Of dairy products
Posted: February 8, 2011 Filed under: Food Leave a comment
Consider this post a kind of addendum to my previous list of remarkable differences between here and there. I’d like to discuss, briefly, the state of dairy products in Buenos Aires.
First off, let it be known that while I may not be a connoisseur, exactly, I really, really love cheese. Within walking distance from my apartment in Los Angeles was (and remains, though I’ve departed) the The Cheese Store of Silverlake. I was a frequent customer of said cheese shop and they had much in the way of fantastic imported and local cheeses. Now here in B.A. there is no dearth of cheese shops, little corner stores which offer Argentine-made reggiano (sometimes called reggianito here), provolone, queso fresco and–a real favorite of locals and truly delicious–queso roquefort. I must admit, though, that the quality and diversity of the cheeses you can find leaves much to be desired. Sure you can buy brie or camembert, but only President–the Kraft of France. And cheddar? Alas, not at all, unless you count the single slices of American cheese as some corrupt form of the original.
The other thing they lack is milk that doesn’t terrify me. Milk is sold here in boxes or bags and isn’t refrigerated. They even serve it at room temperature most of the time. This is entirely common throughout South America in my experience but let me tell you, as a lover of cereal it pains me to be without the milk to which I have grown so accustomed in my short life on this, the loveliest planet.
So, my American readers, in my honor I beg of you, be happy in the vast diversity of cheeses you can find in the States. Be joyous each morning as you slurp the sugary, cold milk that remains when all the Fruit Loops have been eaten and know that while we may not be France, we can really rock the magical world of dairy.
A little translation project
Posted: February 6, 2011 Filed under: Language and text 1 Comment
Oh reader, what glory is the world of Porteño indie rock! I have had two forays, quite distinct but equally lovely, into this particular cultural phenomenon. The first was a show that an Argentine friend of mine played in the barrio San Telmo at a bar called La Cigale. This odd fellow looks a little bit like a porteño Prince (or the artist formerly known as). Seriously. He wears, always, un chaleco with some sort of ironic t-shirt–though, to be honest, I’m not sure if they’re ironic or not in his world, but they certainly work that way in mine. From one of his ears dangles a silver feather. This manner of dress, from which I have not once seen him stray, functions as a kind of signature for him. He plays guitar and sings accompanied by another guitarist and vocalist, a bassist and a drummer. He claims his music is influenced by the Strokes but I’m not sure I hear it.
This show was more or less like any amateur show you can attend in the states: a crowd of onlookers far too small to warrant the volume, an entirely unnecessary smoke machine (a good half of the audience was smoking during the performance), and crappy acoustics. The beer was overpriced but delicious. The most appreciative audience members were friends of the band.
My second jaunt into this cultural underbelly (and what will likely be of greater interest to you, dear readers) is a little project in which I’m taking part. I’ve been asked by another local musician to help translate Belle & Sebastian lyrics into English. So far we’ve met once and managed our way through three songs. But imagine, if you will, trying to explain “Stars of Track and Field” in a language that isn’t your own. Or trying to communicate a Bob Dylan reference, or a common phrase like “caught a glimpse.” In those three hours I learned more local slang than I have during the rest of my nearly month-long stay here. He was so thrilled with the translations that we’re continuing the work tomorrow (and, likely, throughout my time here).
This musician has a real obsession with the aesthetic of the 80s, by the way. Too early to say whether this is a broad cultural phenomenon among hipsters in this town or specific to these two.
La Boca and simulacra
Posted: February 4, 2011 Filed under: Wandering in the city Leave a comment
Well, my dearest comrades, let me tell you of my wanderings. I took a tour this week of a little barrio in Buenos Aires known as La Boca, so-named because it is situated at the mouth of the highly polluted Riachuelo. The neighborhood is (and long has been) working class. In the late 19th and early 20th century immigrant families who labored at the docks here painted the barges which trafficked meat and leather goods along the river. The story goes that they used any remaining paint for the brick and corrugated-metal walls of their homes. While the industry which employed them has mostly vanished, the residents continue the tradition. Hence the broad range of color on any given street. It truly is beautiful.
The thing about La Boca (as any guidebook will tell you) is it’s dangerous. I’ve been advised not to stray from a few square blocks devoted to selling tango shows, souvenirs and Boca Juniors (the barrio’s well-known soccer team) apparel.
