São Paulo, Brazil

Caos Bar & Antiguidades

Half curiosity cabinet, half late night hotspot, this Brazilian bar is helping turn a dangerous neighborhood around.

Brazil’s Caos Bar & Antiguidades truly deserves its name, offering a chaotic explosion of vintage stuff literally crammed into every space from the floor to the ceiling.

Only a few short years ago Rua Augusta in São Paulo was considered a decaying red-light district, but recently the street has transformed into a center of night-life full of bars and night-clubs. Caos Bar & Antiguidades has taken this a step further and combined its daytime vintage shop with a nighttime bar. Crammed with all kinds of vintage stuff it offers a cosy, diverse, and colorful atmosphere with a very limited seating capacity. Regardless of the store’s small size, it would take days to fully explore all of the knick-knacks and curiosities on display. There are toys, door knobs, stuffed animals, posters, t-shirts, vinyl and all manner of salvaged bric-a-brac. And since quirky antiquing can be thirsty work, the bar starts slinging drinks as the sun goes down giving visitors a damn fine reason to stick around.

The cacophonous atmosphere draws a young, hip crowd most nights who do their best to get down in the miniscule amount of space allotted, most of them simply crushing up to the bar for drinks. It’s remarkable what a hip night spot can do to improve the feel and image of an otherwise seedy stretch, and more remarkable is what a huge collection of curiosities can do for an otherwise over-crowded bar.

Know Before You Go

Rua Augusta is a cross-street to Av. Paulista where the metro station Consolação is located. From there it's a 10 minute walk along Rua Augusta (to the northeast) to get to Caos Bar & Antiguidades.