coypu de soja

Luchando Por El Metal

2009-03-18T10:53:00.003-03:00

Here is something I (Stuart) wrote about the greatest Argentine heavy metal band, V8, whose first LP I picked up in Buenos Aires during our visit. This piece was originally published on Bidhardcore, a site dedicated to quick reviews of records that are on auction at the moment on eBay. It's directed toward the record-collector audience of that site.

V8 was the first true heavy metal band from Argentina and arguably the first from South America. Like the classic Argentine punk band Los Violadores, V8’s first LP was released by the independent label Umbral in 1983. “Luchando Por El Metal” is a landmark record, and it’s a shame it is not more well-known outside Argentina. It’s such a classic in Argentina that one can hardly walk down the street without encountering headbangers pledging allegiance to V8 (pronounced VAY-OH-CHO).

The online heavy metal archive site Encyclopaedia Metallum is full of effusive praise for V8, as is the South American metal history site Metaleros, which includes a great history of the band and Argentine metal in general. To really understand where the band was coming from, you need to know about Argentine guitar god Pappo, whom I’ll get to in a minute, but this riff-driven LP really just sounds like a mixture of Motörhead and Judas Priest, with a dash of Black Sabbath. It’s not NWOBHM, it’s FWOAHM. Some of the faster (and better) songs even have a feeling akin to metal-influenced UK hardcore of the early 80s, unfortunately minus Discharge’s drumbeat. Think GBH. (Fans of Canada’s Inepsy would probably love this record.) The production is perfect for this type of music, without any fancy embellishment: guitars prominent, bass drum and vocals next in line.

“Luchando Por El Metal” is not particularly rare because thousands were pressed, but it had zero distribution outside Latin America when it was released as far as I know. Also, Argentines do not have much of a collecting culture, meaning “mint” in Argentina is quite different from “mint” here in the land of Puritanism, and the flimsy stock used for the jacket doesn’t lend itself to durability. In addition, one listen to this LP will demonstrate why it tends to be in “partied-on” condition. It’s a ripper.

Like Los Violadores’ first LP, “Luchando Por El Metal” includes a printed inner sleeve with lyrics. And what lyrics they are! True headbanging fanatics will derive great pleasure, if not goosebumps, from songs like “Brigadas Metálicas,” “Tiempos Metálicos” (lyrics: “Basta de hippies / basta de rogar / estalló el tiempo del metal”), and “Hiena de Metal”—yes, Hyena of Metal! About that last one, which closes the album, V8 collaborated with their hero Pappo on this one (he plays the solo), which I found surprising because it’s the shortest and fastest tune on the record. It actually reminds me of Chelsea’s guest solo on that one Selfish song, if that helps: the whole band concept was inspired by this virtuoso and when he collaborated with them on a song, he threw a curve ball, unlike anything he’d done before. Anyway, the lyrics, as far as my rudimentary grasp of Spanish tells me, combine the dumb dark “poetry” typical to metal since Sabbath with cheeky irreverence, as in the song about a visit to a torturador known as the dentist! (In a country where people were actually being tortured and killed by the military dictatorship, such a joke probably came across as tasteless to both sides.)

To digress on Pappo (né Norberto Napolitano), who died in a motorcycle crash in 2005, this guy was without peer. He was a hero to millions, especially those who saw him as a working-class rocknroll outsider type, the perpetual underdog. He released over a dozen LPs and even more singles throughout his career, which began in the late 1960s. His group Pappo’s Blues, which released seven albums in the 1970s, was a pioneering hard-rock/psych/heavy blues-rock act. In 1977, he formed Aeroblus, another heavy blues-rock band. And in 1980, influenced by AC/DC, he formed Riff, which is the band of greatest interest to me. (I haven’t heard all of what he released, but Riff seems better than either of the previous bands.) Veering more toward heavy metal, away from blues rock, Riff is a band quite worthy of its name. Fans of riff-centric rocknroll would do well to check them out (obviously). I saw a few copies of their records in Buenos Aires; the first, “Ruedas de Metal,” is pretty cool. Don’t pay much more than US $20 for it because thousands of copies were pressed. Psych collectors seem to think that Pappo’s Blues Vol. 3 is the most desirable of his 70s albums, but it doesn’t move me much. Vol. 7 from 1978 was recommended to me as much heavier than Vol. 3, but this one seems to have some sort of “Southern” rock influence, with a bunch of slide guitar. It’s got some cool, slow riffs, but overall it’s not really heavy or ballsy in comparison to what was happening in the UK or Australia at the time. Headline: “Southern rock meets the southern cone: Scumbags rejoice, ride motorcycles, drink maté.” Oh yeah, most Pappo’s Blues songs are instrumentals. You’ve been warned.

