During my visit to The Hub Sao Paulo, I spoke with Gilberto Jr., co-founder of Amanaie,  about the role of the Brazilian government in fostering innovation. He said that although the government has committed significant resources to hi tech investments, the money isn’t getting where it is supposed to go. Jr also challenged the notion that there are no startups in Brazil. Along with a small group of partners, Jr. launched a Web site called Startupi, which he said is like a Brazilian TechCrunch. Each week, Startupi profiles 5-10 homegrown startups.

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Brilliance lives in the mind, but ideas need a place to grow. One of the great things about creative people is that they have no shortage of ideas, but as is often the case, hard currency can be in short supply. Before leaving the States, my friend, David, mentioned an organization called The Hub that builds multi-purpose work spaces, and plans to build one in New York. However,  since I was leaving town, it didn’t register at the time how helpful it could be. Looking back at how casually I leaped into the unknown, I realize now that I too needed a hub of some kind to connect me to the people I was hoping to meet in Brazil. After a week of furtive cold calls, I was over the moon when my efforts finally materialized into on-site interviews and a visit to The Hub Sao Paulo. My gracious guide was Paulo, a programmer and blogger whom I met through an Aardvark query. Just goes to show how creative applications of technology can deliver unexpected results. The Hub is a flexible, membership-based work space where creative types from all disciplines can come to socialize and cross-pollinate ideas that lead to exciting and unexpected new projects. “It’s a mixture between a Starbucks, a traditional office and an incubator,” said Barbara Stutz, one of the co-founders and a  partner in The Hub Sao Paulo. Opened in August of 2008, The Hub Sao Paulo was still in “soft launch,” Stutz said, with about 120 members paying 440-600 Reais (approx. USD 220-300) for an allotment of hours in the workspace. Members can book space for meetings, tackle personal projects or just hang out and be inspired if they like. Said Stutz, “It’s just an excuse to have all these people here linked and doing something.”

Paulo @ The Hub Sao Paulo

From the outside, The Hub was one of a dozen unassuming doors lining Rua Bela Cintra, a busy thoroughfare that crosses Paulista Ave., Sao Paulo’s most notable drag. Inside, however, the building had the unmistakable feel of a creative agency, such as a tony architect’s studio or a graphic design firm. The high ceilings, exposed brick and minimalist art pieces gave me a sense that experimentation and reinvention were happening constantly inside. The rear wall had a row of huge, circular windows looking out onto a handful of Sao Paulo’s innumerable office towers, a jumble of while bathing the room with natural light. On a central island, a group of people worked quietly on desktop computers, while in another corner, two women chatted excitedly with a camcorder. The first Hub location was built in London in 2005, said Stutz, and it has expanded its operation throughout Western Europe, India and South Africa, as well as three North American venues: Halifax, Nova Scotia and Montreal in Canada and Berkeley, CA. Hub Sao Paulo co-founder, Pablo Handl, confirmed that a Hub location in New York City is expected to open in 2010. He also said that walking into a Hub anywhere in the world, a certain look and feel is maintained. Tell me more …

The girls in Rio De Janeiro don’t wear makeup and the mountains slide straight into the waiting ocean. As if by magic, I had a 30-hour Rio adventure that stirred my soul and restored a sense of childlike wonderment that had been flagging.

Sao Paulo is gargantuan, overwhelming and nondescript. Its packed subway cars, high prices and air pollution have lately been causing me to wonder aloud if I left New York at all. Rio de Janeiro is one of the world’s few special places; passionate and delectable, known for it’s raucous Carnival, iconic beaches and gorgeous people. It is simply unique, a gem in Brazil’s crown.

The hostel where I was staying threw a delightful dance party and afterwards, I went to Lapa with an Australian named Dave. Lapa is a strip of bars just outside downtown Rio bisected by a Roman aqueduct that acts as a bridge for the overhead trolley tracks. By the time we arrived, at half past 4 in the morning, the Lapa crowd, which was in the upper hundreds, or even thousands, was disintegrating into a drunken melee. At home, in the States, these bars would be closing in a matter of minutes, but it’s quite possible patrons here continued to samba and sing on the street until the sun came up after 6.

The long bus into town and the subsequent week of late nights left me content heading home as 5 approached. There’s something about Rio though, with it’s sticky climate, soaring hills and the energy of 6 million souls that could have made me push through the exhaustion to find another thrill.

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I have been told that Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town, South Africa were once joined when Africa and South America were a single land mass. The geology of the two areas, Cape Town’s Table Mountain, besides Pao de Açucar in Rio, makes me think that this could be true. But while Rio is unlike any city I’ve visited, it somehow conjures the best: The lawlessness and hedonism of New Orleans, the architecture of Buenos Aires, as well as New York’s addictive cocktail of grit, hustle and filth that one only has to smell to understand.

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I’ve been experiencing an existential crisis ever since I left New York. It’s only been a few days on the road, but I often find myself wondering, aloud, “What am I doing here?” To date, the hardest thing for me to stomach has been leisure time. Although I graduated two weeks ago, I’m not on pleasure trip. If anything, I consider this a hybrid “workation,” where I am chipping away at a task while simultaneously exploring a new city. Inactivity feels like failure and sitting still is terrifying.

There are ways in which such  a reaction is to be expected; there is no road map for what I have set out to accomplish, and those whose journeys inspired me, had to wrestle with their own doubts either publicly or privately. With meetings and interviews with founders set for early next week, I’m starting to hammer away at my objective, but I can’t shake the feeling there is more I could be doing.

