Today was the big game between Boca and River, the Superclásico.
I'm very meta. Rather than watching the game, I watched people watch the game. It's always a kick to walk around the city during big matches and see every bar and cafe with a television positively packed -- very often standing room only.
And then there are the spillover crowds.
Some people can't even fit into the bar. Or maybe they don't want to spend the money. The cafe across the street from the following photo had a sign warning patrons that the minimum consumption during the game was 5 pesos -- that's nearly 2 U.S. dollars!
Rakish globetrotter Joel, in his waning days here in Buenos Aires, has taken a final shot at appearing on the blog. While I would normally resist such transparent attempts at manipulation, I have to say, his is an admirable bid.
He asked me the other day what they were saying in a Ford commercial and I had to point out that my go-go schedule of blogging, drinking coffee and taking pictures of meat did not allow me a lot of time to watch television.
Fortunately, thanks to the Internet, we can all watch commercials whenever we want!
The short monologue at the end is as follows:
Una flor que se marchita, una paloma con cuello ortopédico
y un tema franela te pueden hacer replantear
un montón de cosas, pero ¡que no te confundan!*
You may have to rewatch the beginning of the commercial to make sense of the first three lines.** I am not in love with the idea of posting commercials here, but since I already have, I should note that it rewards repeat viewing. This is a deeply weird spot.
For example, those socks he tosses on the fire . . . where did those come from? Exactly.
*A withering flower, a dove with an orthopedic collar, and an overwrought love song can make you rethink a lot of things. But don't let yourself get confused.
**UPDATE: Thanks, Juan. I have one question regarding tema franela. I am aware of the literal definition of franela ("flannel") but my lunfardo (Buenos Aires slang) dictionary says it can also mean someone who goes to a whorehouse and is too cheap to pay for a prostitute. So is this referring to a warm, comfortable song or a cheap love song?
Cafes are very much a part of life here. Many of them — especially the older, more traditional ones — are staffed by people for whom waiting tables is a lifelong profession.
I'm reluctant to generalize, but it's hard to escape the idea that people here are both fiercely proud of this city and incredibly down on it at the same time.
I am often asked, with utter puzzlement, why I would choose to live here if I am from the United States. Don't even get me started on the ease with which people refer to this as the Third World, or remind me that I am not in the First World.
The last time Starbucks came up among my friends here, someone mentioned that they had stores in Chile and that rumor was they would soon be on this side of the Andes.
Someone raised an eyebrow and pronounced herself skeptical: "This isn't exactly Chile."*
Starbucks made Clarín the other day under the headline "Starbucks backs dulce de leche." Any article about the States automatically has potential to be amusing because it can feel like you're reading dispatches from Mars. Take the new beverage Starbucks has introduced -- please!
The push for this spring is the Dulce de leche Frapuccino, which sells for $4.50 a glass. A true caloric bomb, this star product intends to lend Starbucks Latin American authenticity.
In their search for authentic dulce de leche, Starbucks visited Costa Rica and Gautemala, but, curiously, did not visit South America, cradle of dulce de leche.
So, basically, you're paying 14 pesos a pop for this beverage and Starbucks couldn't even be arsed to provide you with authentic dulce de leche. I mean, let's face it. Costa Rica? A fine place, I am sure. But it isn't exactly Argentina.
* This is the same friend who, when we met up for my birthday the other day, was the first to arrive. While we chatted, she stopped me for a second to ask, "You've been speaking a lot of English lately, haven't you?" I said that I had been. "Mmm. . . I thought so. You sound a little funny." Hey, thanks!
It strengthens domestic industry, feeds the economy, nurtures employment. Meat* makes us strong.
Let's first turn back the page to ten days ago when an article appeared in Clarín under the headline: "The Church reminds us that eating meat in Holy Week is not a sin." The price of fish was up 40% this year over last and the church felt it was important to reassure people that if you had to choose between going to the poorhouse and eating meat, you should eat meat.