In this area in La Boca everything about the barrio is forced performance. For example, instead of allowing people to stand on the balconies of the buildings, they put grotesque statues of ‘old-timey’ porteños. Instead of hosting real milongas, or tango dances, they hire young men and women to dance for onlookers at every street cafe, all wearing somewhat ridiculous costumes that I think are meant to indicate an earlier, lovelier epoch of tango.
Despite the warnings from locals and the guidebook, my friend and I wandered (albeit a mere block) outside the designated tourist trap. It was fantastic, though the the colors on these houses are considerably faded. Stray dogs run everywhere as do children and real-live folks stand on balconies and mill about on doorsteps. There is a ‘there’ there, far superior to the bizarro simulacra that is “La Boca” as tourists see it. I do get the sense that the people that live in the barrio are perfectly happy to keep outsiders relegated to their specific square mile and relatively controlled, so perhaps there’s something to be said for the power of imitation. Certainly, given the radical politics of this particular neighborhood and the class status of its residents, throngs of camera-toting Europeans and Americans out to see what ‘real’ Argentines live like would be, in a word, repulsive.
Either way, it’s a fascinating thing about certain kinds of travel–so much of what you see is a reference to something you don’t, a representation of an original that never really existed.
Of the rat tail
Posted: February 1, 2011 Filed under: Mishaps, Wandering in the city 1 Comment
You’re strolling down the cobblestone streets of Barrio Palermo at, oh, say 3:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning. You manage to dodge a gaggle of drunk German girls stumbling out of one or another of the wholly unbearable dance clubs that speckle the neighborhood. Suddenly, there he is, a vision in horn-rimmed glasses and a pearly-buttoned Western shirt. He is walking towards you, this man, the loveliest Porteño hipster you have ever seen. Thrilled, you make furtive eye contact in the hopes that he will (unlike anyone on the planet, ever) randomly strike up a conversation with you, you poor American girl walking by on your lonesome way home. But, alas! Though he looks in your direction, maybe even returns your coy glance, he passes by without a word. Just as he does you turn to watch him go, a melancholic ache deepening in your black heart. But wait. What’s this? A special little surprise delivered unto you by the gods; a small but priceless consolation for letting the man to whom you were surely fated to wed slip through your fingers. He has a rat tail. Yes, he does. He is but one more Argentine with this most heinous of haircuts.
I cannot now nor will I ever be able to explain why they do this to themselves but oh so many of them do. Porteños love the rat tail. This style is a far, far worse offense to their otherwise dashing good looks and breezy charms than would be the standard L.A. hipster mullet. It is the sort of haircut that can, in fact, induce nausea in a foreign onlooker. But it is heartening to know that if you live and die alone in Buenos Aires, you’ll have avoided ever having run your hands through such a greasy, ugly, disastrous assault on reason and reasonable aesthetics.
Of the hipódromo
Posted: January 31, 2011 Filed under: Food, Uncategorized, Wandering in the city Leave a comment
I spent a fantastic Saturday afternoon and evening at the Hipoódromo Argentino de Palermo–the Buenos Aires horse racing track. It is, as per the above image, a Buenos Aires institution. It is also a perfect place to watch the old, middle and upper class men of the city interact with each other while they smoke cigarettes and drink small cups of coffee. They, like most gambling men, do a lot of yelling as the horses round the bend and gallop past the crowd of onlookers at ridiculous speeds. This makes the hipódromo a great place to learn city-specific curses and to laugh at the weird mix of horse names given to the poor animals you watch. My most recent favorite: pirata perseguido, though ScorpioNYC, pronounced phonetically be the announcer as “scorpionick”, was a close second.
Also, the balding, khaki-short-wearing Argentine men sometimes bring their grandchildren, who are more fun to bet on than the horses. They run half the length of the track as faux jockeys, whipping all the while their imaginary horses with rolled-up newspapers.
This was, actually, my second visit to the hipódromo. There is something particularly pleasant about spending time at this track in the muggy Porteño summer. It is close to the water and near one of the city’s largest parks so the winds for which Buenos Aires was named are palpable and cool. It’s also lovely that the minimum bet is so low. For two pesos, the equivalent of fifty U.S. cents, you can bet on any race. I’ve lost everything I’ve put down so far. Entrance is free.
An important fact about the hipódromo: the snack bar is terrible and overpriced. The worst hamburgers and hot dogs on earth are served at the aforementioned bar. You can’t disguise the foulness of these disasters with the salsa golf, essentially a mayonnaise-heavy Thousand Island dressing that they freely offer. The beer they sell is non-alcoholic. The ham and cheese sandwiches are an abomination. Bring your own food and beverages if ever, my dear comrades, you find yourself at the B.A. tracks.
