Papas Fritas Y Calvita Peron

The heat. The taxi packed beyond belief. Back to a city with noxious diesel fumes. This crazy place reminds us so much of Naples, and Havana. Neither of us can get over the Italian feel in the place. Stinking fumes means the city’s alive. The old cars belching black exhalations into the twilight as the dim or non existent headlights from oncoming traffic make little or no impression on the city’s dirty cloak, their unimpeded progress a factor of luck, determination and nonchalant hope rather than rules or written or observed law. We’ve spotted a couple of extra large disco balls on the outside of buildings using the sun as its spotlight. We don't know why they're there either. The beautiful sky-blue of the Argentinean flag with the ever present sun perched high. One of the first evenings, still a little bit jet lagged with drool on our cheeks and very much overwhelmed, heads spinning and eyes rolling in our head we take a wander out into our new world of Buenos Aires at sunset, a completely over the top, crazily colourful, heavily polluted sunset. I promptly get sucked on by a bastard parasite mosquito as we sit under the shade of trees at a local open space. My hand ends up looking like a granny’s hand with gout. I have a nasty scar on the back of my hand to prove it aswell. We’ve been lucky since though, basically staying away from shaded areas, stagnant water and not being out and about at dusk. It’s crazy how such a small creature (though they are huge over here) can effect your habits in such an adverse way.


So, initial thoughts after almost 2 full weeks and 2 glasses of heady Malbec – this city stinks like no other. In other cities, their inner workings are underground or overhead, hidden from nervous humans' awareness. In Buenos Aires every function is public, the city’s modesty is never spared - from the electrical cabling dangling in front of your face as you walk the pavements, to the thousands of external facing air conditioning units, trickling chemically infected droplets onto your unsuspecting overheating brow, the cracked paving, harbouring fetid stagnant rainwater from last nights storm, blessing each passing pedestrian with a foot squirt of unholy water up the trouser leg to speed them on their journey through the craziest city in the world. The smells are noxious and intoxicating at the same time, the smell of gas mixed with the smell of open sewers mixed with the smell of verdant plantlife from the parks at the height of Summer. Mosquitoes who attack you through your clothes. Roving hordes of unwashed unshirted young boys rifling through the stacks of rubbish on every street corner looking for salvageable recyclable trash to stack separately on opposite corners of the street for later collection by moustachioed men in high backed clapboard trucks, which appear to be in more urgent need of recycling.


The learning of a new language from the subtitles on television with quick reference to our phrase book when difficulty occurs. I make random misguided attempts to read the newspapers and generally end up second best. For example I translated the caption under a picture in a newspaper using our phrase book as : “These beach people are Almost Cutlery” – I think I might need to update my phrase book. Sitting watching shit retro American rerun movies and “Look Who’s Talking” comes on – and guess where it was shot? Van-fricking-couver. The scene where John Travolta picks up Kirstie Alley in the taxi to bring her to hospital was shot on Robson and then they speed around Burrard / West Pender for a while (you can see the Pacific Centre dome) and then its off down to Chinatown with them. Gas crack – we can never escape!


We’re in a brand new apartment and all new neighbourhood now. Our neighbourhood, Palermo, has a great feel with tree lined, humid streets abuzz with activity – kind of reminds me of what I imagine Brooklyn would be like, except the stoops are made of highly polished marble rather than redbrick. There seems to be a lot more money here than I gave BsAs credit for. We’re presuming that people who had a healthy stash of dollars when the dollar / peso decoupling took place were made instantly 3 times richer. Our apartment is functional – only just. It needed a wallop of TLC from M to try and knock it into liveability. It’s located beside and oldschool liftshaft and underneath a night time flight path. So bizarre science fiction noises awake us regular. The lift is tiny – a 2 man at best – with the quaint in-the-movies-only sliding gate. Porteňos are a very cultured bunch, very European in their comportment but very Latino in their passions. Dancing, eating rich, mostly meaty foods, drinking fine wines, staying up into the wee hours every night having heated discussions and expressive conversations in sidewalk cafes.


When it comes to local transportation, Ireland is so incredibly boring compared to here. Where we’re obsessed with the newest, shiniest, most ergonomic model of Japanese or German production line spawn, the streets here are living, heaving, belching automotive museums. How can it be that over here in the Americas, a car will keep getting up for work each day as long as its owner keeps depositing gas in its gas bank. Why after 10 years do cars at home become prohibitively expensive to maintain? The whole scrappage and emissions and NCT thing has a large part to do with it I suppose, but it doesn’t explain why there’s such a lack of interesting or aesthetically pleasing cars on Irish roads. Could it be the inbuilt, much reduced mean time to failure of components nowadays? Car manufacturers under handedly reproducing their lucrative markets every half generation by rolling out paragons of comfort and technology which are programmed to roll over and die after only 10-15 years. Or is it just Irish people’s obsession to drive shiny, new, over obvious symbols of their status as the bright young things of Europe? Something that will always start first time to get you to the back of the traffic jam quicker, a vehicle which will make you look like you’ve arrived even while sitting in a 5 mile tailback. Bring back the Renault 19, the Peugeot 2000, the Ford Cortina. Cars with character, coming in odd, funky colours as standard. Who ever heard of an olive green Lexus with dark red faux leather seats? Or a pastel yellow Avensis? Bizarrely the old model Opel Astra has just recently been launched over here as the Chevrolet Astra. And there’s the Chevrolet Corsa aswell. Similar to the Opel Astra down to the minutest detail except for the branding. Cortinas are called Taunus down here and Taurus in North America.


