Market (neighborhood of Moema), Winter holidays 2019-2020
A little boy watches customers as his father works
The neighborhood of Moema has a weekly market, like many neighborhoods in the city of São Paulo. These photos are from several visits to the market. Every week vendors of clothing, housewares, repair of kitchen pots and pans, and food stalls for nuts, spices, freshly pressed sugar cane juice, and the ubiquitous pastel shop. The pastel is a deep-fried pastry, a bit like long, flat empanada, filled with cheese, heart of palm, artichoke, or meat. They can be delicious, dragged dripping with grease from the pan. The Brazilian heart association is silent about their health value.
Fresh mangoes, papayas, oranges, and much more. It is December in São Paulo, summer in the southern hemisphere. 
Some demand that I take their picture, and cannot resist the ubiquitous Brazilian “thumbs up” 
Our favorite fruit vendor with the Brazilian double-thumbs up. That day he had a special on lichi nuts. 
This nut and dried fruit vendor was curious about the odd (fisheye) lens 
The Brazilian market is an exuberant place 
Coconut and tapioca stall. Tapioca here is not the breakfast food I knew as a child, but a rich power that is typically fried into crepes and wrapped around cheese and other fillings 
Among the surprising number of banana species, bananas “prata,” on special here, are smaller than the “nanica” variety which are more like the larger variety commonly found in the U.S. 
The narrow market aisles, normally suburban streets, are filled with vendors, delivery workers, shoppers, children and dogs
The São Paulo Metro
The São Paulo subway system is brilliantly efficient along the many lines that are completed, though many areas in the sprawling city are still underserved. A day in the underground is not exactly like being in Cocteau’s Orpheus, or in Pabst’s dystopian Metropolis, but there is still an eerie feel when you squint a bit and see it as just movement within an unforgiving structure.
This reminds me of the surreal underground journey in Cocteau’s 1950 film Orpheus 
Layers upon layers at the Praca da Sé, a major transfer point for several metro lines 
In Fritz Lang’s expressionist film Metropolis (1927) workers move anonymously through layers of elevators and stairs that take them to work, and back
Praça da Sé
The plaza, also known as the Largo da Sé, is the home of the cathedral. It is also the middle point of São Paulo and a place, they say, from which all distances are measured. It is a famous cathedral, built and rebuilt over the years, and is a popular tourist destination. What tourists experience is different from the travel posters: the plaza is filled with small vendors and diversions of all sorts. You can sell gold there, and buy a vast range of dubious goods and counterfeit items of all sorts. It is a vibrant secondary economy with money being passed surreptitiously from hand to hand everywhere. People bathe in the plaza pool. Except for the Cathedral itself, the area has been given over to all the diversity of the urban area.
The Praça from the Cathedral steps 
The Cathedral in the background, the secondary economy fills the plaza. Everything is for sale 
The pool next to the Cathedral, for bathing and washing clothes 
Cathedral at the left, a vendor sets up his table 
At the edge of the plaza (Cathedral to upper right) a cart with belongings and collected items