Of Argentine cell phones
Posted: January 28, 2011 Filed under: Mishaps, Technology 1 Comment
Take head, oh ye foreigners who dare to enter into the strange world of mobile telecommunication in Buenos Aires!
A few days after my arrival here I went about getting myself a functional cell phone. With the aid of a lovely young Colombian woman and her lovely young American boyfriend we went from Claro to Movistar and then, finally, ended up at Personal. (These are the three most aggressively present carriers in these parts). I purchased, for the ridiculously high price of 60 American bucks, a little LG phone. My own U.S. cell phone didn’t have the bandwidth to work this far South of the equator, apparently, and the folks you can normally pay to hack in and change this couldn’t fix the problem. Price paid and journey over I ran my fingers over the soft white plastic of my new mobile and thought, this will be my connection to the vast social networks whose links crisscross Buenos Aires, my dear port city.
Well, yes and no: First off, it is entirely unclear to me what prefixes to use when calling on said cell phone. I’ve heard different numbers to try from different people. There is apparently no hard and fast rule. “It’s sometimes 15,” people say, or “Try 11 first.” Some say to input the prefix in your contact list with the rest of the number, others say it’s unnecessary.
I have a whopping five contacts in my phone right now, only two of which I have been able to successfully call or send text messages to.
In addition, if one were to dial the Argentine prefix from a U.S. phone and then key in what I believe is my number (this was more difficult to figure out than you’d imagine because I received three text messages from Personal after setting up my phone, all of which claimed that I had a different phone number) you would be roundly informed by an operator–more likely a recording of an operator than an actual, live, human operator–that the number does not exist. Go figure.
I have successfully placed and received calls about as often as my attempts at communication via voice or SMS have failed, inexplicably and entirely. I also have received several voice messages which I cannot access because this bitchy recorded lady keeps telling me to put in my pass code–a code I have never known and that will forever remain shrouded in an impenetrable mystery to me. A friend of mine who has been living in the city for over two years still doesn’t know how to get his messages. TWO YEARS: this is a man with many local friends, mind you, and a reasonable amount of technological know-how.
So, for now, I remain only partially linked in. But I swear there must be a secret because Argentine’s love to talk on their cell phones as much as anybody. Although they do really seem to prefer the walkie-talkie function. Even when they aren’t using it, they treat their phones thusly, moving them from ear to mouth and back again, somewhat haphazardly, throughout their often very loud and animated conversations.
One great perk, which may or may not be specific to Argentine cell phones: each button on my phone, when pressed, sounds like a different key on an old casio keyboard.
Of heat and difference
Posted: January 26, 2011 Filed under: Wandering in the city Leave a commentAccording to the heat index it was about 99 degrees today as I wandered, for two hours, with little aim around the city. I walked from my apartment in Recoleta to Plaza Congreso to Obelisco to Plaza de Mayo. Meandered a bit around the latter ye ol’ plaza and then headed back home to arrive, with luck, just before the late afternoon rain began.
I had time during this fine, extremely hot walk of mine to think on the differences I note between my lovely Los Angeles and here. And, to amuse and confound you, I came up with the following list of notable distinctions:
1.) Dish soap: it’s so much soapier here, somehow, but considerably less affective at cutting grease.
2.) Wine: cheaper if you buy the local stuff and oh soooo delicious.
3.) Bidets: Porteños love bidets. I wonder if it doesn’t come from their long admiration of French culture, but I swear I have yet to see an apartment without one.
4.) Dinner: so much later. I never eat before 9 p.m. and usually it’s more like 10:30.
5.) The weekend: everyone strolls about in the afternoons, but really wakes up at night. It is not unusual to see folks in their 60s and 70s out at one, two, three in the morning. And the young ones? Up until the dawn and then some. Plenty of bars and clubs stay open until 9 a.m.
6.) The manner in which coffee is brewed: Now at a café espresso machines are the norm, but somehow the coffee is usually weaker than it should be. For the home barrista like myself I’ve seen Italian percolators for sale as well as French presses, but by far what appears the most common (and cheapest) method is a re-useable cotton filter not unlike a sock with some wire holding it open where you’d slide your foot in. For a coffee snob like myself, this has been a serious adjustment. And let’s not forget that we are in South America so Nescafe has quite a hold at the local grocery stores. Instant coffee abounds, if not at the local restaurants, certainly in the aisles of the CarreFour.