There’s a load of shitty Fiat 127s still bombing around like the 80s and 90s never happened. And the ominous Ford Falcons – ominous in my mind because I read somewhere that during the dictatorship of the mid 70s and early 80s, the Ford Falcon was the Secret Police’s car of choice to cruise the city streets after dark picking up young agitators, most of them never to be seen again. And then there’s the trucks – dinosaurs exposed to a lifetime’s abuse in the most unforgiving of conditions. But yet they’re still roaring around the city holding their own, hauling everything from sand and gravel to half buildings.


I’m still very much coming to grips with my new camera. Shots I try to make end up looking crap but sometimes, by some fluke of configuration and lighting, something is produced which encourages me to keep trying, that with more practice and theory that the craft will come to prop up the art. But then it makes a complete idiot out of me and I have to start from scratch again. What else? The cult of the dessert – there are several large, very upmarket dessert places over here which are generally packed at all hours with young families, courting couples, and retired old dears – don’t let anyone tell you that Argentina is experiencing economic difficulties. Anyone who can afford to spend $10 on a dessert is doing just fine. The hyper efficient lifer waiter is also a bit of an institution in the cafes over here. Think of that actor from Waking Ned or Sylvie from Glenroe (David Kelly) having spent his entire life working in somewhere like Bewley’s, and as a result can do some serious junior voodoo with one hand like unscrew the top from a bottle of water and pour the water into a glass while holding the glass in the same hand – these guys must have done an apprenticeship straight out of school, they’re so talented. The embarrassment of riches in restaurants, cafes, wine bars. Every city is the same – or at least it’s inhabitants are. They may eat later or earlier, they may be more obvious in their disdain or admiration, they may accept a certain level of hedonism more easily than another city’s inhabitants, they may be more courteous or aggressive whilst navigating the arteries of their adopted or inherited beast - but when it comes down to it, cities everywhere are inhabited by the same species of man woman and child who by their innate actions of protection, aggression, self advancement or benevolence shape their living space making sure to keep us all moving in the same direction. The rich crave further riches. The poor crave to be less poor. Speaking of poor – the kids juggling at traffic lights is an interesting more visually impressive sight than Vancouver’s window washers or those Eastern European people in Dublin with Big Issues. There’s also the depressing sight of plenty of infants on street corners with shaven scalps and bloody scabs looking like the devil just dragged his hoof across their head, forever marking them as unworthy, lesser beings - at least until their industrial strength infestation of cooties clears up.

Puerto Madero (please may I have some Gurr Cake)

The means we’re using to get to grips to this vast unwieldy metropolis is that we basically take a neighbourhood and wander around it for the day getting lost, having lunch and finding out how to get out again. We hit Recoleta on Saturday. Recoleta is probably close enough to the Ballsbridge of BA and it’s centre piece is the famous Recoleta Cemetry. Recoleta has the reputation of being The Manhattan of Cemeteries. The uber exclusive space is at a huge premium – even allowing for the fact that they stack the caskets, very elegantly mind you, one on top of the other.


It’s a bizarre setup where families have tombs (basically large marbled rooms – almost like mini churches) with shelves for each family member. Some of the shelves are filled, others are ominously empty awaiting the passing of the next family member, so they too can go on the pile. Strangely, some of the lesser maintained tombs are used by the cemetery staff to store fertiliser and the forklift of death.

The Forklift Of Death

We saw tiny caskets belonging to babies and we saw the tomb and HUGE casket of Luis Angel Firpo (“The Wild Bull Of The Pampas”), a heavy weight fighter who boxed Jack Dempsey for the Heavy Weight crown in 1923 – he lost but apparently it was a cracking fight. We also learned a lot about Evita (Eva Peron), for example how she died at the very early age 33. The city’s elders refused to have her buried in Recoleta cemetery, burial place of the socially and politically elite (being very rich won’t necessarily cut it – you really have to earn your spot in this place). Evita was a lowly peasant from the provinces who married Juan Peron. Her body actually went missing for 20 years when Peron was deposed – he fled the country neglecting to ensure that her body came with him. The body apparently ended up in Milan and was only repatriated (grudgingly) to Recoleta cemetery when Peron regained power in the mid 70s.

