Nostalgic for 80s New York?

Time moves on. Cities change. As they change, people tend to get nostalgic for what used to be. Today, nostalgia for the “bad old days” of the NYC of the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s has almost reached the level of kitsch, it’s so prevalent. Luckily, your solution is only measured in distance, instead of time. Just hop on a flight to Sao Paulo.

I always describe Sao Paulo as New York in Portuguese in 1982 (and without the great public subway system I suppose). First of all, the town is huge - one of the five biggest cities in the world kind of huge. No city that isn’t at least a few million people can rightfully be compared to New York. Before anything else, the defining characteristic of the city is “big - really big.”

Second of all, like New York, Sao Paulo is an immigrant city. It has the biggest Japanese population outside of Japan, the biggest Lebanese population outside of Lebanon and (believe it or not, New Yorkers), the biggest Italian population outside of Italy. Like New York, anyone can walk the streets and not feel out of place. That is, of course, if you know how to walk like a Brazilian. The immigrant situation in Sao Paulo is different from New York in a very significant way. Sao Paulo is an old immigrant city. While 100 years ago it had a similar immigration story as New York, today it doesn’t attract substantial numbers at all. The Korean, Chinese, and Bolivian populations have all increased somewhat in recent years, but they’re the only newer groups of significance.

It’s similar to the early 80s in New York, when the old immigrant groups had already long since assimilated, but new immigrant groups had yet to arrive in large numbers. It’s as easy to tell a Japanese-Brazilian and a Japanese tourist apart as it is to tell a Italian-American and an Italian tourist apart for us. There is such a universal Brazilian identity and culture (the same as there’s a universal American culture I suppose) that despite the myriad kinds of different ethnicities, I noticed that people were Brazilian first, and only after if they were Afro-Brazilian, or Japanese-Brazilian, or whatever else.

I tried to wander around the town as much as I could, and see the different neighborhoods and populations. But there’s a problems - sizewise, Sao Paulo is ridiculously big, and doesn’t really have much of a subway system. There’s about 4 or 5 main business districts (they keep moving further and further south), which can be miles apart. I stuck mostly to the old downtown and surrounding neighborhoods. One, Bom Retiro, was the old Jewish neighborhood. Similarly to the Lower East Side of the 80s, it seems to be developing into the cosmopolitan neighborhood of the town, with old Jews, Bolivians, Koreans, Chinese, and Yuppies all living there today. The locals I talked to said generally said it was their favorite neighborhood.

Also like New York City in the 1980s, Sao Paulo has a somewhat overstated reputation for being extremely dirty and dangerous. Dirty? Sure - it’s a city. I wouldn’t say it’s any dirtier that any comparable city. Dangerous? Well, that’s always subjective. Generally speaking, if someone runs into trouble in any particular city they’ll say it’s dangerous, and if they don’t, they won’t. I felt perfectly comfortable there - maybe more comfortable than in any city outside of the United States. And I never ran into any trouble, or even felt that I was close to doing so. Still, it’s a far cry from the New York of today, and from talking to most of the locals I gathered it’s reputation for danger was somewhat undeserved - but not THAT undeserved.

Another thing the locals agreed upon was that the city was getting a little better every year. This is why I call it New York in 1982. There was a small period, post 1970s fiscal crisis, yet pre Crack and Aids, where New York - led by a still enormously popular Ed Koch - seemed to be on the upswing. Sao Paulo is better than yesterday - but still has yet to undergo the dramatic transformation that would let it take it’s rightful place as a world city.

Sao Paulo is the financial, and arguably cultural, capital of an entire continent. It’s by far the largest city in South America, and also happens to be one of the leading 4 or 5 fashion cities in the world. It’s cosmopolitan, has great nightlife, amazing restaurants, and every other service an international traveller could want. Yet it has an almost nonexistent tourist infrastructure. And needless to say, Sao Paulo is not exactly the first place off the lips of people when asked where they want to vacation.

Still, I’m betting on the town. Sao Paulo has, for lack of a better term, a certain coolness factor to it. Language is a barrier (who speaks Portuguese?), as is the perceived chaotic and dangerous nature of the city. But there is a certain energy in the town that’s an indescribable draw - an energy all too familiar to the inhabitants of New York City. In many ways, Berlin is the city I’ve been to that is most like New York. But in terms of sheer feeling, Sao Paulo is really the only place that comes close. Give the city 10 or 20 years - if it has a second great immigrant wave (a wave which saved New York City in the 80s and 90s), cleans up a bit, and manages to develop an easily recognized positive identity and character (I’m betting on supermodel paradise), I won’t be that surprised to hear the international jet set talk about it as a destination of choice - much like New York. I wonder though, if it will retain the same edge - if people will pine for the “bad old days” of Sao Paulo like they do for New York.