7.) Plastic surgery: Now coming from Los Angeles, you’d think this wouldn’t be so different. But it is. People love plastic surgery here. There are fake breasts and sculpted noses in every direction. From what I hear this is common across Latin America, particularly in Brazil and Columbia.
8.) Parks: In my neighborhood there are many, as in nearby barrio Palermo, but what’s most impressive? Every park has its own Facebook page. I can’t do all the confirming on this that I’d like to (because I, despite much prodding by the general public and the vague sense that I will be single forever and increasingly incapable of making friends without membership, am not on Facebook) but it appears, indeed, to be true. Perhaps parks everywhere are on Facebook these days, but never have I seen a placard in a park inviting me to ‘friend’ it.
Oh sweet, sweet Buenos Aires. How muggy and lovely you truly are!
Of mosquito colonies and textual laughter
Posted: January 25, 2011 Filed under: Language and text, Mishaps 2 Comments
O.k. readers, particularly those sensitive to crude language, consider this fair warning. The following post contains the occasional expletive.
Now, having told you what to expect, let us commence with the cursing: SHIT! What I thought was a small, avant-garde gnat commune in the corner of my bedroom turns out to be an imperialist army of mosquitos. I woke up today looking like someone suffering from one of those 19th Century diseases that kills your social life quickly and you slowly. Luckily, my social life here is minimal so I just appear afflicted when I buy my entrance tickets to museums or my groceries. And the folks selling that stuff have, thus far, made no obvious attempts to distance themselves from me. Although, I may not be in the best position to gauge such gestures, considering it is quite common for anyone to look at me with that peculiar “don’t you dare come hither” stare. Fucking mosquitos.
And, in unrelated news, I’ve just discovered the following glorious phenomenon: If a porteño is instant messaging another porteño, or anyone, really, and wants to indicate laughter the following text is used: “Ja ja ja.” Oh my! So splendid a transliteration of “ha ha ha” (which is itself, I suppose, a transliteration) I have never seen. And that it appears totally normal to them to write “ja ja ja” and totally normal to me to write “ha ha ha” makes it all the more jubilant.
That, my dears, is all I have for now. Wish me luck sleeping under the constant threat of attack by those colonialist jerks.
Un domingo, día de las ferías
Posted: January 24, 2011 Filed under: Wandering in the city 1 Comment
This photo (which I grabbed from flickr and cannot take the credit for) is from the San Telmo Sunday market, or fería. Every Sunday throngs of tourists and Porteños alike stroll the streets of San Telmo looking for various crafts, clothes, gourds out of which to drink Mate tea, antiques etc. Musicians and street performers of all types, including the mandatory tango dancers, set up to busk every few blocks. I went yesterday with an ex-pat friend of mine and wandered for a few hours. I ended up buying a pair of homemade shoes that would put any Echo Park hipster to shame. They are glorious. And, again, photos will follow once I solve that little card reader/language problem. (By the end of the week, comrades, I vow to make that purchase.)
The streets are packed with slow-moving shoppers who stop over stalls and finger the goods. There are also plenty of folks walking around with coolers of beer and soda or baskets of pan relleno (stuffed bread) and a surprising number of people with stands to sell orange juice, squeezed from the fruit on the spot and delicious.
The drawback of the market is not only the ubiquity of tourists, but the ease with which vendors seem to peg them. Its unclear to me how they know (but they always do) who is a local and who isn’t. Spanish won’t save you here. Even when I was silent I’d have folks start the bartering in English.
Another vow: not to leave Buenos Aires without one of those seltzer bottles.
Word up:
Posted: January 23, 2011 Filed under: Language and text Leave a commentMy friends, I deliver unto you a fabulous web site which you may have already discovered via my tweets or my where to go page: buenosairesword. The graffiti in Buenos Aires is fantastic, as is the commercial and municipal typography all over the place. By fantastic I do not mean ‘high design’ (though this exists in spades in parts of Buenos Aires). I mean rich. There are such varieties of color and shape, juxtapositions, and bizarre conflicts between texts that you can pretty much stare at any wall and be mesmerized. Play around with the aforementioned site (it will be easier if you can read Spanish, but a few clicks here and there and you’ll probably figure it out even if you don’t). You will a.)not be disappointed and b.) get a little sense of the typographical aesthetics of the city.
Itinerant Me 
