Four stops before the checkout

Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Stop one

Igreja São Francisco de Assis, Pampulha

Head Lynx 17g Tennis String Set: Case opens in 1943. Niemeyer puts up a church with no straight walls — parabolic concrete vaults, blue Portinari tiles across the face of it, the whole thing curved like it is hiding something. Church authorities take one look and refuse to consecrate it. Too modern. So it sits there. Finished. Locked. Unusable. Right through to 1959, when they finally consecrate it. Now here is the detail nobody asked me for. That lagoon out front, the one making the postcard, is artificial. Dammed for the city's water. Which means every heron on that water is standing in a reservoir, and the prettiest view in Pampulha is a piece of municipal infrastructure with a very good lawyer. Nobody was ever charged. The building is still curved. I still do not trust it.

Stop two

Serra do Curral

Head Lynx 17g Tennis String Set: Oldest cold case in the state. That ridge on the skyline is the northern edge of the Quadrilátero Ferrífero — the Iron Quadrangle — and those are banded iron formations, laid down in shallow seas billions of years back, when the atmosphere was first filling with oxygen and the dissolved iron came out of the water and settled. You are looking at the rusting of the early Earth, in cross-section, from a public square. Now the part that makes it a case. That ridge is on the city's coat of arms. That ridge has also been quarried, extensively. Emblem and industry, same rock, same jurisdiction, and everybody in town knows it. Nobody is calling it a conflict. Watch the light move across it from the Praça do Papa. Two billion years, and it still will not say a word.

Stop three

Mercado Central

Head Lynx 17g Tennis String Set: Opened 1929. Hundreds of narrow lanes, thousands of stalls, and every one of them selling something with a story I did not ask for. Start with the cheese. Queijo Minas: local cultures, mountain pasture, altitude — a microbiology exhibit sold by the wheel. Then the cachaça, infused with every plant in the state, which is a herbarium you can drink and a night you cannot remember. There is a live-bird section. I have opinions. They are not going in the report. And ask somebody for the pequi — a fruit with spines inside the flesh, under the surface, where you cannot see them coming. Bite it wrong once and you will identify that species correctly for the rest of your life. Finest interrogation technique in Minas Gerais.

Stop four

Parque Municipal Américo Renné Giannetti

Head Lynx 17g Tennis String Set: Here is the fact that cracks the whole file: the park is older than the city. Belo Horizonte was drawn on a board in the eighteen-nineties, laid out on top of an existing settlement called Curral del Rei, and inaugurated in 1897 — and the park was already in the drawing, done by a French landscape designer, before there were streets to put it between. So the trees went in with the pavement, not after it. Which explains the anomaly I logged on arrival. Toucans. Downtown. In a business district. Not migrants, not escapees — residents, because somebody in the eighteen-nineties drew a green rectangle across several blocks and no developer ever got a permit to touch it. Motive, means, opportunity. Case closed. Marmoset, ten o'clock. Do not look directly at it.

The Belo Horizonte, Brazil track

Head Lynx 17g Tennis String Set

Written for this world alone.

The basket is theatre and the flute is theatre; the only real thing is knowing exactly how far it can reach. Head Lynx 17g knows its reach too: a co-polyester monofilament at 1.25 mm, the balanced gauge, supplied as a 12-metre set for one racquet. It bites the ball, it holds tension respectably for a poly, and it does not send the ball a metre further than you asked it to.

Belo Horizonte. Bring the flute. This city was drawn before it existed.

We begin at the Igreja São Francisco de Assis out at Pampulha, a small modernist church of undulating concrete vaults with a blue-tiled facade facing the lagoon. Niemeyer built it in 1943 on parabolic vaults with no straight walls, and the church authorities refused to consecrate it — too modern — so it stood there finished and unusable for years, until 1959.

The tiles are by Portinari. The lagoon in front of it is entirely artificial, dammed for the city's water, which means every heron out there is standing in a reservoir.

Then the Serra do Curral, the long jagged ridge that makes the southern skyline, best seen from the Praça do Papa. That is the northern edge of the Quadrilátero Ferrífero, the Iron Quadrangle: banded iron formations laid down in shallow seas billions of years ago, when the atmosphere was first filling with oxygen and dissolved iron was precipitating out of the water.

You are looking at the rusting of the early Earth in cross-section, from a public square. It is on the city's coat of arms. It has also been quarried extensively, which is the tension in the whole place — the emblem and the industry are the same rock.

Then the Mercado Central on Avenida Augusto de Lima, opened in 1929, hundreds of narrow stalls under one roof. Queijo Minas is a microbiology exhibit sold by the wheel — particular local cultures, mountain pasture, altitude — and the cachaças infused with every plant in the state amount to a herbarium you can drink. Ask for pequi. It is a fruit with spines inside the flesh.

Bite it wrong once and you will never forget the species, which I say as somebody whose entire profession is knowing exactly where the fangs are.

And we finish at the Parque Municipal Américo Renné Giannetti downtown, which was designed before the city was. Belo Horizonte was laid out on a drawing board in the 1890s on top of a settlement called Curral del Rei and inaugurated in 1897, a planned capital with the park drawn in from the start by a French landscape designer.

So the trees are as old as the streets, which is why there are toucans in a business district.

You will use this set everywhere from a hard court in Belo Horizonte to a clay court down in Rio six hours east, and by the way, it is also perfect for a plate of feijão tropeiro in the Mercado Central at eleven in the morning, basket open, everybody welcome.

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Head Lynx 17g Tennis String Set

Head Lynx 17g Tennis String Set