Hot Stuff Cant Get Enough ...go Ahead Alfonso!
Dear Alfonso,
Even disagreeing partly. . I must however praise both Murilloa´s and Kama Leao´s advice and protective attitude concerning your eventual visit to the area of Intendente.
Yes. Intendente is in general terms similar to Raval in Barcelona. A bit more run down. More exposed. And yet more breathtaking for those who seek a more hard core sort of ultimate experience in terms. Of street survival and smartness. A little of a road movie. Bronx late hours sort of experience transfered to sexual and mongering adventure.
I am probably one of the few portuguese that have acquainted this area in his early teenage. So I do know what I am speaking about.
Intendente is in fact an area where I used to take students when I decided to get to know them better in any available budget pensao. After some excruciating days or weeks of imposed celibacy.
It was a quite genuine area with its sociological idosyncrasies. Like spoting a pimp. Sharpening his nails with one of their menacing spring pocket knives. But let me tell you something. In those years. Intendente was a safe heaven and a pearl compared for instance to Bairro Alto or even Cais do Sodre. Which were the infamous areas of Lisbon.
With time Intendente has degraded. And has both above mentioned distinguished members have stated it has become a nest for drugaddicted acid head hoes and small time drug dealers or pushers, has one calls them in street slang!
But nothing more than that. If you preserve your coolness, do not overindulge in alcohol or other substances. Do not show off or hostilize anybody and keep the senses for distance and approach, if you do so you ll not be in danger. Unless you try to stop somebody running with a knife in his hand. And you would like to play the hollywood sort of hero.
I am a veteran of some of the most dangerous countries in this world. I have seen some honky tonky stuff in Intendente like a guy getting a bad trip and trying to stab people that would step into his way. But this you can see in Amsterdam, Hamburg, Seville or in any other city in Europe or elsewhere.
As I said before, it is worth the visit if you appreciate world music. Some joints have the genuine feeling of West African music with the Kwassa Kwassa or the Zoukouss rythms or even the Coladeira from the Cape Verde Islands. And the decor of the inevitable african female exotic seduction!
So in other wordS it is one of the few places in Europe that you can come across the real maccoy in terms of experiencing an african home away feeling. Believe me I have worked and been to most West Africa with Congo, Senegal and Nigeria included. And that gentlemen takes the cake in terms of danger. Intendente is by no means nearby that reality.
Apart of your mongering aims it can be worth a visit. To experience something new.
Tell me about it if you feel for it. And happy discovery voyage!
Intendente - GabrielSilva
Hallo Garielsilva -
I know Intendente since 1974 when I was a young soldier waiting to be ordered to Angola. During these days you have seen a lot of the young lads with very little money there and it was a kind of low(est) prostitution there. There had been a lot of cheap alcohol there but not real drugs - I assume in those days the hoes did not earn enough for this. - Remember how poor it was (and is)? Dirty little Pensaos (5€ for the trick), cheap perfume, nothing to clean up - juck!!!
I agree with you - it is still little Western Africa in Lisboa. But I must admit - I had enough of Western Africa.
Carlos