Anyway, if you’re not ready to delve too far into Argentine 70s–80s rock, the only records you need from this site’s perspective are V8’s and Los Violadores’ first LPs. “Luchando Por El Metal” is on eBay relatively frequently for buy-it-now prices around $80. That’s too much, in my opinion. But I say you ignore this record at your own peril. One listen and you too will become a hiena de metal.

Wacky Bs As

2008-06-24T19:24:00.003-03:00

Lest you all think that we've been sitting at home footnoting research papers and having post-structural debates about memorialization this whole vacation, we wanted to share some of the hilarity we've come upon in the last couple of weeks:

So, it's winter here. We have the (meager) heat on whenever we're home. Which is an OPEN FLAME. Luckily, there has been no dog-singeing thus far:

Yes, there is a window open at all times, so we don't die of carbon monoxide poisoning. Yes, this defeats the purpose of having the heat on. Welcome to Argentina.

Um, and we're a long way from Mexico. That soup below?

Bowl-o-enchiladas. They were good, though.

And I can't imagine what a spectacle it created when they drove this Argentina-themed tank to its spot on display:

Especially given that you can still see the tank tracks in the pavement. I wonder if the bus tried to cut him off when he slowed to turn into the military base.

One animal we overlooked in our zoo post was this giant freaking turtle:

Who had clearly eaten some of this food, but then just backed in and sat-the-fuck-down. Maybe out of spite for the other giant freaking turtle? But he sure as hell wasn't moving.

Oh, right, and we haven't spent EVERY waking moment in the house researching rare Argentine records. Sometimes, we play ping-pong:

Um, and drink beer.

Oh! And we haven't been snapping photos only of anti-capitalist graffiti. Sometimes, there is such heartfelt sentiment written on a bridge, you can't help yourself.

Yes, it says, "Love is blind. -Ray Charles."

Then, just when we're starting to get homesick, we run into this, in Belgrano:

Why go back to New York, when you can get a burger and a coke in the Chrysler Building right here?

Sadly, though, the sun glinting off the Chrysler-replica caused pain for more than just us Neoyorquinos:

Even the dogs in Belgrano gotta shield their eyes from that shit. He do look cool, though.

And then we stumbled across Buenos Aires' only religious-themed amusement attraction: Tierra Santa. Sadly, it was closed. But we enjoyed ourselves at the Lord's expense nonetheless:

Dude all the way to the left looked a little suspect. Personally, I don't know if there were any elephant seals in Bethlehem or whatever, but he looked chill, so we hung out for awhile.

Everyone from our hosts to the guidebooks told us that biking in this town would be absurdly difficult. But it's not, if you're willing to ignore that fact that no one drives in a lane, red lights mean nothing, and the way to get through an intersection is to get there first and play chicken with the oncoming traffic until someone either 1) passes or 2) crashes. (Before we started riding bikes everywhere, we were very nearly killed in taxis on multiple occasions.) Oh, and also, the few bike paths that exist look like this:

But there are plenty of bikers out and about in Buenos Aires. Like this guy, who clearly needs these aero-wheels for his grocery run:

Or this guy, whose entourage of dogs could fend off any taxi:

And then, after a long ride through the bustling city, dodging buses and breathing in diesel fumes, Argentines and their best friends can look forward to a delicious frozen meal:

Turismo anti-imperialista?

