Galeria do Rock

This guide to Galeria do Rock in São Paulo traces how Grandes Galerias, an ordinary downtown shopping arcade of tailors and beauty salons when it opened in 1963, was reshaped in the 1970s as record stores selling rock vinyl moved in and skaters, punks and hip-hop kids claimed the stairwells as their own. By the 1990s the gallery had grown rough enough that the city nearly shut it down, until an administrator everyone calls Toninho da Galeria stepped in. Look up as you walk: record shops sit beside barbershops, comic stores, and tattoo studios, stacked floor over floor.