Street Markets - Feiras Livres

Seemingly incongruent with the life of a hectic large city, whose main characteristics are heavy traffic and serious pollution, feiras livres, traditional street markets selling mainly fruit and vegetables, are still easy to find around São Paulo.

They are usually held once a week on a certain street (you can find a list of all feiras here, listed according to their neighborhood). Regular hours are from 7:30am to 1:30pm.
Also they are one of the few places in São Paulo where you may actually bargain! If you go early in the morning you will basically have to accept prices as they come; as hours go by salespeople start throwing their prices down and will be open to negotiate. For example, if they are selling a bunch of bananas for R$3,00, you could offer to buy two bunches for R$ 5,00, and so on. Fresh fish can also be found at reasonable prices.

The environment is usually quite friendly: salespeople - called feirantes - will offer you to taste their fruit, other people will chat with you, and almost everyone will stop at one of the stalls on the corner (no matter where you go, every corner will always have one stall) to eat a pastel. Most of all, they are typical old times' classics, places where you'll find people from all walks of life going around their regular lives.