Sunday, June 19, 2005

Sources

Forget the tourist offices. Most of them just regurgitate the information in the mags they hand out to tourists. They can't make any recommendations and they definitely don't know the dirt.

An article appeared in the Clarín last week about the city considering training cab drivers to give tours to tourists. Now there's a fucking idea. It doesn't matter what city I'm in, cabbies are always always the best sources of information. From the swank hotels to the dives (and I'm not even going to go into our mad strip club dash around the city last weekend that took us from the $50 entries in Recoleta to the cavernous brothels of Flores), they know everything.

Next best are the newspaper stand owners. They'll tell you how to get from point A to point B and tell you all the cracks in the sidewalk to watch out for along the way. It's amazing. Ask someone for directions, and if they can't tell you (and they always try), they send you to the newspaper kiosk to make sure.

Thursday, June 16, 2005

The Great Patagonian Sweet & Sour Lamb Cake Express

God, I can't keep eating like this. This job is gonna kill me. Every night a new restaurant, every night another plate of rich food. I'm not some restaurant critic who dines out every saturday night for the weekly food section. I gotta bust out reviews for 90 restaurants in the same number of days. Steaks the size of footballs, chicken in blackberry curry, flourless chocolate cake, beef in smoked Spanish pepper sauce, sweet and sour pork, Patagonian lamb pie, mandongo, tripe and sausage locro, sweetbreads, intestines, pork loin in apple saffron sauce, greasy lomitos, fried bananas.... My god. This is just not the path to a healthy life. Which is why Aimee and I chase every meal down with a bottle of red wine. It is my only key to health. If it weren't for the fabulous cheap red wine, I'd probably be dead already. As it is, I'm healthier than most. But whoa, I could sure use some more rice and veggies.

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Futbol

Goddamnit, this soccer thing is driving me crazy. I know I'm just outta the loop, but I can't find a fucking schedule of games for the life of me. The tourist office doesn't know (they just tell you to contact a tour company). The guy at the Boca Juniors museum told me to check the website, which I did, to no avail. I was told to try Ticketec, but a friend told me that you can't get tickets if you're not a club member due to efforts to keep unregistered hooligans out. There's nothing online (at least that I can find), and all the guide books tell you to either go with a local fan (great, all my friends are River, not Boca fans) or contact a tour company which will pick you up and take you for the princely cost of US$35 to US$50 and the pleasure of hanging out with a tour guide. Fuck that.

The way most people get tickets is they go down to the stadium on game day and stand in line out front of that delapidated ticket shack, which I can't imagine being that harry, despite the crowd crush, mounted police and armored cars I experienced at the San Lorenzo stadium four years ago. Nah man, it's way to sketchy, the guide books say. I just don't believe it can be that sketchy. You're in town for a day, there's a game on and you wanna go on your own. Why not? I'm calling the stadium tomorrow to find out the next game and I'm going down to La Boca in a taxi and I'm gonna get in line. I wonder if Aimee will be game. We won't even sit in the populares (which was two hours of total insanity at San Lorenzo), we'll get platea. Uuuh, I'll keep ya posted.

Monday, June 13, 2005

Brute Force

I don't even know how to begin to explain what we saw on Saturday night. Cirque de Soleil on acid? Crowching Tiger meets a Bjork video? An SRL wet dream? By the time they lowered the 40- by 40-foot seethrough water-covered plastic tarpeline over our heads, with four soaking wet, pajama-clad women diving across the plane of water inches above us, we were out of our minds. Well, I was at least. A man running through us, through shattering planes of dreams and nightmares? Waves of silver celophane and sommersaulting dreamers? Forget it. It's not even possible. I've just never seen creativity and imagination so insanely realized. Did they really do all that for us? I guess Fuerzabruta pretty much rocked my world.

