Today Paulista woke up to loud, and organized protests from several of the workers syndicates or unions here. They had completely taken over Paulista by 8:00AM shutting down the morning traffic and were blasting speeches from the organizers on one of the three bus/float sound systems out in the street. Alison and I live two blocks off of Paulista and the MASP, the open area under the museum where the protesters all meet, the sound from the protest was actually projected toward our apartment on the eighth floor which is level with MASP plaza due to the bowl like shape of our neighborhood. For us, this meant basically that the protesters were on our balcony screaming at us. It definitely put an end to sleeping in!
Once we were up, we ate a late breakfast and showered before getting ready to try and attend our afternoon class. Since the buses were shut down we walked around the edge of the protest and caught a cab to PUC. We arrived in time for our culture class where we were further discussing the two short stories we read that were set in the Edificio Copan. At the end of class I spoke with my professor Chris about my project topic and I decided to write about several city parks as manifestations of acceptable nature and the nature-culture relationship in São Paulo. Afterwards, I met up with Alison and we grabbed some food on the way home and went to rest before meeting back up with our group for the optional nighttime bike tour of the city.
The bike tour is organized twice a week by a gym, or academia, near PUC on Avendia Sumare. The regular group is over 60 people and about 20 of our group joined in and rented bikes to go along with them. The tour left from Sumare at 9:00 and we biked all over the central area of the city. We went down Avenida Brasil to Parque Ibirapuera, up toward Paulista, down Paulista and turned right on Consolação rode all the way into the center through Republica around the Teatro Municipal and down the Elevado (a raised highway that is closed to cars at night), then back up Sumare. Somewhere around Consolação our tour split off from the regular bike group which were more used to the ride and kept a faster pace. The ride was amazing, and it was so cool to see the city light up at night! The ride itself was long, about 30 kilometers (18.5 miles), and we did not get back to the gym until after midnight.
It was so interesting to peek into the biking sub-culture in São Paulo. There was a general camaraderie and group mentality to the ride to make sure that everyone kept together and safe. We also picked up several independent bikers along the route and they fit right in with everyone else. The ride was great, but once we stopped moving everyone felt the exhaustion set in for the first time and we realized how sore we would be in the morning!
The protest, it was kind of like and annoying parade
biking... apparently I don't have a good nighttime camera
Halfway through!
No comments:
Post a Comment