I just happen to be back in Sao Paulo by way of a few “off the grid” days in Fortaleza spent gazing out onto a warm and gusty Atlantic Ocean way up there in the state of Ceara, the land of the beach, the Cashew nut tree, the Donkey, no small mount of plastic trash and the billion and one wind turbines turning endless miles of remarkable coastal dunescape into a wind farm. (A tale for later) It is all part of a week that somehow started with pitching Flowerbud.com at a “Sustainable/Green Living” convention in NYC, where I spend a day wedged between a cooperative of Organic Goat’s Cheese & Ice Cream vendors from northern California. A couple of hilarious holistic medicine woman from Michigan, selling cremes/rubs and other curiously scented juju and medicaments with names like the “I’m Wounded Creme”. Opposite me, a rather striking lady promotes Zestra, an essential arousal oil for topical application by women to enhance “deep pleasurable sensations” It acts within minutes and lasts for 45. Ah, the power of botanicals, clinically proven of course. What spin might TV’s Madmen place on this? My guess is that of all assembled… goats, cremes, flowers, aspirin holders, exercise monitors and so on, the rather striking lady has the most to gain from the sometimes hard and sometimes not so hard to grasp concept of “sustainable arousal”.
But I am getting blown off course here and I have a few hours in the middle of the day to learn something new and interesting and great good fortune has a recent acquaintance of mine, a young and indecently prosperous graphic designer taking me to a client for lunch and a ‘field trip’ all in one location deep in the endless megalopolis that is Sao Paulo. A brief visit to his office is confirmation that a certain C21 skill set, in this case a geek x artist hybrid, given sufficient monitors, tablets and with computing horsepower fast heading towards brainpower, can reach out in real time and touch clients be they in Brasil, Portugal, the US or Timbuktu. Finished work for printing presses flashes out across our known world in seconds and can be in production in hours if not minutes. It can be done almost within the same breath and spandau like staccato of key strokes, appearing in catalogs, on packaging and adorning garments. Multiple monitors with multiple windows open, Skype and IM. Old fashioned email and of course the fanciest Nokia cell du jour ringing, vibrating and texting. Simultaneously juggling the demands of the demanding in order to meet the demand. Growing all the time. Quicker all the time. It brings to mind James Carville’s coining of “Its the economy, stupid” phrase that won the day for BC. In this day and age one guy can accomplish an awful lot of what it took an organization of many to do just a decade ago. It does though take a killer work ethic, an ability to work way beyond the clock and a hungry appreciation for the lucre and all it can bring when spent. A concept worth hanging onto in the US and just now a burgeoning one in places like Brasil.
We head down to CEPAM, a Bakery, a Chocolatier and a Paderia. I have previously talked about the Paderia’s of Brasil. Those noisy, crowded places where the hungry go to feed as if food were free and the hungry then feed as if food were free. You eat in a Paderia with great gusto, an outsized joy for the moment and an appreciation for the privilege of eating… larger by far than the miniscule paper napkins. Well, Cepam is a 600 seat establishment where dough rises, bread bakes, chickens roast, eggs crack and oranges get squeezed and all the while with patrons arriving and departing like from a war zone mess hall. If one word were to sum up the experience, it would be loud. Loud enough to almost loose focus on a sandwich which I hear (barely) is called ‘The American’. I view it as a Brazilian concoction, pure and simple… tasty at about 5000 calories per bite.
Rafael , scion of one of six owners greets us, teased by his father into showing me the operation as it will give his English language skills (which have taken heavy investment) a little exercise. That may be so but It also gives me a lesson in bakery wardrobe etiquette as we don white coats and hats, face masks and cinch our pant legs tight as if for a bike ride… instead we head off into the world of Panettone. You can imagine the scent as we enter this industrial sized bakery. Flour, eggs dough, yeast, dried fruit, and yes, somewhere out there … chocolate. Tanker loads of the stuff warmed to a viscosity required to make today’s Truffles.
First things first. I am taken through the production cycle of a loaf of Panettone, that tall, cylindrical, fruit-filled sweet bread from Milan, now an essential part of the Christmas season around the world and obviously a big hit here in Brasil. Rafael, barely combating the perpetual ‘Curious George’ in me gives up the numbers for the throughput of the monstrous ovens in the bakery. All are about 25 meters long and jointly pop out for the Christmas season, some 20 million Panettone over a few months. Each perfect loaf metered, mixed, kneaded and risen into taking its 43 minute journey on the endless chain belt through the searing heat to perfection. The smell of baking bread at this point is otherworldly and would turn US realtors into dervishes and might well sell every foreclosed home in Nevada, Florida and California combined. (to be cont.)