Sometimes, no matter how good life is going, you still step in dog crap
As I was walking into my apartment building, I thought something smelled like crap.
First I looked around to see if someone had taken a crap somewhere nearby, or maybe the porter’s dog had forgotten to take a walk. I saw nothing.
I went into the elevator and still smelled it, so I started to smell myself. Still nothing.
I walk into my apartment and I still smell crap. Now it’s a real mystery here, until my host mom tells me that I had dog crap on my shoes. Looked at one, nothing really, but the other, it was all over the front toe.
So I go out onto the balcony and start cleaning the crap off, but the smell is starting to get to me. For those who don’t know, I can gag easily. One of the hardest moments of my life was cleaning out the slop sink in my fraternity’s kitchen after renovations. There were maggots. I had to flush a little bit of water in, then leave. Recover, come back a few minutes later.
One time, cleaning out a trash barrel in the dining hall of my fraternity, there was mold at the bottom. I brought the trash outside, puked.
Yeah, my fraternity sounds like it’s some kind of shithole right now after just these two paragraphs, but trust me it isn’t. It’s a beautiful place, one of the best facilities in the Northeast. But what do you expect to happen when you put around 45 guys into their own house with no authorities making sure that they maintain healthy living conditions. It is getting better, but the prep kitchen on Monday mornings is still one of the most horrific things I’ve ever seen. And I used to have to clean it.
Anyways, here I was cleaning dog crap off my shoes on a balcony on the seventh floor of an apartment building in Buenos Aires at around 9 pm. And honestly, this was the only bad thing to happen to me all week. I’m just gonna have to wait for it to dry more before I can really start to clean them.
Saturday I met up with a friend and set off to a trendy shopping district where I would find a shoe store that I found out about at home. I used to not understand the fascination with shoes. I mean for girls, maybe. They get into all sorts of weird clothing fixations. But guys salivating over a pair of nikes?
However, something about these shoes, which are hand-made, made out of leather, and based on vintage American sports sneakers, just got me excited. Plus, Lonely Planet said that they were relatively affordable.
We walked through our neighborhood, past a bar district that we frequent, down cobble stone streets that still held the cracked remains of an old trolley line. It was easy to see how this neighborhood, described by Borges admiringly as a place full of adventure and both great and horrible to grow up in, had changed though.
Knife fights in the streets between immigrants speaking a diverse range of dialects have given away to tourists buying designer clothes in mostly English, maybe a little bit of French. Tango bars and dens of villainy have given way to bars full of obnoxious American students (us) and dens of, I don’t know, something that fits into this sentence to make some cool figurative language.
But yet, the neighborhood still has charm. Lights hang over the street, strung under a canopy. An enormous arts fair winds its way up and down each street, alley, and avenue with the many squares serving as centers.
I found my way to the shoe store and had to be admitted by a doorbell. First bad sign. I got in, and it as much smaller than I expected yet very elegantly furnished. Second bad sign. Other than me, only a well dressed foreigner was browsing. Third bad sign. Prices started at 390 pesos and ran to 900. Time to leave. And after watching the Lonely Planet travel show and seeing their hosts, I thought it was all aimed at trendy, vaguely European, young independent travelers on a budget. Guess not.
We met up with a few more friends and continued our exploring. Which meant for the most part I watched them try on clothes at every little bizarre boutique that met their fancy.
I was able to occupy and entertain myself with the different quirks of each store. One seemed like it was out of the Backstreet Boys Larger than life music video with wide space-age concrete ramps that extended outwards in some bizarre display of visual illusion. I felt like a moon-man in there.
I also entertained myself with observing a variety of distinct seats in each store. Space age store had things that were weirder to sit in then those egg-shaped chairs. Some frilly boutique that sold things that looked like from a thrift store had an oversize red ottoman. One place had a bed. Another had a ladder.
The final thing that occupied me was the diverse display of hot store workers.
After this, we went to do a man’s thing, eat at the best steak house in the city.
Of course, like any great place where you show up unannounced, there was a long wait. But here, the wait came with champagne. This also meant that we would end up eating at the normal Argentine time of around 10.
We waited at a bar next door with an elaborate visual theme. What do Salvador Dali, Malcolm X, Fatty Arbuckle, and Madonna have in common? All had pictures on the wall here. Along with what seemed like toilet paper streamers coming down from the ceiling and Chinese lanterns on each table and post cards of Basque Country on the walls and god knows what other crap. Talk about taking random crap on the walls to a new level.
