Bar Mercearia São Pedro, in Vila Madalena, will close – 06/23/2023 – Bars and nightlife

“Rua” derives from the Latin term “ruga”. It is the mark of time on the epidermis of the city. São Paulo has never faced the passage of years well. He submits himself all the time to the most butchery scalpels, concerned more with paying for surgeries than with the health of the (im)patient. Hence this monstrous city, accumulation of plastic surgery, fillings and other disastrous interventions. If it were Tanya, from “White Lotus”, I would say: “These developers are trying to murder me!”.

Less tormented metropolises proudly display white hair. In Mexico City, it is possible to eat a taco and see, even today, on the ceiling of the restaurant, the hole shot by Pancho Villa on an afternoon in 1914. In Buenos Aires, you can have a vermouth in the same cafes on Corrientes as Borges and Cortázar one day they attended. In São Paulo, bars are knocked down with a sledgehammer: square meter by square meter we are destroying our historical heritage, tearing down our affective memory.

For 55 years, at number 34 Rua Duartina, Vila Madalena, there was Mercearia São Pedro. In the past, because soon the entire block, sold to a developer, will be demolished, putting an end to that unrivaled mix of bar, restaurant, bookstore, video rental (young people, ask ChatGPT), informal Sesc, organic Facebook, Tinder avant la lettre , amusement park, nursing home, coworking, codrinking, coliving and co-other-things-better-not-to-mention.

I know half a dozen couples who formed around those light beige Formica tables —and the same number who fell apart under the mythical furry bottles, at the top of the shelves. (The hairy stalactites produced by some radioactive mixture made up of frying oil, dust, smoke from the grill, cigarettes, exhaust, spit and who knows what else accumulated there since 1968, when Pedro Benuthe opened the dry goods store ). Years later, the sons, Pedrão and Marquinho, turned the establishment into a bar —and so on. And it will be precisely the et cetera that we will miss the most.

At least two generations of musicians and writers have been influenced by Mercearia. From Nick Cave to Lulina. From Ciro Pessoa (ex-Titã, composer of “Sonífera Ilha”) to Lúcio Maia. From Reinaldo Moraes to Bruna Beber. Many books were released there and many others plotted there.

Two compilations were specially produced at (and for) Mercearia: “Uma Antologia Bêbada”, organized by Joca Reiners Terron and “Saideira: O Livro dos Epitafios”, by Joca and Marcelino Freire. Revista Mercearia came out in 2006, defying the curse that independent publications always wither in the third issue: it died right away in the first. A talk show pilot was filmed at the bar one morning. The content of the conversation was so, let’s say, unorthodox that, in the end, Reinaldo Moraes commented “well, maybe some porn channel in Amsterdam will buy it”.

So that this São Paulo institution doesn’t just stay in the memory of its regulars —also because, on many mornings, the memory would wake up a bit blurred— I suggest to Joca and Marcelino a last drunken anthology: a memoir about Mercearia São Pedro or epitaphs for her. In the meantime, we are left with the tombstone of Marçal Aquino, in the book “Saideira”: “If there is a second season, it will be shown on another channel”. A porno from Amsterdam, who knows?