The Sabana Grande in eastern Caracas is one of the city’s most famous streets, and it has seen many changes in its short life. Until the 1940s, most of it still lay under sugarcane fields. But by its 1970s heyday the shopping boulevard was the scene of a flourishing café culture that for many Caracas intellectuals of a certain generation has passed into legend, a relic of a safer, wealthier, more cosmopolitan city.