Bar do Netão

About this place Bar do Netão

Bar do Netão is the classic São Paulo dive bar — the kind of place that exists in every great gay neighbourhood and that serves a specific and essential function: providing cold, cheap beer in an atmosphere entirely free of pretension. On Rua Frei Caneca, surrounded by venues with more elaborate production values, Bar do Netão stands as a counterpoint — the bar you come to when you want conversation rather than performance, when the evening is just beginning and you want to settle in before deciding where the night goes, or when the week has been long and you need a barstool and a cold Brahma rather than an Aperol Spritz. The crowd is mixed in the specifically São Paulo way: working-class and middle-class gay men, the occasional tourist who has been sent here by a friend who knows the city, drag queens stopping in before their set down the street. The bar is not trying to be anything other than what it is, which is precisely why people love it.