Bar Alemão: Closing marks the end of historic sites – 07/07/2023 – Bars

Aging is, without euphemisms, approaching death. Relatives die, friends start to die, you die slowly as body and mind wear out. The physical ballast of distant memories degenerates or fades away. Your idols die, the places you went to die.

In São Paulo, death haunts bars that make up my generation’s collection of affections. From people who started drinking in the 1980s and are now getting older.

Mercearia São Pedro, in Vila Madalena, has been on the go-no-go for years. It looks like it will be “fondo” until the end of the year. In Jardins, Balcão tries to negotiate an eviction that seems fateful. Bar do Alemão, MPB club in the west zone, capitulated to fatigue. It closed and is due to reopen, at the same point and under the old management, but with a new identity.

I took a Wednesday night, cold and half empty in the city, to visit the marked bars to die for. I would have liked to go back to Alemão, of memories blurred by beer and steinhager.

It was fashionable to drink both, together and sometimes mixed, with canapé of black bread and croquette, there and in other German bars. Joan Sehn, from Moema, deceased. Léo, in the center, a shell of what it was, today managed by investors.

I’m not a fan of steinhager or bars with live music. Never been. Thus, my habitué period with Alemão lasted less than the metal phase with Robertinho do Recife. When I heard about the closure, it was already closed.

The Uber dropped me off at Balcão, which I’ve been going to since the time when the address was another bar, Funilaria e Pintura – it is assumed that, before that, there was a workshop there. It was at Funilaria that I drank Jack Daniel’s for the first time, scraping the bottom of my wallet and thinking I was too adult, even a little American.

Back in the late 1980s, Jardins was where kids would go out dressed up, perfumed and stocked up on black Hall’s to pick someone up, or at least try to. Close to the Balcão, in the same block on the Itu avenue, there were two bars made to measure for “malhos” — slang at the time for French kissing with silly hands.

They were called Leiteria Sena (I guess it was an allusion to the movie “A Clockwork Orange”, in which the anti-heroes drank milk) and The Last Blue Clouds in the Sky at Alameda Tropical. There will never be another bar with such a luscious name.

In both, the exact same scheme. Low light, low sound, sweet drinks and tiny furniture that forced the couples to be physically close. In one of the points there is a pizzeria, the other was demolished to erect a building.

Demolition is also the likely destination of Balcão, where I accumulated liters at the end of the last century and the beginning of this one. In the years leading up to the World Cup and the Olympics, foreign correspondents residing in São Paulo met there every first Thursday of the month. I would go crashing to grease my English – it gets easier after a few shots.

Balcão wants to be listed, and there are plausible arguments for that. The corner of Melo Alves and Tietê is a time capsule that preserves everything as it was before. Same winding, modern counter, same works of art, same mood, same food. I ordered a carpaccio with ciabatta, which came as usual, with a taste of the 20th century.

They are also the same customers. Balcão is a victim of ageism –some call it Balzacão– for bringing together mature people who have been going there since the times of David Drew Zingg.

Pure malediction. The Balcão crowns are in top shape, as is the bar. If the Balcony dies, it will be killed by death.

I can’t say the same about Mercearia São Pedro, my next stop. The bar has been bleeding painfully for years, agonizing in a family tragedy, of two brothers who were once partners and are now enemies.

The shabby and somewhat grimy sales environment has been polluted with huge TVs showing football and the news. França, Merca’s historic waiter, stayed behind for lights out. He’s still in his usual bad mood, but he looks tired. We all are.

Mercearia is a rare vestige of Vila Madalena, which became famous as a bohemian neighborhood. Bartolo died at Fradique. Sujinho, from Wisard and Mourato, died. The crickets were dislodged by the Farialimers who listen to sambanejo.

With the passage of Merça, the last stronghold of the old village is Empanadas, which has not shown any health problems.

The original bar, with Brazilian movie posters and a generic Latin American feel, has been expanded indiscriminately. I found the old Empanadas closed for cleaning, with a sea of ​​tables available in the soulless pulls.

I didn’t feel like staying and lost myself in a drunken reverie about the finitude of bars and mine. It’s not just real estate speculation, it’s an inevitable and unstoppable cycle.

I took a meat empanada –which didn’t do justice to my fond memory– and the path to the fields. It was time for a gentleman my age to retire.