The spokesman for the archdiocese of Mendoza was quoted as saying that for eating beef, "no one would go to hell."
Maybe so. But you may have to go through hell to get the beef.
After a long Lenten season of meat deprivation for (some of) the faithful, meat was finally going to be back on the menu Monday. But Saturday's news delivered an ominous warning: Supermarkets might experience meat shortages on Monday.**
Today the news hit the paper: the shortage had materialized. In the refrigerated section of one large supermarket, instead of meat, shoppers found a sign:
Dear customers: Please excuse the lack of beef. This is due to the fact that our providers do not wish to sell at the prices suggested by the Government.
Meanwhile, at the supermarket today there was only weird milk. And I'm not talking about milk in bags. I'm talking about iron- and vitamin C-fortified milk that always tastes a little funny. No normal milk. And there was a sign saying that my purchase of milk was limited to six liters because of supplier difficulties.
It's also worth noting that, despite higher prices and shortages, meat consumption continues to rise.
I guess what I'm saying is, if you have a cow you're not using, would you kindly send it to Argentina? Thank you.
* I have always enjoyed the honesty with which Spanish refers to meat, by using the term "flesh." ** Fortunately, only 30% of people buy their meat at the supermarket, with the rest preferring to buy from the neighborhood butcher.
Ojo de bife al grill con papas rotas, mini provoleta de cabra y chimichurri
I don't see any way I couldn't have eaten meat on April 6, given that it was both my 30th birthday and Good Friday. I was a longtime but increasingly half-assed vegetarian who had spent two years in a country revered for and singularly obsessed with its meat.
It was only a matter of time.
About 3pm, I sat down in the enclosed back patio of Bar Uriarte. The restaurant is minimalist, full of dark wood and clean lines. The service is not at all stuffy, but meticulous. I remember noticing on one of my first visits that when people finished their meals and left the table, the staff came by and measured the distance from the chair to the table, and from one table to another. Everything had to be just so.
The patio was beautiful. The bread basket came, as it always does, with a small pale-green pool of rosemary-infused olive oil. Staring into the oil, you could see the trees overhead reflected.
When I ordered my steak, I thought I heard a slight catch in the waitress' voice as she repeated the order back to me. Was she astonished that I was squandering 10 years of half-assed vegetarianism? That I was ordering meat on Good Friday? That I could order a steak in such flawless, lilting Spanish?
At a table a few yards away, a Portuguese-speaking couple went over the menu practically line by line with the waitress, trying to figure out what wasn't meat. ("The mollejas?" "No, those are the glands of a cow.")
At another table, two French women babbled quietly in silky tones.
A table of 10 sat down. It was half Spaniards (with their "tiós" and "¡hombres!") and half Argentines (with their "si vos pensás").
I had a few sips of Flecha de los Andes Malbec. It was rich, all inky and concentrated.
When the plate came, I ate a potato and cut the steak in half to see what I was dealing with. I stared at it a moment, grabbed my knife and went to town.
I'm guessing both of you reading this have eaten a steak before. So what else is there to say? Especially on a blog ostensibly about Argentina and not about, say, my eating quirks and proclivities.
I will say in all seriousness that the meal has made me feel slightly more connected. Food is important to understanding a place and its people, and extraordinarily important to me besides.
I don't really see myself eating a lot of meat in the near future. But I'm glad I ate this steak.
Nico Alligator deserves some attention. What does that have to do with putting him on my blog? Good question. But it can't hurt, right?
He's a sculptor creating people, insects, dogs, etc. out of scrap metal, auto parts, bicycle wheels, etc. Appropriately, his "gallery" is a giant garage in Palermo, an area that was once given over to mechanics and body shops but is now full of boutiques, restaurants and galleries.
Sure, you could make a list like this for every city and I don't generally go in for such lists, but this one is pretty great.
