Welcome to São Paulo

For the first half of 2007, I lived in São Paulo, Brazil, studying Portuguese at a private university and maintaining my freelance editing/writing business from afar. I arrived in the city with no place to live and spent two weeks CouchSurfing with a guy I'd only written to online. With his help, I found a roommate -- a lovely, intelligent blonde who practices plastic surgery like a religion and who speaks nearly flawless English -- and moved into a large flat in an older building in the quiet and slightly more upscale neighborhood of Higienópolis.

I adapted quickly to Brazilian life because I tend to be laidback, incapable of arriving anywhere on time and always looking for a way to avoid meet-ups I no longer have time for or interest in without hurting anyone's feelings or fouling up their schedules. I like a place with few expectations. (Although it took my taking-things-for-granted American self a while to realize the true purpose of the small trashcan in the bathroom. Old pipes. Yeah. Found out the hard way.)

But the one thing friends and family back home were fascinated with was how I safely navigated a city that's known in the US chiefly for its crime rate. Why wasn't I dead? Why hadn't I been mugged? Why wasn't I handcuffed and locked in a closet while anonymous thugs demanded a ransom for my release?

Because like most big cities, if you don't live in a poor neighborhood and/or you aren't running a drug cartel or prostitution ring out of your house, the chances of falling victim to violence aren't as high as sensationalized media reports would have you believe. Not that I'd recommend leisurely strolls from the subway to one's apartment after midnight, although I did it occasionally without being murdered or robbed.

In May, with my time in São Paulo coming to an end, I thought I'd dodged, well, bullets. I felt more afraid walking down an unlit suburban New Jersey street than I ever felt there, and it was in New Jersey where I'd had my car stolen and in New York City where a mentally ill or drug-crazed guy threatened to stab me on the subway.

But I attract the crazy. Or maybe I court it. And so a few weeks before heading home, I found myself in the midst of the kind of scene most Americans envision when they think of a visit to Sampa.

My roommate and I were walking to the subway to go to a shopping district noted for cheap goods and pirated electronics, when we noticed five or six police cars in front of Mackenzie University, a Protestant school nearby.

The police had a hot dog guy's cart on a flatbed truck, taking it away. No, calling it a cart doesn't do it justice. More of an ancient, busted pickup with a cap. Enterprising individuals convert their cars and trucks into roving kitchens, cooking and selling meat of unknown origin from the backs. And you thought dirty water dogs were of questionable quality.

Knowing their market, these churrasco grego chefs park themselves in front of schools, where students and professors can grab a quick, cheap meal between classes.

People were milling about and staring at the scene because the police were doing a raid (shakedown) on those nefarious unlicensed hot dog vendors. Like in the US, you technically need to be licensed to sell food, but even if they were, are you going to eat a kebab from the back of a 20-year-old, rusted clunker?

(Okay, I would, but I have no common sense or functioning tastebuds.)

My roommate and I laughed about the absurdity of it and kept walking.

About two minutes later, we heard people yelling frantically in our direction. We thought nothing of it -- at least I didn't -- because Brazilians are loud by nature, like my family, and they could have been talking about the weather.

About 10 seconds later, a car sped up on the sidewalk behind us, nearly sideswiped us, and then sped back into traffic, where it was blocked by other cars stopped at the traffic light.

A cop ran past us into the street and in front of the car, pulled out his gun, pointed it at the driver and ordered him to get out. At that point, we looked at each other with a holy-fucking-shit expression and ducked into the alcove of a building, while Mackenzie students ran for cover.

In quick succession, more cops ran by and police cars sped down the street. I thought there was going to be a shootout because I had no idea what was going on and even with a father on the police force in one of the US's most violent cities, I can't say this is something I've experienced before, first-hand or second-hand. It took me a while to connect the Great Hot Dog Raid of 2007 with what just went down.

Afterward, two cops came over to us to ask if we were okay and to get our IDs, contact information and a brief statement. If the guy made it to trial and I was still in the city, I probably would have needed to testify, but I left before finding out what, if anything, happened to him.

My roommate asked one of the cops why the driver was running and willing to mow down strangers in the process. He said because the guy was one of the illegal vendors and if the police confiscated his cart, he couldn't make a living. So, better to kill us than give up his lucrative snack truck.

Still in a bit of shock but trying to maintain my composure, I joked to the cop, "I can't believe we almost died for hot dogs." He laughed and said, "Welcome to São Paulo, dear. Life is cheap."

Drivin' down the wrong side of the road

I haven't driven in one more than a year, and I miss the exhilaration of speeding down the NJ Turnpike at 2 a.m. with no direction in mind, blasting the Ministry and Skinny Puppy CDs of my youth and secure in the knowledge that I probably won't get a ticket because of the get-out-of-jail-free PBA card in my wallet. So, although I have no idea how to drive a manual transmission, I'm debating how difficult it is the hotwire these cars in my apartment building's parking garage and if it's worth the penalty of probably being permanently banned from Hong Kong.