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CHAOS THEORY
In the urban tangle of São Paulo, flashes of crazy colour, brilliant architecture and unmistakable style are no accident. Discover the formula behind this intoxicating megalopolis.

Text: MARIE BELMONT

1 | 2 | 3 | AUG 03

When the woman in the black satin bunny ears walks in, I'm convinced that São Paulo is hot. I'm perched at the sushi bar at Skye, the rooftop restaurant of the new copper-clad design hotel Unique, when this gorgeous bundle of shiny dark hair and stilettoed nut-brown legs sits beside me. She wears a bikini under a very short, very sheer black dress. While her tuxedo-clad companion procures champagne, she hovers in this dining purgatory (even as a hotel guest, I was lucky to land a seat); then they flit out to the scene around the red-tiled pool. They are immediately replaced by two women wearing leather skirts and bustiers, chattering Japanese and Portuguese into their cellphones, the constant ring tones punctuating the pulsing, ambient music.

Brazil has been on the smart traveller's radar screen for some time. Led by Gisele Bundchen, amazonian supermodels stalk international runways. Paulistano architects and designers like Isay Weinfeld and the Campana brothers are attracting international buzz. An annual fashion week builds momentum, an art biennale flourishes, and a patch of new five-star hotels blooms. The signs of a stylish scene are unmistakable.

But this city's heat is not the externally sparked, generic kind dictated by glossy bibles of cool. This city is far too chaotic for that – the hard-working older brother to Rio's laid-back party animal. Its heat is an internal combustion, fuelled by the palpable throb of the sun and by nearly 20 million people hustling, hustling to complete 20 million agendas in an endlessly complex, endlessly fascinating metropolis. Yet the residents of one of the globe's largest cities seem surprised that the world is at their doorstep and keep asking me why I'm not in Rio instead.

For any urban aficionado, the skyline view is astounding from a 23rd-floor corner suite in the new Grand Hyatt in Morumbi, a business district hugging the city's high-tech backbone. It's like Manhattan times 10, nearly 8,000 square kilometres of high-rise sprawl. A hazy, polluted inversion gives the metropolis a mythical shimmer; you have to blink to believe it. The same is true of the huge piles of landfill I see from my airport taxi window. On the return trip a week later, I blink and see them for what they are: the jerry-rigged huts of the favelas (illegal squatter towns), where as much as 20 percent of the population lives. Under the gleaming modern surface, this city must eat its poor alive.

But what you see is a crazy, mixed-up, colourful urban tangle that is turning itself over like an anthill. "Part NewYork, part New Delhi," says local newspaper columnist Gilberto Dimenstein. It is populated by a delicious stew of Portuguese, African, native Indian, European and Japanese descendants. (In fact, the largest Japanese community outside Japan – one million strong – lives here). It has infinite body shops, automotive and otherwise, thanks to the Brazilian mania for plastic surgery. It passionately honks, bleeps, shouts, sings and debates. (Dining with Portuguese-speaking companions one night, I think they're fighting, but they're merely debating what to order.) It especially loves to debate about mayor Marta Suplicy, a sociologist and former TV sex therapist, which would be like Sue Johanson becoming mayor of Toronto. It sounds like something cooked up by a novela (soap opera), but it's for real.

In fact, it's so real, so raw, that it lacks the patina of, say, a well-worn European travel experience. One weekday afternoon in the Pinacoteca do Estado, a stunningly restored century-old museum in the downtown Centro district, I circle and ponder a Rodin sculpture, blissfully alone. (Try that midsummer in a museum in Paris.) Centro pulses with authentic street life. On the lively pedestrian mall Itapetininga, hawkers ply Metrô passes and phone cards and vendors hack wedges of watermelon or drill coconuts that can be quietly sipped in the shady gardens of the Praça da República. On the streets surrounding the massive Catedral da Sé, wobbly tables display sunglasses and Brazilian rap CDs. Descending below the busy cathedral square, I ride the Metrô to the end of the Barra Funda line to the Memorial da América Latina, which is even more brutal and desolate than Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer probably intended. Around the blood-stained concrete hand, kids kick soccer balls and ride scooters; commuters stream by without glancing at the powerful symbol.

But such excursions don't necessarily come easily. Anytime I inquire about going somewhere on foot – more than a few blocks during the day or anywhere at night – I'm nicely told it's "not possible." (Is it the piercing heat or safety that's the concern?) Everything is at least a 30-minute taxi trip away, but that's entertainment in itself. Traffic jams are epic, with vendors aggressively hawking in-demand goods, from sunshades to umbrellas, car to car. Walking just a few blocks from a museum to a lunch spot on Avenida Paulista, I nearly suffocate from the fumes of more than a dozen idling armoured cars lining the street – not to mention the oppressive glares of their armed attendants.

1 | 2 | 3 | AUG 03