Highlights:
You can, at all times, find a heladería within 3 blocks
In your barrio, there are more people on the streets at 3am than 3pm
You generally communicate better in gestures than actually conversing
You know the attractive women all over Palermo Hollywood are really men, but that's OK
A bar at a car wash, a Kosher McDonald's, and a Museo del Jamón all seem to make sense, somehow
You eat sandwiches without crusts, pizza with a knife and fork and empanadas with your fingers*
Your swear words include colorful descriptions of the birthing process and the private parts of a parrot
You know all the parts of a cow and you're not a butcher or a veterinarian
*Eating pizza with your hands? TOTAL foreigner move. Also, plunging your face into your ice cream cone instead of using the provided spoon? Why not just drape an American flag across your back?
This new building down the street is a pastry school, part of the STPCPHYA.
To unravel that string of letters: It's the cake bakers, candy makers, pizza makers, ice cream makers and alfajor makers union.
What's an alfajor? There are variations on the theme, but it's essentially a dulce de leche cookie sandwich. Because I do not have one at hand, this linked photo that I did not take will have to suffice.
I am supposed to get a batch of homemade alfajores with my vegetable delivery tomorrow. They are not strictly speaking vegetables, true, but they do provide 100% of your recommended daily serving of dulce de leche.
On 24 March, Argentina marked the 31st anniversary of the military coup 1976. The date was first celebrated as a holiday last year, having been declared a holiday only a few days before in a bizarre last-minute frenzy of populism. The name of the holiday is Día Nacional de la Memoria por la Verdad y la Justicia, which works out to the rather Orwellian sounding National Memorial Day for Truth and Justice.
Monday's Falkland Islands holiday and the military coup holiday of 24 March are very much related. The dictatorship that came to power in March of 1976 is the same institution that launched the Falklands invasion in April of 1982. It was a cynical attempt to hold onto power by distracting the country from a crumbling economy.
Days after the Falkland Islands war was finished in June 1982, the military dictatorship was over.
Maybe it's been a while since you thought about the Falkland Islands.
I think about them every day. This country won't let me forget.
Two blocks from me is an ice cream shop named after the Falklands (Malvinas in Spanish). When I take a bus, I'm likely to see signs declaring the islands belong to Argentina. When I had some bookshelves made at the carpenter* down the street, the receipt I got had "The Falklands are Argentine!" stamped on the top of it. At least one soccer stadium and town bear the name Malvinas argentinas.
You may have some hazy, Thatcher-tinged memory of the Falkland Islands War. Here "Malvinas argentinas" is not a distant memory, it's very much a present-day rallying cry — or propaganda campaign, depending on how you look at it.
Today is a national holiday. Twenty-five years ago, the military junta in Argentina ordered the invasion of the Falkland Islands, a British dependency. When it was all over, 258 died on the British side. On the Argentine side, 649 died.
*Yes, I live in a medieval village. I have a cobbler two doors down, a carpenter around the corner and two tailors in a two-block radius. All that's missing is the hooper.
I suppose it was bound to happen eventually. Are Internet pirates trying to capitalize on the wild popularity of TWFEB? Some who have tried to access the site have seen not the page they have grown to love, but rather this:
I don't know quite what to say. Except that for anyone who hopes to get more eyeballs on their propaganda by hijacking this page, the joke is pretty much on them.
p.s. No, this is not an April Fools joke on my part. Come on, I could do better than this.
On Thursday night, Buenos Aires held a noche de las librerías, where the booksellers row section of Avenida Corrientes was closed to car traffic. Debates and readings were held in the shops that line the street. I went to none of the debates or readings. I did, however, see a man on stilts drinking mate.
Yesterday, at the "dollar store" a few doors from my apartment, I noticed a basket sitting by the cash register. It was clearly reserved for impulse-buy items, where you might see gum or candy in the States. Here, the basket was filled with the metal straws with which you drink mate.