2008-06-23T10:41:00.001-03:00

We enjoyed a long and lovely dinner of empanadas and Argentine wine with former Naclista Eduardo Joly the other night. In addition to Eduardo, the guests included other members of REDI, the Red por los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad (Network for the rights of the disabled): Eduardo, who uses a wheelchair; his wife, Silvia, an architect who has written the book on urban spaces and disability in Argentina; Marilu and Facundo, two lawyers who also use wheelchairs; Carolina, a blind psychologist; and Pamela, a deaf Chilean student at the University of Chicago. We were so privileged to be able to participate in (to the small degree that we did) a fascinating discussion with them regarding disability in Argentina, and in Latin America more generally, as well as about identity and disability...as someone put it that night, not about who is in and who is out, but about "quienes somos"—as a group, fighting together for rights, who the disabled are.

Over the course of many bottles of wine, a massive heap of empanadas, and a sampling of fernet con coca, the locals were all curious to know how we'd been passing our time in Argentina. We told them we'd been to the MALBA, the Museo de Bellas Artes, and other tourist spots. But when we said that we'd been to a few off-the-beaten-path places, like Parque Rivadavia, they joked that only turistas anti-imperalistas would go to such places. And yeah, maybe that does describe what we've been doing the last few days:

First stop was the Museo de Deuda Externa: a museum dedicated exclusively to the history of Argentina's foreign debt.

Where else can you find art about the Brady Plan?

Or demonstration art about the poverty line?

Other exhibits included an "anniversary album" celebrating 50 years since Argentina "wed" itself to the IMF; a series of sculptures about unemployment levels using tiny dolls of San Cayetano, the patron saint of work; and a cascade of the many currencies that Argentina has used over the past few decades. One can only hope that, in the coming years, there will be more anti-IMF museums in the world.

So then we tried to be normal tourists and headed down to San Telmo on Sunday, along with every other foreigner in the country. But soon we strayed down to the sculpture "Canto al Trabajo" by Rogelio Yrurtia:

And then down the Paseo de Colon, past Asambleas street art:

To the Memory Recovery Project of the Secret Detention Facility "El Atlético," an archeological memorial site under a highway overpass.

During most of 1977, some 1,800 people were kidnapped and brought here, to a secret torture facility in the basement of an athletic club. Only about 300 survived to tell about it, and, in 1978, the dictatorship demolished the building to make way for the highway, literally burying the secret and the bodies of 1,500 desaparecidos. Only in 2002, after much agitation by human rights activists, was the site unearthed and this memorial created. Later, a more official memorial park was created across the street, but it was closed and locked when we were there. And while the excavation site was very moving, as we stood in the grime, under this overpass, on a huge avenue with little foot traffic, we couldn't help but feel as though this space of memory, indeed, this memory itself, had been forgotten...or at least kept in the dark.

Then it was back up into the San Telmo street market, where we ran into the booths of the Asambleas movement and agoratv.org, where a guy selling radical DVDs knew of NACLA and invited us to visit Hotel BAUEN, a cooperatively run, recuperated hotel.

Then today, after a quick jaunt through Chinatown in Belgrano...

(sadly, no coypus de soja to be found)

...we rode up toward the city line to the Escuela de Mecanica de la Armada (ESMA).

ESMA, a Navy training facility, was the largest detention center during the dirty war, where some 5,000 people were disappeared, with only 200 survivors. In 2004, it became a memorial museum, the Espacio para la Memoria y para la Promoción y Defensa de los Derechos Humanos.

To visit the grounds, we would have had to make an appointment for a guided tour (which we hadn't done), so then we rode out to the river, again, to find the Parque de la Memoria.

This memorial, the Monument to Victims of State Terror, was inaugurated in late 2007 but is still not open to the public, as much of the park is still under construction (the friendly dreadlocked hippy in the information booth told us it was scheduled to open in August.) The atmosphere was ruined somewhat by the loud and very insistent cat-calls we were getting from the construction workers (Stuart's legs really drive 'em wild), but the site itself is very striking, perched at the northern end of the path along the river's edge.

So we rode back home, across the railroad tracks, our brains full of questions about cities, and memory, and activism, and memorialization—reminders of which, in this city, are everywhere....

Unevenness of Development: Yacht Clubs and Dinosaurs

2008-06-21T11:40:00.029-03:00

Our travels across this city have revealed the unevenness of its development and, most interestingly, the forgotten, obsolescent, and recrementitious spaces that are left behind as cities embrace "progress." Often, these are the interstitial spaces, the edges of industrial zones or government tenancies, the often trash-strewn spots that are surely owned by someone on paper but of which no one takes ownership. In these spaces, street art often springs up, as cavalier creative types highlight the contradictions of such property that no one cares about until someone else decides to care about it (one can't help but think too, here in Argentina, of the Malvinas/Falklands in these terms).