The ambience worked somehow. There was a dart board, and I just started idly throwing them at the board. A Frenchman started playing when I finished. I challenged him.
Like billiards, I win not on any skill at all, but on the other guy losing. When I play pool, 9 times out of 10, the other guy sinks the 8-ball in the wrong hole. Darts, the same thing. The other guy just can’t get to 150 exactly.
So we continued, as he steadily gained ground and I snailed along, sometimes hitting the section that I actually aimed for.
The count continued climbing downwards and I continued to give off quite the spectacle. Eh.
Finally, I got down to his 2 with a 1. He beat me.
No matter, I went over to his table and met him and his friends and found out that they were leaving the next day to backpack in Bolivia after being here for two weeks.
Behind them sat a map of Argentina and I looked at it, noticing how far south Ushashia was. Ushashia is the most southern city in the world, or something like that and the “gate” to Tierra del Fuego, the province of the country literally at the end of the world.
Just imagine sitting on a beach, looking out over the ocean, knowing that out there somewhere was Antarctica. Talk about the limits of adventure.
Theres a book and movie called Into the Wild, the story about a college grad who gave up his life to hitch-hike across the country with the ultimate goal of reaching Alaska. Needless to say the guy was a selfish dick to leave everyone from his life behind, an idiot for not learning anything about plants in Alaska that he might eat that might possibly kill him, and without a doubt insane.
However, his story holds amazing relevance for many people. Pretty much the ultimate case of wanderlust.
However, what happens when you reach the edge of how far you can wander? I would say the most Southern point of the Americas can count as one of those places.
Once you reach there, you can come back and explore all the fabulous stuff in between and that you’ve seen on the journey to that point. Reaching Ushashia gives me that type of opportunity with not an iota of the idiocy of the guy in the book.
We got back to the restaurant and in the last ten minutes of the wait I chatted up a group of Australians who work for Qantas airlines. Every few days, they’re somewhere else in the world. They were proud of the Qantas record of being the second longest continuously flying airline and not having a single accident. I asked about the pressures of piloting (two of them definitely had a piloty look to them). They told me they were ground crew. I also might have asked them if they’re ever afraid of crashing on some crazy island in the Pacific with time travel and polar bears and smoke monsters and hatches and creepy bug-eyed guys named Ben Linus. They reiterated the company’s record. But I did get a laugh from one of them.
We were seated and promptly treated to a diverse range of tastes and flavors. We started with palm heart salad, which also had avocado and tomato this creamy aioli dressing. And French fries.
The breads came with a selection of sauces from olive to sun dried tomato to a whole garlic that we took cloves out of.
Then the steak.
It was red, it was juicy, it was full of flavor that only increased when we dipped the meat in its own selection of sauces. Don’t ask me what they were, all I know was each hit my mouth with a completely different sensation that didn’t overpower the taste of the steak.
We also got a bottle of the same Malbec that we had the week prior. Needless to say crazy conceptual discussions happened and I realize now that I should probably swear of red wine. It makes me contemplative and meditative, two things which I already am to a bad degree. I over think a lot. Conversation with the red wine pushes me to bring my mind to philosophical levels that honestly scare me. I over think over thinking. A great conversation over a bottle of red wine can really make you push your intellectual boundaries, but I wouldn’t recommend it frequently.
My traveling partners from the day checked out for the night and I met up with another group at a bar around the corner.
So at this point I was at about four glasses of sparkly (as the Aussies call it), half a liter of Quilmes, and four glasses of wine.
After resetting myself after a shot of whiskey (use your imagination to guess what I mean by resetting), I started on a liter of Stella.
I’ve finally learned that you’re better drinking beer if you plan on steady drinking over the course of the night as opposed to mixed drinks. Providing you drink a beer that you like, you can get a few glasses down quickly and easily and maintain it through the night with a glass here or there. It’s much, safer, smarter, and cheaper.
I know this sounds obvious to a lot of my readers, but if anyone’s gone out with me, you know my tab is a steady stream of Cuba Libres.
From here, we took a cab across the city to a party being thrown at a theater by someone’s host mom. My cabmate got the idea to bet with the other cab who’d cross the city first.
The ride was a perfectly simulated perceived adventure. As our silent but efficient driver cruised down Avenida de Julio (the widest avenue in the world), towards the Obelisk that stands at the center of the city, surrounded by a Times Square like variety of electronic billboards, and taking a turn down a quiet looking street; I felt adventure.
We arrived just before the other cab, thanks to our driver cutting the other cab off (plus the other driver was jamming out in his car to Nirvana, so he obviously wasn’t focusing on being first) and made our way through what looked like an abandoned store front.