For whatever reason, I accomplish the most when I’m not at my computer. After last night’s rousing introduction to Paulista pub culture, I went with Joao to meet Roberto and Bruno at their house near Villa Madalena. Bruno, who is Debby’s nephew, and my age, is a musician who recently returned from a master course in Barcelona. When I arrived at the house, Bruno was out buying guitar strings, so Roberto and I watched the Roland Garros French Open and talked about sports. Soon Bruno came back and we ate the most delicious beans I’ve ever tasted, followed vine-ripened figs no American unknown to the American palette.

After lunch Bruno and I took the Metro to the Pinacoteca, where we visited the Museum of the Portuguese language. While the idea of creating a museum to honor the language of a colonizing power seems odd, the facility itslef was an homage to the dexterity and richness of Portuguese spoken by Brazilians themselves. The bedrock of Brazilian Portuguese is the European mother tongue, but its influences include other continental languages such as France as well as languages spoken by slaves kidnapped from Angola and Africa’s Southwest coast. The motivation and execution of the museum were brilliant and it’s the third museum I’ve visited where I feel I must go back.

We headed back to Jardins at the height of rush and  I’m inlcuding this short video because I can’t remember the last time I saw a train station this crowded. It’s very possible that more people pass through Grand Central Station during peak times, but the flow of bodies in Luz station was tremedous. At the same time, however, even a full subway car was not that full and if we missed a connecting train, the next one arrived no more than three minutes later.

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Back at the ranch, several of the emails I had been waiting for arrived.  In just a few minutes I was was able to set up interviews for next week when I get back from Rio de Janeiro on Monday. Today was also special because I celebrated Shabbat for the first time in months, or years. While it seems that things are moving along quickly enough here, it’s easy to lose sight of how incremental actions will lead up to a big finish when this trip is over.

It’s approaching 3:30, which would normally be early, but part of me wants to be on a bus to Rio that leaves at before 9 am. It might happen, but I’m already feeling warn down from sleepless nights, hurried days, schizophrenic winter weather and air pollution. If you have any suggestions on how to stay healthy, I would love it if you drop some comments below. I was told that commenting was non-functional, so if this is the case, you might have to email me so I can take the appropriate action. Perhaps I will even cut myself a little slack and cease the crisising for now.

My hair and clothes smell like smoke. Last night I jiggled the key into the lock a tad before midnight, but it’s almost 3 AM and I’m just getting started. We watched Corinthians and Curitiba play a 0-0 draw, then I headed out with Patrick, the son of Debby and Jose’s close friends who live down the street. Patrick heads to Buenos Aires tomorrow, but he was gracious enough to show Paulista nightlife tonight.

Kia Ora bills itself as a “Down Under Experience,” and who am I to judge it. Patrick, who Couch Surfed in New Zealand said that it wasn’t like any bar he had been to, but it’s safe to say that very few people there could point out why Kia Ora was or was not authentically New Zealand. As we paced through the joint, I heard English spoken nearly as often as Portuguese, but I only noticed when I head English. So far, I’ve been getting by on my Spanish, but I would much prefer to speak and be understood in the native tongue.

I was, however, pleasantly surprised by my abilities to comprehend Portuguese at a rally to protect teacher’s salaries this afternoon. I had little trouble understanding the plight faced by Sao Paulo’ public school teachers and professors at universtity who were having their salaries and benefits slashed. As they hurled their complaints at the bureaucrats inside the provincial government building, it was clear to me they were upset about wages that were laughingstock of Latin America in spite of Brazil’s relative wealth. Unlike during a casaul conversation, I felt as though understood 4 out of 5 words being shouted by the speakers. While those teachers and thie union may have to wait for result, I knew that I had instantly made progress.

After a busy day like yesterday, I was happy that today was relatively chilled out. I went to to the Museu Afro Brasil, a collection of contemporary modern and historical artifacts of Brazilian culture. I was especially moved by the display of a slave ship that sat comfortably inside a single room. Only the ribs of the vessel remained, but on every wall hung wood blocks of conditions aboard the ship as well as maps detailing what types of Africasn could be expected from each country. I’ve never been so close to a remnant of the New World’s slaving past. What struck me most was the tight, unforgving experience a sailor would have topside and out to sea. To be crammed below deck for a trans-Atlantic passage would be a horrible fate I can’t begin to imagine.

Beyond the shocking nature subject matter, the Brazilian slavery exhibition struck me because of how close the experience was for slaves in the U.S. As I grapple with how similar my slice of Sao Paulo is to New York and other world cities, it’s instructive to recognize the legacy of slavery in creating Brazil, the U.S. and the nations of the Americas.

Beyond this macabre comparison, I have been underwhelmed by Sao Paulo as the industrial heart of a such a mighty nation. Anyone urban explorer would instantly peg Sao Paulo as a major metropolis, but there is little that makes it unique. Buenos Aires, Beijing, and Bogota vary in their food, language and climate, but they greatly resemble Sao Paulo in the ways that matter. My litmus is whether hot water pours from the tap once the knob is turned. Any product can be obtained a short distance from the front door and the lights work 24 per day. I’ve been told that Sao Paulo is not the real Brazil and I’m inclined to believe it. I do, however, think that Sao Paulo is the model capital of the 21st century. It’s no surprise that TechTrotting shuold drop me here.

And while the entrepreneurs are out there somewhere, I have thus far found the experience to be more challenging than I would have thought. Just carving out the time to research and write has been difficult and I haven’t connectd with key sources as quickly as I would have liked. People in this city are as busy as New York, with worse traffic and armed robbers afoot. To simply pack up and talk to willing entrepreneurs would be a challenge in the states, but coupled with a language issue and the knowledge I’m leaving so soon maks my time limited, and infringes upon my time to meet the entrepreneus I wish to see.