Ibirapuera Park – MWBrazilBlog

Ibirapuera Park, September 2015 (around the Spring Equinox in the Southern Hemisphere)

Just outside Ibirapuera Park, juggling in traffic

A refuge in the middle of the city, Ibirapuera Park

Ibirapuera Park is the 2nd largest in the city and was inaugurated in 1954 with architecture by Oskar Neimeyer, the founding architect of the Brazilian capital of Brasilia (founded in the 1960s).

It is my favorite refuge in the city with about 2 square kilometers of space. It is free, democratic, and quiet (except for the determined weekend joggers, soccer players, crammed playgrounds, busy exercise course, and the new bicycle rental section just outside). In years past you had to bring your own bicycle — and most still do. But urban bicycle rentals have caught on here and now make the park more accessible to day riders.

Just outside the middle reaches of the park is the memorial to the Bandeirantes, the explorers and adventurers who penetrated the interior of Brazil. They opened territory and took slaves. One of the main thoroughfares in Sao Paolo bears the name Bandeirantes in their honor, a gigantic statue near the park memorializes them. The statue is so rich in historical ambiguity, embarrassment and pride that I’ll talk about in another post.

Seringuera (rubber) tree — your living room rubber plant might look like this if you let it grow for a century or two.

This auditorium was designed by Oskar Niemeyer, the architect of Brasilia.

Even the bathrooms are not immune from Sao Paulo’s ubiquitous wall

Another public bathroom in the park. This one is not far from Neimeyer’s art museum, but much of the park is an art project.

This mural seems to invoke both indigenous peoples but also a kind of playfulness in the smaller face to the center-left. On this day there were several young people sitting in front of the mural, just looking.

When trees are taken down they often become benches or other artistic installations.

There is a large cormorant population in the park. This was the first time I have been able to watch cormorants up close. Beautiful as they are in the air and water, they are grumpy and territorial where they roost. They seem to be the only natural predator for the countless fish (mostly perch and carp, I think) in the park’s lakes.

Suffering through a college course in logic I recall the famous syllogism that goes: “All swans are white, this is a swan, therefore it is white.” This was contrasted with the false syllogism: “All swans are white, this bird is white, therefore it is a swan.” I think a major point was that axiomatic statements were not empirical ones that were principle verifiable by observation. But they did mention that only one black swan was enough to invalidate the proposition. So, decades later I find that all the swans in Ibirapuera Park are black.

I also remember vaguely that in England all swans are white and are the property of the Queen. In Ibirapuera Park they are black and not the property of anyone.

These probably have a name, but seem to my untrained eye to be in the azalea/rhododendron family

A tiny flower found on small bushes all around here, as if they were nothing special

This flower seems similar to the previous one, but a modest horticultural background in the midwestern United States doesn’t give you much to go on here. You only see these small flowers if you are ambling off the paved part of the park

There are large bushes (or small trees) filled with these. Technically the spring equinox in the southern hemisphere is about now (September), but with temperatures in the 90’s everything is blooming furiously . These these seem to be at the end of their cycle.

The 34 degree Celsius temperature outside the park works out to about 93 degrees Fahrenheit. This was the beginning of the Sao Paulo spring.

It usually doesn’t get much warmer than this in the summer, which includes the winter holidays as they are celebrated in the northern hemisphere.

It takes real dedication for Santa Claus (Pai Noel) to appear in full dress and beard in weather about like this.