Stayou: Virada Cultural

(Virada Cultural's ad in a bus)

Now that I am leaving Sao Paulo to live in New York, I started to notice more the good things my city has to offer. I am also living each day here as the last one and enjoying every opportunity I have to feel and live Sao Paulo's life.

That's one of the reasons why I decided to register this weekend's major event: Virada Cultural. This weekend hundreds of concerts, shows, movies, dancing, food events, and other activities were hosted from Saturday to Sunday (starting in the afternoon + during the whole night + the other day until the afternoon) in various places of the city. All events are reachable by public transportation (a.k.a. subway) and the quantity of people in the streets is incomparable to any other day in the year.

Although it's not a perfect event (there are always security problems, shoplifting, lack of electricity, etc), I had the luck to go trough it without any of those and ended up having an experience that was worth the risk of any of the problems I could have found on the way.

My photos are blurry, pixeled and sometimes dark, but it's all part of the experience of lack of light, not having a professional camera, the fact that I was dancing or running when I took the pictures and the fact that photography is not my strength point. All photos were edited the "Instagram" style and were selected because they called my attention by their 1. life 2. colors 3. energy 4. simplicity and 5. beauty.

I hope through this photos I can catch a bit of the feeling of spending the night awake in such a beautiful city as Sao Paulo, that, beyond all the problems of government, money, security and location, is a place worth being for it's richness in life, colors, culture and unique beauty. :]

Why Virada cultural is an incredible event:

1. there is always something that matches your style: from hip hop to jazz, from classic music to rock, from concerts to movies, from eating street food to eating restaurant food; it's all there.

The map of the event

2. They created a part of Virada specially planned for kids. And although they mean it for SMALL kids, I couldn't help but going to two of the shows. The first one is from a group called Palavra Cantada; which I used to hear in the car when I was a little kid. The memories of my childhood + seeing the band so close made me feel so happy..!

The city centre architecture during the night: Estacao da Luz

I took A LOT of photos of kids because I could not help how they looked focused and happy in "Viradinha"

The second band I watched for kids was on Sunday afternoon and is from a group called Pequeno Cidadao. This group has the most amazing songs I know and is composed by singers and compositors that are recognized for making good brazillian music. THis os one of my favorite songs.