Hidden Cities: Travels to the Secret Corners of the World's Great Metropolises; A Memoir of Urban Exploration by Gates Moses

Author:Gates, Moses [Gates, Moses]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-03-21T00:00:00+00:00

ABANDONED MANSION.

You would think a shantytown in the concrete yard of a half-decomposed building would be a residence of last resort. But it turns out it’s not. I learn from Neiva that the government has offered the residents new housing virtually for free. The problem: it’s situated over three hours away. Most residents have opted to stay instead, because many people have jobs and connections downtown that they have to be close to. This demonstrates the enduring problem of the South American megalopolis.

Many people in New York complain about the poor getting forced out of neighborhoods with convenient access to the city center—in our case Manhattan. While this is true, it is nothing on the level of the amoeba-like urban sprawl of the poorer parts of the globe. A lack of comprehensive public transport ( Paulo has three full subway lines and a six-station stub line, unconnected to the main network, for twenty million people) and heavy traffic all conspire to make getting from point A to point B a lengthy and wholly unpredictable task. It’s not even an option—a best-case scenario of six hours a day in traffic commuting, and a worst-case scenario of working late and having to grab your few hours of sleep on the sidewalk? The folks would rather stay in a shantytown than endure it. It’s a good bit of perspective for those people in New York who complain about being forced to move two subway stops farther out into Brooklyn.

After conversing with the residents, we head into the mansion. It’s a beautiful old building. My companions are mainly interested in the colonial architecture, pointing out old detailing and brickwork. But for me the most interesting things are the murals. The mansion is covered with them—some whimsical, like a painting of a Garfield-style obese cat, others serious and sad, commemorating the expulsion of the residents of the abandoned building. There are some examples of pixaçao, the harsh and angular graffiti style native to Paulo.

I notice some writing by one of the murals, partly in English and partly in Portuguese. It reads “Saudades—Last Day Sadness.” Saudade is one of those wonderfully untranslatable words that encapsulates a feeling endemic to a particular culture. It’s sometime loosely translated as “homesickness.” “Longing melancholy nostalgia” is more accurate, but even that is far from perfect. It’s a particularly Portuguese word, one that I’ll probably never really understand.

There’s also a strange design, a snaking pattern of two shades of blue, which I notice on a few walls throughout the building. José Rodolfo tells me he sees this pattern only in places like this—places the people walking down the street normally never see. Later I find out this is by a Paulista artist, a guy named Zezao, who started painting this pattern in the sewers of Paulo.

This is one of the most rewarding things about going exploring: the ability to see things other people don’t. What it happens to be—an old sign on an abandoned observation deck, a message on the subway tunnel walls, a mural painted in an empty building—isn’t even all that important.

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