Inspiration

On the Rise: Inside São Paulo's Youth-Driven Revival

São Paulo’s next generation is reclaiming its city by bringing life and color back to several long-neglected neighborhoods.
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Antonio Ribeiro

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On a 70-degree winter’s day in São Paulo, a young crowd in vintage tees and Common Projects sneakers sipped cafezinhos on the terrace of Mirante 9 de Julho, a café and cultural hub that occupies a formerly abandoned platform over the 9 de Julho Avenue Tunnel in São Paulo’s Bela Vista district. A model with an Afro picked at bacon doughnuts while a couple of laptop jockeys tapped away and a DJ spun hip-hop by the door. As evening fell, the after-work throngs in tailored blazers and heavy square-frame glasses flowed in from the neighboring São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), a concrete-and-glass landmark designed in 1947 by the acclaimed Italian-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi.

As with the transformation by locals of New York’s Lower East Side in the ’90s and Berlin’s Kreuzberg, Paulistas, as denizens are known, are reimagining their city, occupying and reshaping neglected pockets of Brazil’s 576-square-mile megalopolis that have boomed and busted over decades of development. (New York’s five boroughs, by comparison, total just 322 square miles.) “São Paulo used to be big condos and shopping malls, where people lived their lives removed from the streets,” says Facundo Guerra, a boyish-looking nightlife kingpin and developer who two years ago converted Mirante into today’s crowd magnet after it languished unused for nearly 80 years, its parkland views obscured by new freeways. (His other projects include a gay disco in an old church and a restored Art Deco jazz bar that he opened with the Brazilian culinary star Alex Atala in 2013.) “Now people are changing their relationship to money and retraining their eyes to see beauty everywhere.”

Ten years ago, Brazil seemed poised to become the largest global economic player in the region, and swarms of giddy international investors flocked in for their piece. São Paulo quickly became South America’s financial and industrial hub and the headquarters for the Latin American branches of companies like Merrill Lynch and Twitter. But growing public debt and resource mismanagement by a government with a track record of corruption led to economic collapse, leaving the city reeling. Watching policy teams from Brasília, New York, and London get so heavily involved in the aftermath ignited local pride, compelling a new generation of Paulistas to take the town back and make it their own.

“It’s like Brazil in the ’60s,” says Matheus Yehudi, a communications executive for the influential Mendes Wood DM gallery in the Jardins district. He’s referring to the artistic movement initiated by mid-century renegades like the novelist João Guimarães Rosa and the architect Oscar Niemeyer, whose communist politics challenged Brazil’s then military dictatorship (Niemeyer later went into exile). “Only this time we are reconnecting with our identity as a pushback against an excess of American and European influence,” he says.

The obelisk in Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo’s equivalent of Central Park.

Photo by Antonio Ribeiro

São Paulo’s dense urban sprawl (some one-percenters actually beat the brutal commuter traffic by taking helicopters to work) can make the city as off-putting to travelers as its lush beachside sibling Rio de Janeiro is inviting. And while the Edenesque beauty of Rio seduces from the first glimpse of Guanabara Bay, São Paulo reveals itself more gradually—in hidden alleys now lined with designer boutiques, crumbling office and residential towers turned experimental-art centers, and warehouses hung with vertical gardens and filled with galleries and bars.

Take Jardins, a trendy shopping district that has lately repositioned itself as an arts and food hub. Back in 2010, partly due to safety concerns over the area’s notorious grab-and-go muggings, luxury fashion brands like Louis Vuitton and Dior retreated from its tree-lined streets to far-flung shopping-mall fortresses. But the vacancies allowed the upscale neighborhood—where the clubby Fasano São Paulo hotel and Atala’s top-rated D.O.M. restaurant alone are reasons to stop by—to open its arms to edgier local tenants. Across from Mendes Wood DM on Rua da Consolação is Pair, a starkly minimalist boutique that sells monochromatic clothing, close to Epicentro, a multiuse venue with an organic market and rotating design exhibitions.

On Saturdays in Centro, the city’s once rough-and-tumble downtown, well-dressed Paulistas arrive early for brunch at Bar da Dona Onça, a home-style bistro that stocks around 30 brands of cachaça, before strolling next door to the Pivô, a cerebral 38,000-square-foot art center on three floors of Niemeyer’s 1966 Edificio Copan, to see installations by art-world pioneers like the Colombian Danilo Dueñas. The area is also home to cult spots like A Casa do Porco, a quirky swine bar from the gourmet hash slinger Jefferson Rueda that draws devotees from across the city’s social spectrum for its pork tartare and pancetta cracklings. And O Lourdes is a riotous drinking hole in a gray-walled former funeral parlor that attracts an in-the-know bohemian crowd and doesn’t pick up until 3 a.m.

There is perhaps no better snapshot of São Paulo’s bubbling melting pot than the wonderfully wacky weekend scene that goes down on Paulista Avenue, the busiest thoroughfare in the city’s financial heart, still home to the country’s headquarters for the likes of Citibank and Banco Safra. Two years ago, then-mayor Fernando Haddad closed it to traffic on Sundays, and the effect has been like Rio’s Copacabana Beach poured through a cement mixer: Eight-lane roadways become a phantasmagoria of shirtless joggers, sunbathers lying on blankets dotting the asphalt, guerrilla theater, house music DJs, wrestlers wearing clown masks, prepubescent Michael Jackson impersonators, antiques vendors, and hypnotic drum circles. It may just be the most blatant example of Paulistas reclaiming turf, and a way of life, that had previously felt so out of reach.