Then on Monday we hit the colourful (in many more ways than one) barrio of La Boca (pronounced La Botcha). Neighbourhoods where scrawny dogs roam free always make me feel a little uneasy. The wandering runts of La Boca are in marked contrast to their canine compadres in Palermo or Recoleta, other more well heeled barrios of BsAs where professional dog walkers (some of them are required to have veterinary qualifications) drag upto 12 well groomed, well bred dogs at a time around the manicured parks for their twice daily walks. Another distinctly Buenos Aires trait is the phenomenal amount of dogshit on the pavements.

Consuela, will yeh take Pat Kenny out for a shite in the street?

Its like the set of All Creatures Great and Small here some days. So very very different than the very anal (ahem) Vancouverite dog owners. It makes wandering around looking at the sights, the architecture, the local wetware, that little bit more difficult because if you take your eyes off the path for more than 2 seconds you’re guaranteed to be up to your oxter (or the strap of your flip flops) in fibre rich, autumn hued dogshit (may contain traces of nuts). I left Maeve to go wandering and spent a good hour floating around (I wish – imagine not having to worry about the dogshit for a while) taking pictures in and around La Bombonera (the chocolate box) – Boca Juniors, (Argentina’s most popular club and South America’s most successful soccer team – also Maradona’s original club and the club where he returned to retire his spare tyre) stadium. The location would remind you of Croke Park, a world class stadium (albeit a little bit more creaky and not in as modern a state of repair as Croke Park – that’s another bizarre thing about having a Summer in the Winter – I keep wanting to turn on the telly to watch the Gaaaah – I’m so confused) suddenly appearing on the horizon from a warren of residential streets in a well dicey area.

"Smile Jesus Loves You" - La Boca

I’ve come to the conclusion that having zero Spanish is actually beneficial if approached by someone who’s trying to scam you or who plans to do you harm. One group of topless chungflas (their Boca Juniors jerseys were in the wash) either wanted to get their hands on my camera or wanted me to take a group photo of them – either way they wanted to engage my attention. Me simply repeating “no entiendo” “sin carne” “papas fritas” “bith-kooit?” and ignoring their attempted communication-by-charades soon exasperated them enough for them to move on, convinced no doubt that I was retarded. I’m pretty sure if we had a shared language they’d have been a bit more feisty and possibly even given me the bumps.

La Boca

An hour or so later, after I’d met back up with M, a cop car pulled up beside us, the two boyos got out and basically told us we should leave the area we were in for our own safety. We had wandered off the tourist path and they could now no longer guarantee our safety. Thinking about that, it’s a pretty strange impression of an area to leave on a tourist. Obviously getting mugged would also leave a bad impression but for the local cops to proactively discourage curious tourists from discovering all their city has to offer, that felt kind of strange. I’d spent the previous hour wandering aimlessly but carefully and hadn’t experienced any overt evilness. There was a decent enough police presence on the street to discourage any random attacks so why they felt the need to tell us that, rather than them have to actually do their jobs effectively and protect us, they’d prefer it we left altogether. We still thanked them profusely (MUCHOS Banshee Bones) but it was a strange encounter.

There’s a zoo around the corner from us aswell, ironically enough on a very well appointed and wide avenue called Avenida del Libretador (liberation avenue). We have the very strange privilege of being able to see the monkeys through the railings as we walk down to the shop (the local Dunne’s is called Disco over here – just poppin’ downt’ Disco) to buy banshee bones and chomps.


They seem to absolutely adore U2 over here aswell – every coffee shop, every shopping centre, every lift banging out the U2 – particularly Achtung Baby and the Joshua Tree. There’s a general preoccupation with late 80s / early 90s music over here – judging primarily by what gets blasted out of parked cars - middle aged sweating bald men in wife beaters tapping their fingers along to “I wanna Break Free” by Queen or random Genesis-ness. Coincidentally, as I write – “Don’t You Want Me Baby” has just come on the speakers in the café, causing this middle aged, sweating man to tap his fingers on the table.

Buenos Bizarres 1 : We’re on an early morning walk in the park up the road from us and we encounter one of the aforementioned dog walkers, stressed to the max with 15 dogs of vastly varying sizes all trying desperately hard to enjoy their exercise. One Labrador, obviously new to the routine and a little bit over excited, keeps wandering behind the dog walker causing all the leads to get mucho tangled and completely pissing him off. This happens twice and the third time the guy stops his whole doggy entourage and punches the Labrador in the face! Don’t let these people babysit your kids is all I have to say.

Join us next time for further editions of Buenos Bizarres and also exclusive to hollowsolid : Papas Fritas and Calvita Peron’s Neighbourhood Watch…….. (I’ve been watching WAY too much shitty cable TV – alarmingly, only some of it in English). Hopefully (for Maeve's sake more than anything else) there'll be far less photos of cars.