Barra Funda becomes an effervescent point with trendy bars and nightclubs in the center of SP

Little by little, the calm atmosphere of the streets taken by the houses and sheds that make up the scene of the former industrial Barra Funda is transformed with the arrival of new tenants, especially after the beginning of the pandemic. Bars and snack bars, markets and stores are beginning to share more and more space with art galleries, design stores, cocktail bars, clubs, breweries and artisan bakeries.

The movement is reminiscent of visas a few years ago in the Santa Cecília and Vila Buarque regions — and it is not surprising that the news mainly attracted the “santa cecilier” public, who now inhabit both sides of the Minhocão.

Open for three months on Conselheiro Brotero street, the Pietá bar and restaurant is an example of this. The space is, in fact, a combination of two old businesses: the Pietá bar, which operated in the Vila Madalena region until 2010, and the vegan restaurant Rica Raiz, which closed in Santa Cecília due to the pandemic.

Arlindo Carneiro Neto, a partner at the house, says that he decided to look for a location in the region precisely because of this new audience. “For me, who was born in the neighborhood, this change is very clear. A very nice crowd is coming, more cool,” he says. “And we want to be together right now.”

He reckons that this renovation in the neighborhood’s face also has to do with whoever moved there recently. “It started to have a flow of younger people, looking for houses with a lower cost. And here there is a lot of space, sheds, properties to be renovated.”

And it looks like this combination has worked. Opened two years ago in a garage in Olavo Bilac Square, the Miúda bar was known for bringing young and modern people together on the sidewalk for drinks and beer on beach chairs. In November, it rented the parking lot next door and launched a party schedule. Now, it’s hard not to find lines to enter the venue on weekends, when it receives DJs and the public that is divided between the dancefloor and the usual beach chairs.

Architecture, location and prices have especially attracted people looking to open their first businesses. This is the case of Diêgo Penido. After being fired at the start of the pandemic, the product designer turned his apartment into a mini bread factory.

The business grew and he had to look for a place to install the kitchen. Despite having captivated customers on the Facebook group Cecílias e Buarques —from residents of Santa Cecília and Vila Buarque— with his bread, it was in Barra Funda that he found space for the Na Fila do Pão bakery, opened in August.

“We started thinking that there would be a production studio there, but customers started to come and we were forced to offer a service here,” he says. He, who shares the space with the Fialka flower shop, says that the people from Santa Cecília usually show their faces there, especially on Saturdays, after the walk in Minhocão, but that he has noticed that the neighbors have been showing up more and more. “There was an identification with the neighborhood and vice versa.”

Bartenders Fabio Mec and Ciro Tupinambá also chose the region to set up their first venture, Trago Bar, in September of last year. They bet on Rua Souza Lima — the same as the houses like A Dama e os Vagabundos, Mescla, Laskarina Bouboulina and, now, Cervejaria Central. “Our idea was to serve 40 people a day, but there are days when it reaches more than 300”, says Flavia Almeida, married to Mec and manager of the place.

The deal was so successful that they already have plans for a new bar on the same street, a bar called Estrago, scheduled for February. “Trago has a drink audience, who sit at the counter and order a sazerac. But we also want to serve a neighborhood audience that likes 600 ml bottled beer, something that Trago doesn’t have.”

A pioneer in the current season at Rua Souza Lima, the staff of A Dama e os Vagabundos says that when it arrived, in 2017, there was hardly any movement at night there. “We wanted a place that was cheap, small, to be able to experiment”, says Italo Escarparo, a partner at the house. “We didn’t even think it could grow, that we’d have to use the sidewalk. Lucky for us the businesses next door don’t open on weekends or at night, so we can spread the tables there.”

The bar is another one that gains a brother in the region in 2022. “We rent a little house nearby, on Camerino Street. We still don’t know what it will be, but we want a more intimate business,” he says.

And it’s not just first-time entrepreneurs who land in the neighborhood. Well-known figures of the Baixo Augusta night, producers and DJs Ronaldo Rinaldi and Sérgio Oliveira, known as Click and Sérjô, opened the club Irregular on Rua Barra Funda in February 2020. For Oliveira, the address, which formerly housed the Bunker nightclub, it fit like a glove. “We already wanted to get away from the Augusta circuit, which was already saturated at that time”, he says. What he didn’t expect, however, was that the gang that was boiling on the track at places like Desmanche would also migrate there. “And we have the public at the Sunday party, Tereza, who is very loyal”.

“This here has everything to become a new Vila Madalena”, projects Arlindo Carneiro Neto, from Pietá.

The new face of Barra Funda

Irregular
a. Deep Bar, 630

Central Brewery
a. Souza Lima, 5

The Lady and the Tramps
a. Souza Lima, 43

Caquinho
a. Brigadier Galvão, 32B

Laskarina Bouboulina
a. Souza Lima, 67

girl
Praça Olavo Bilac, 38

Pina Drinks
a. Brigadier Galvão, 177

bring
a. Souza Lima, 174

In the Bread Queue/Fialka
a. Daisy, 30

Pietá
a. Counselor Brotero, 575