1 PIX = 1,000 WORDS / HEADING WEST INTO A WINTER NIGHT

Cold metal rolling West.

AMTRAK Borealis, westbound through southeastern Minnesota or western Wisconsin. Late-afternoon daylight slipping away on the Chicago–St. Paul run. Best guess: descending into the Mississippi River valley, toward Winona or Red Wing. Going back to Seattle after visiting the folks for Christmas in Chicago.  

COFFEE BEANS & BEINGS / GLIDING FULL SPEED TO A SAO PAULO CAFE

Blue, blue, blue skate shoes...

Late afternoon on Avenida Paulista. The air is humid but forgiving. The city is humming rather than shouting. Cars are still moving, which already tells us this is not peak rush and probably not a Sunday full closure, more likely a Saturday or a weekday drifting toward evening. 

 She leans left, wheels biting the pavement, and commits. If she keeps rolling straight, the coffee stop that actually makes sense for São Paulo street culture is not Starbucks. It’s Urbe Café, just off Paulista on Rua Augusta. Urbe is not a destination café in the precious sense. It’s a crossroads café. The kind of place where designers, students, skaters, freelancers, and people who are “just passing through” all accidentally sit next to each other. Long wooden tables. Strong espresso. Cold brew that actually wakes you up. Music that never quite demands attention but always feels right. It’s also forgiving. You can arrive sweaty, flushed, half out of breath, and no one blinks. Urban motion is part of the dress code. 

 

From where she is in that frame, Urbe Cafe is plausibly 400 to 700 meters away, depending on the exact block. At a confident skating pace, that’s about two minutes, three if she eases up near the intersection. Long enough to feel the ride, short enough to arrive smiling. 

 What makes Urbe fun, and very São Paulo, is that it doubles as a social hinge. People don’t just meet there on purpose. They bump into each other. Someone recognizes someone else’s shoes. Someone asks about wheels or bearings. Someone mentions a show later that night. 

That’s how afternoons turn into evenings in that part of the city. As for timing. This feels like late afternoon, somewhere between four and six. The light is soft, the trees are still holding the day, and nobody looks rushed enough to be fleeing work. 

Weekend is likely, but not mandatory. São Paulo has a way of making weekdays feel like weekends and weekends feel like something else entirely. So the story version is simple. She skates. Paulista offers glide space. Rua Augusta pulls her in. Urbe catches her. Coffee first. Everything else later. And honestly, that’s the right order. 

Urbe Cafe