Saturday, June 11, 2005

Laughin' on Tuesday

I got this beautiful email from my friend Isa, who's from BA but has been living in London for several years. She ran down a long list of things she missed about Argentina, one of which hit the nail on the fucking head for me. I gotta quote ya, Isa: ''people that don't care to much about being successful and can have a laugh on a tuesday afternoon.'' And goddamnit, that's what it's all about. Laughin' on a Tuesday afternoon! Cheers to that.

Millionare Club

Party in a mansion?! Ha-aay! This place rocks! We went to Milión last night, a bar in a four story mansion. Holy shit. Story goes that the kids of the original owners inherited the place and felt like partying. Thank god! Cafe on the first floor, dining room on the second, along with a bar in the living room and a DJ spinnin, and loungey lounge in all the adjoining rooms. Art everywhere. Up the winding wooden staircase again to the upper level and wander between the rooms where everyone's chillin, listening to the killer tunes. Back down stairs out to the terrace, down the giant marble steps to the back garden, through the garden to another chillout room with wierd light projections on the walls. Makes you wanna go crazy!

Friday, June 10, 2005

OK, how 'bout a big Hee Haw for the Burro!
Oh man, and the street performers? These guys were bustin' out the tango in San Telmo like nobody's buisness.
Man, BA has some outstanding public art. This sculpture just blew me away. Now that's a party. There goes Rome!
Here's the opposite side. Damn, If I were gonna be cast in stone, I might as well go like this! Sure looks better than Han Solo did.
The other one was cool, but this one's just straight up wierd!!
Man, yesterday was rough. Nobody told me they had rattlesnakes on the estancias out here, but goddamn if I didn't have a close run-in with one! Posted by Hello

Pig Out?

Man, I gotta quit wearin' the Pig Shirt. I just can't get the respect I need when I have it on. I go into the Sofitel hotel, one of the chichiest digs in town, and the receptionist just looks at me, blank-faced. I can tell she's trying not to stare at the pig on my chest. But I gotta get in here and wander around the lobby and see the bars and get up into the rooms. They aren't gonna let some chump with a flying pig on his shirt up there.

I gotta tell 'em what I'm doing, or else there's no seeing the rooms. So I tell 'em I'm writing a travel guide and this and that and she still looks at me. She's got better things to do. So she finally get's some suited up kid, after asking for my card, to show me around the hotel.

Well, once you get past the reception, everything opens up. The bellhops or whatever you call those people that see you to your room or whatever, they're great. They don't give a rat's ass what you're up to. And they'll give you the truth. That's when you start poppin' the questions, askin' to see other rooms and shit.

We're wandering around the hotel and we're up on the upper mezanine looking down over the lobby, the big pillars, and this guy in a suit runs up the stairs and asks me to please come down to the lobby to meet the PR guy. I guess the business card got passed around. So the PR guy turns out to be this young man who's traveled all over Asia and Europe and is thrilled to shoot the shit with me. Now we're talking. Into the Jockey Club, out with the espresso and cookies, and I've got more information comin' at me than I ever wanted. Oh, there's a private cocktail party tonight? Really? Yeah, but come however you want, he says, come in that. Come in this! The Pig Shirt? I can go to the Sofitel private cocktail party in the pig shirt!

Goddamn I love this shirt. I ain't ever givin' it up.

Thursday, June 09, 2005

Style Council: Mulletmania

Wow, I've never seen so many mullets in my life! Everyone's got 'em here. Guys, gals, kids - I even saw a dog with a mullet. I hate to admit it, but man, they're hot! And I'm not talking about the chumps on Two Wheel Tuesday who sport the extreme mullets (buzzed head, horsetail back), but the new mullets: you know, a little longer, more playful on the sides and top, and all messed up. Six months and the gals back home are gonna be sportin' em too, I guarantee it. The hip huggers hit BA long before the states, and now look! So if you wanna be ahead of the game, go out and get one now!

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Burrecommendations

SOUND
Kevin Johansen + the Nada - Modern Leonard Cohen meets Argentine folk? Tom Waits after too much mate? I don't know, but you gotta get Sur o no sur. It's half in English, half Spanish (he's Argentine but lived in New York) and just sooooo goddamn groovey.