Beco do Batman

This guide to Beco do Batman in São Paulo opens with a single gray rectangle amid the alley's ever-changing murals, and the retired resident who owns that stretch of wall and repaints it whenever new graffiti appears. It traces the lane's own origin, an unclaimed Batman drawing from the 1980s that drew art students and turned it into one of South America's most photographed alleys, and the tensions the fame brought when tourist crowds followed the 2014 World Cup into Vila Madalena. The owner told a reporter plainly: not a protest, the wall is mine.