If you took Chicago, and crammed it on top of L.A.... you could jam the three million residents of Buenos Aires in there... and still have fewer people than S.P.
It's just a never-ending flood of people -- more than a little off-putting, if you're not comfortable with it (or a New Yorker, meaning you'll at least say you don't even notice.)
I'm not here so much here to see the sights, anyway; I'm just detouring to meet a baseball guy. (Did you know Brazilian baseball has been nurtured not by the U.S., but by Japan? The president of the baseball "confederation," whom I'll meet tomorrow, is named Jorge Otsuka, and, I'm told, doesn't even speak English.)
Oh - and to have dinner with my aunt Miriam. We both happened to be in the neighborhood... Weird, huh? We hit up one of those straight-up, flip-the-card-green-for-meat Brazilian churrascarias. Oh, daddy! (Actually, I just googled "Brazilian meat restaurant" to get the spelling of the word, and the two that came up first were the one we ate at last night, and the one in S.F. on Market Street.)
Getting back to the megalopolis. I can't say I like it -- Sao Paulo has zero discernible street plan, doesn't speak any English or Spanish except in the service industry, people don't make the effort to be friendly or look decent like in Buenos, and... it smells like pee. Lots of pee.
One thing that interests me: seeing people -- young couples, that is -- escaping to the most public places to get their private time.
In cities like this, I like to take photos in the metro, since I'm there anyway, and there are these rushing hordes of diverse people, frequently with interesting backdrops. (Check out this photo, one of my very favorites ever.)
Here's another one I snapped yesterday, not even realizing myself this couple was just chillin' there.
I'll let you know how it goes with the maestro do béisbol. Although I don't plan to have much time for blogging: it's on to a Rio hostel.
Rio, baby. Rio.
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