will wash over it with grey or white), how artists will ask permission to pain privately owned walls, and once they’ve gotten permission, it becomes “their” wall to pain over and over. It’s interesting that the artists respect each others’ territory that way. Very infrequently do others paint over or show disrespect by messing up the design. Karina shows us the wall of a graffiti gallery that she’s received permission to paint on next week.
That gallery owner changes artists/wall designs every 3 months. We view an alley that was originally similar to Batman’s alley, but empty stores around it prevented protection and it’s fallen into disrepair and vandalization of the remaining artworks.
The Beco de Batman (beco means alley) got its name from a large Batman picture being painted on years and years ago. No one (still) knows who painted it, but after a long time of being referred to as the “alley where Batman is”, the name stuck. She tells us how the paintings there are protected by the locals, and so are all still in beautiful condition. Every painting is signed by the artist, and there are quite a few that are a collaboration between several artists. Most have their own signature style/characters. Slik’s looks like a Jackson Pollock wanna-be, and an old school artist, Niggas, is held with great respect. He couldn’t practice his art in the US, however, because of the potential misinterpretation of his signature.
They are all so incredible, I have to post more! See if you see anyone you know…
and still more:
It is a real honor to have art in this particular location, and you have to be invited by a current artist (who then has to give up some of his/her “real estate” to you) to be able to display your craft here. It’s so full that some of the artists have started painting around the corner and into the next alley/street area.
Karina is a delight and snaps pictures, answers questions and shows mom some of her artwork (other than her t-shirt) on her iPhone. I give her my email address because I am interested in purchasing some t-shirts with graffiti art. All the graffiti galleries are closed today because of the big election. That’s one of the ways that these artists make money and are able to keep painting – stores and taking commercial commissions.
Time to meet up again with Ernesto (oh boy!) and our driver. They drive us back to the Museo de Arte de São Paulo (MASP, gotta see at least one while in town) and we enjoy a walk through the modern building. The top floor houses some of my favorites: Renoir, Van Gogh, Lautrec, Cezanne (Michael’s fav) and a couple of interesting pieces by Julian Schnabel. The bottom floor has a special exhibit of his works between 1988 and 2014. Mom and I laugh and agree we don’t really “get” his art or why it’s so popular. Different strokes and all that.
We’re finished before the rendezvous time, so we head across the street to walk through the beautiful garden that is adjacent to the handicraft fair we visited earlier in the day.
It’s like a verdant jungle, and we are immediately enclosed in it and feel far, far away from the city. After our brief stroll, we head back across the street and await our ride. Longer than we should have, but we’re just shrugging it off at this point.
Post-election traffic is a bit hairy, but we get back to the hotel with time to rest. mom is hungry, so we head up to the Skye bar for a snack and watch as the skies open up and it’s pouring. Makes a girl want to stay in for the night! But by the time Vicky picks us up for our Sunday pizza dinner, it’s cleared up. It’s nice to see her, and she drives us over to the same street where we went to DOM the night before, and we enjoy a beautiful salad and pizza. Two striking things about the restaurant: we are able to have up to 3 types of pizza within our one pie, and after serving us each a portion of salad and our slice of pizza, they whisk the pie away and keep it warm in the oven until we’re ready for another slice. Pretty smart and great service. We chat and learn more about Vicky, then walk through the drizzle to a gelato store. Enjoy but not incredible, then back in the car and to the hotel. We hug goodbye and head up to our room. I receive a call from Vlad Roosevelt, the son of my former neighbor in Boulder who was a playmate of Michael’s for their first few years, and who works brokering commodities here in São Paulo. He was elsewhere in the country celebrating Oktoberfest for the weekend. Not going to work out to get together before we leave town, but nice to chat with him. A bit of reading, then lights out.