Formosa Hi-Fi, high-fatty vinyl bar, opens under the tea viaduct

It’s a drink bar, but the house star is the song. Still, there are no DJs, but a selector, who takes care of the curatorship of what sounds in what promises to be the best sound system in the city. Such is the Formosa Hi-Fi, the new bar of businessman Facundo Guerra that opens to the public on Thursday (31), in the Formosa Gallery, under the tea viaduct.

Opposite the Prestes Maia Gallery, the space that will house the new bar was opened with its own viaduct in 1938, as a pedestrian passage between Ramos Square, Anhangabaú Valley, and both sides of Xavier de Toledo Street.

Although listed by the three levels of heritage, the gallery was more recently used as a deposit of the new Anhangabaú. But it was precisely the concession of the valley that, according to Facundo, unlocked the negotiations for the rental of the space.

The idea of making a vinyl hearing bar occupied the entrepreneur’s head for at least a decade, when he sought José Augusto Nepomuceno, the acoustic architect of Sala São Paulo and Artistic Culture Theater, for what would be a hearing area of high fidelity within a ballad. At the time shelved, the plan has now been rescued in partnership with Alê Youssef and Ale Natacci, from Baixo Augusta Academics. The pair were also eyeing the gallery to reopen the block’s house there, which closed in the pandemic, but chose to join forces around the Formosa project – that, says Facundo, was the last in his drawer.

Although it seems late in the wave of hearing bars (which began in 2018, with the snail, and took body two years ago with Domo, Matiz and the high advisor), Formosa has as an asset, besides the historical lease, the very high sound quality. The idea is, therefore, to be the meeting point of São Paulo audiophiles – a guys who reject the compressed sound of streamings and makes a point of a sound experience as close as possible to the sound recorded originally, without distortion or noise.

“It’s a loud sound, but it doesn’t hurt your ear. You can hear nuances from the vinyl that you might have forgotten because of digital compressions,” says Nepomuceno, who worked in partnership with architects Júlio Gaspar and Silvis Oksman. Just like in the Sao Paulo Room, he says he had Carta Branca to do “the best there may be” in acoustic terms.

The house’s collection has more than six thousand records, including a “false brilliant”, the soundtrack of the show that Elis Regina rehearsed in the Formosa gallery in 1975. The cookies came from the private collections of the partners and also the members of the Club of the House.

For a monthly fee of R $ 390 (in addition to the initial donation of three records), who is part of the club (for now, only 100 of the more than 5,000 subscribers) have a guaranteed entry without a queue and gets a welcome drink throughout the visit. On Wednesdays, they can also present their collections with the help of the selector of the house. Already on other days, says Facundo, the idea is to invite remarkable people in their areas to present their favorite albums. Admission will cost $ 20.

All this audiophile pomp, however, should not be reflected in exorbitant prices in the menu. Unlike Bar dos Arcos itself, which serves high cocktails across the street, in the basement of the municipal, in the formosa the idea is to serve an entry cocktail, with pre-prepared and served on TAP, as draft, which reduces the costs of the house.

With this, the prices of the drinks should be “between the twenty and many thirties,” says Facundo that after so many projects in which people stood to meet, this time bet on a different marketing strategy, inviting their followers to visit the new space during the works.

“We need to break this antipatic thing from exclusivity,” he says. “I wanted to exactly break with this elitism, which is much based on social networks. A redneck -fashionable collector who is part of the club, for example, is much more influencer than someone with thousands of followers.”

Extra Revenue with the Member Club also helps cheaper the letter, prepared by Bartender Michelly Rossi, who signs Arcos’s most refined (and award -winning) drinks. Already the foods will be inspired by the Brazilian cuisine restaurant that Mário de Andrade, founder of modernism and also the city’s first department of culture, planned to open there at the time of the inauguration of the viaduct.

With the arrival of Formosa, the source of the horses of Praça Ramos, renovated in the management João Doria, should receive more attention from the administration of the new Anhangabaú, always remaining connected. And the underground connection between the sidewalks of Shopping Light and the future Sesc Galeria (in the old Mappin building, which should be partially inaugurated later this year) will be reopened along with the bar, even during the day, outside its opening hours, serving as a showcase for independent artists.