After paying a cheap cover, we walked into a theater space, at the front of which a singer who epitomized the funky, independent, spunky, yet sorta dangerous and very sexy. She was also wearing leather shorts.
Her band played well and she had a great voice. Behind them a video screen played the following assortment of images, some of which had quirky cartoon changes on them. Adam West’s Batman doing the thing from YTMND (my friends from home know what I’m talking about, but for everyone else, ), Mr. T., Juan Peron, a vampire, Pele, the other members of the A-Team, George Bush, and so many other things.
After a can of Quilmes, we checked out of here, crossed Julio into the center of the city, where we ended at Fusion. After dancing for a bit (even though most dance floor dancing hardly counts as dancing by 90% of the population), I checked out.
Got a cab and went home.
The next day was spent at the rural exhibition with a friend. La Rural is pretty much a National version of a State-Fair. You walk in and you’re instantly thrown into a crowd (especially considering today was the last day of it). On each side are faux-pampas (the plains wilderness where the mythical Argentine cowboys, the Gauchos, come from) stands selling assorted dulce de leche pastries along with cured meats and cheeses.
By the way, before I go any further, I should probably explain dulce de leche. Really creamy carmel. Imagine the best roasted marshmellow you’ve ever had.
After this, we found ourselves in a valley, surrounded by glistening tractors on each side. Scattered around were different vendors representing clothes, tourism, and other crap.
The food stands overlooked a giant vacant hole which was lined with 50 story condo and apartment buildings. The image for some reason struck me as so distinctly South American, but this fair was showing me how much we do stereotype this continent.
Argentina is distinctly Italian influenced. The most Spanish thing about their culture is the language. Everything else, pizza and other Italian cuisine sold on every corner. The café culture straight out of continental Europe. People’s heritage, the music, the dancing, so much of it Italian.
Yet, the Gaucho culture on display at the fair showed a deep similarity with the American fascination with its Wild West.
The exhibition halls held either farm animals and horses or giant corporate displays. Coca-Cola smiled down at me comfortingly from almost everywhere. Outside of the US, you really see how little market share Pepsi actually has. Ford was another major sponsor of the event. But just as visible were Galicia bank and La Nacion newspaper, two distinctly Argentine corporations.
We grabbed dulce de leche straddles, a perfect combination of flaky baklava and savory dulce, and made our way to the exit and stumbled upon a concert going on.
The lead singer, attired in distinctly pampas but not gaudy Gaucho clothing, lead his band in what seemed like folk music, but had a bit of a bad-ass tinge to it.
Then, the crowd started opening up as two young people went into the middle, produced handkerchiefs from their pocket and started passionately dancing in a manner that seemed stereotypically “Latin Hot-Blooded”. Then I looked to my right and saw a new circle formed, this one around two older people, dressed in gaudy Gaucho, dancing their own loving rhythm. Their moves matched the young people in the other circles perfectly, even with their bodies being 50 years older.
Then the other circle had a father leading his kids in a similar dance. Then another couple joined the other circle, again, somehow also producing elaborate handkerchiefs that were used as tools of seduction in their acting out of the courses of love through their footsteps and the way they teased each other with the rest of their body.
And so it continued as the band swung into tunes that explored deeper and deeper into the pantomimes being put on by the dancers.
They came in and out of the crowd, which forced me to chuckle at the idea that seemingly everyone, of all ages and body types down here, knows the art of seduction through passionate acts of dance and at any moment people could whip handkerchiefs out and start dancing through the streets.
It got darker and the crowd got larger. Someone jumped onto the stage with a harmonica and joined in with the band. The singer took a break and opened the mic for people to share jokes. A little girl came up and said something that made everyone burst out laughing and someone who looked like her mother look flustered. I think it was a dirty joke.
The band was playing near the exit and attracted more and more city folk who wanted to continue their fantasy trip to the pampas. Past where we were, which also happened to be the entrance, corporations smiled down from every wall and stall.
There were no independent leather artisans come in from their villages to sell hand made goods, only several kiosks run by a company that an employee proudly told me has 136 locations across the country.
While the food was native to the country, it was served with a Coca (as they call it down here).
John Deere sold a vicious looking thing with hundreds of spinning blades that looked like they could make short work of a Nebraska corn field.
But here, here where people stayed on, stayed before they left and the fair was gone for another year, here was something authentic. Here they danced, they sang, they stomped, they joked, and here was where the culture of the Gaucho was most prevalent. Where people were smiling the most.
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