The São Paulo One-Sheet

Getting There Is Easy
São Paulo is the hub for most airlines, including American, LATAM, and Copa, that fly to Brazil from the East Coast of the U.S. It makes for an easy extended layover when heading to Rio or Trancoso (both under two hours away; flights to Rio go roughly every 30 minutes). A 10-hour overnight flight from JFK gives you a full first day, with no jet lag. On the ground, the affordable and efficient 99Taxis app is Brazil’s answer to Uber.

It’s Definitely a Hotel Town
It’s not hard to sleep comfortably in São Paulo. Classics like Hotel Unique, a watermelon-shaped building with a stylish pool, and the glass-walled Emiliano São Paulo, both in the Jardins district, have made our Readers’ Choice Awards list for years. The six-month-old Palácio Tangará is the continent’s first from the German-owned Oetker Collection and sits in parkland designed by famed landscaper Roberto Burle Marx, a lush escape from urban grit only a few miles from the city center. But the legendary Fasano has 60 mid-century modern–inspired rooms, an old-school lobby bar where bow-tied barmen stir up Aperol spritzes, and a glamorous Italian restaurant.

These Meals Are Worth a Flight
The city’s been on foodies’ radar for a while, thanks largely to the two- Michelin-starred D.O.M. in Jardins. This is where the celebrity chef Alex Atala, like Brazil’s own René Redzepi, translates foraged ingredients from the Amazon into fine-dining dishes. Come on the right night (reserve a table two months out) and you may even glimpse him prepping fettuccine from pupunha hearts of palm in the open kitchen. Down the road is Dalva e Dito, D.O.M.’s more casual, affordable offshoot that’s walk-in-friendly. Order the fish of the day wrapped and roasted in a banana leaf, followed by a shot of mouth-numbing cachaça with jambu. Maní, a chic all-day spot in Jardins, has a ladies-who-lunch crowd and warm interior (raw-wood tables and fresh-cut flowers). Meanwhile, northeast of Jardins in Vila Medeiros, the rising culinary star Rodrigo Oliveira runs Mocotó Bar & Restaurant, a hole-in-the-wall with smoky flavors from Brazil’s northeast, and Esquina Mocotó, a companion restaurant right next door, beloved for its sun-dried salted beef.

There’s Art All Over Town
São Paulo has reigned for nearly 70 years as a regional art and architecture hub, thanks to mid-century titans like Niemeyer and contemporary masters like Isay Weinfeld. On the top floor of Lina Bo Bardi’s MASP, you’ll see paintings and sculptures by hometown artists Agostinho Batista de Freitas and Marcelo Cidade. A 20-minute car ride southwest will land you in Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo’s equivalent of Central Park and home to The Pinacoteca, a grand exposed-brick public art museum, and Niemeyer’s Museu Afro Brasil, with jewelry and paintings by Brazilians of African descent. For something more modern, head to Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel in Pinheiros, or Mendes Wood DM in Jardins.

A view of São João Avenue, which turns into the Minhocão, a raised freeway that's car-free on Sundays.

Antonio Ribeiro

It’s a Surprisingly Green City
There are a huge number of parks tucked in among the city’s skyscrapers, including its largest, Ibirapuera, where you could spend a whole day museum hopping, picnicking, and biking. Hidden within the wealthy Morumbi neighborhood, southwest of Jardins, Casa de Vidro is a glass house on stilts where Lina Bo Bardi once lived, surrounded by a lush private garden planted by Bo Bardi herself. (It’s open to the public from Thursday to Saturday.) The jungly Parque Burle Marx is a stunning miniature version of the rain forest that runs the length of Brazil’s coastline, with native flora, chirping birds, and monkeys. If you’re not staying at the park’s Palácio Tangará, pop in for afternoon tea on the hotel’s sun-flooded terrace.

The New Must-See
The Minhocão is a raised freeway that cuts through Centro and is car-free on Sundays. “It’s the best place to see São Paulo’s changing identity,” says the entrepreneur Facundo Guerra. “People are no longer in their bubbles.” Buy a fresh coconut and walk the pedestrian streets gazing at the enormous vertical gardens cascading down the sides of buildings, as drones, Rollerbladers, and impromptu puppet shows whirl around you.

Sleeping Is Optional
In Brazil’s characteristic work-hard, play-harder fashion, cocktail dens and music clubs are open around the clock here. Start the night at Baretto, a discreet piano bar inside the Fasano, with live jazz and bossa nova played by musicians who’ve been performing around town for almost 20 years. Then move on to O Lourdes, a stylish, dim-lit spot to sip martinis and Manhattans that turns from jazz to DJ with dance floor as the clock strikes 3 a.m. If you’re feeling game, head to one of the city’s famed all-night roaming parties, like Mamba Negra or Carlos Capslock, which rarely occupy the same gallery twice.

The Ultimate Bring-Back
“Brazilian furniture from the ’50s and ’60s is in high demand on the art market,” says Josh Wood, the New York event producer who organizes the annual star-studded amfAR gala in São Paulo. Alexandre Gabriel of Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel gallery recommends Loja Teo, a furniture store in the design district in Pinheiros, for its rare jacaranda-wood serving dishes from the 1950s. Down the road, Firma Casa sells chairs from the Campana Brothers that you can only find in Brazil. From there, it’s a 10-minute car ride to Passado Composto, an antiques store that specializes in artistic tapestries from the late local master weaver Genaro de Carvalho and pieces from mid-century furniture designer Jean Gillon.