At the edge of an enormous railyard, bounded to the north by the Retiro slum and to the south by high-rise apartments and hotels, we stumbled across a sculpture workshop/theater/arts space called El Gato Viejo. It is full of sculptures cobbled together from industrial detritus, mostly in the shape of old cars, airplanes, and dinosaurs—essentially obsolete and decrepit pieces of iron, tin, and aluminum put together to whimsically represent obsolete or extinct forms that have perennially captured our imagination. El Gato Viejo is anything but neat and orderly, and because our visit occurred during a rainstorm, the mud and puddles were fierce. Although the city has given this alternative arts space permission, it does not come across as a clean, inviting arts exhibit meant for tourists. It's dirty and grimy, lacking in pretense—it's beside railyards, composed of industrial waste, and it doesn't pretend otherwise.

In other areas, grassroots memorials spring up, such as one near the back of the Once train station devoted to the 200 or so jovenes who died in a fire at the Cromañon rock club in 2004, attempting to escape through doors bolted and wired shut by club owners trying to keep fans from sneaking in without paying.

Anyway, this cityscape is fascinating because, unlike New York, Buenos Aires has not (yet) engaged in a wholesale erasure of the past as de rigueur urban planning policy. Though there was certainly slum clearance in decades past (particularly as the highways that traverse the city were built), today gentrification is its more "genteel" heir, displacing working-class residents and neighborhood businesses—plumbers, glass-makers, welders, auto-repair shops, upholsterers, all of those trades that rely on the conservation and repair of old things, rather than their replacement. In Palermo Hollywood, for example, high-rise condos, boutiques, and restaurants catering to foreigners and the "creative class" (manifested here by those working for the many television and movie studios) are rapidly squeezing out what was here before, in this neighborhood of working people once known as Pacifico.

In the neoliberal period, beginning more or less with President Menem, Argentina has embraced models of urban development now seen throughout the world. Inevitably, some spaces have been left behind, and these are the ones that often offer the best insight into the dreams of the past, or the repressed memories of the present, as seen above. Elsewhere in the city, the unevenness of development is not quite as visible by direct juxtaposition; instead, the lack of older, traditional housing and businesses points to a wholly forward-looking neighborhood identity. Puerto Madero, which was a fallow port space made obsolescent by container shipping, has become a sort of touristic themepark (themes: "global city," "redevelopment"), with its requisite Santiago Calatrava bridge next to its requisite Hooters.

As cool as the Calatrava bridge may be, its function is the same as Calatrava bridges worldwide: to symbolize the arrival of neoliberalism. No urban redevelopment, in the post-Guggenheim-Bilbao age, is complete without a signature architectural spectacle, and, in a hundred years, historians will look back and see so many of Calatrava's (and Gehry's) works as period pieces. In this case, the bridge is actually fairly tasteful. That the bridge is functional (ie, movable) is a paean to the memory of Puerto Madero as the center of Buenos Aires' port. Today, Calatrava's bridge rarely needs to open; its function is its aesthetics, its spectacle-commodity-ness. If the city were concerned with using the most up-to-date technology for its movable harbor bridges, the Calatrava wouldn't be a superfluous pedestrian bridge south of the harbor's mouth and the yacht club. (One assumes a pedestrian bridge designed by Calatrava is cheaper than an auto bridge.)

Puerto Madero combines reclaimed grain storage facilities—now turned into lofts and restaurants—as well as a newly constructed museum (not open yet) and many new office and upscale residential buildings, with, ostensibly, the only functional use of these waters: a yacht club. Unlike New York City, which has all but completely turned its back on its past as a major port, Buenos Aires was never the ideal locale for a shipping center due to its geography (and hydrography, I suppose)—and even still, it maintains a large, modern container port just to the north of this tourist destination. Despite the economic rollercoaster of the last 50+ years here, Buenos Aires has managed to maintain what is central, in my opinion, to a healthy working class in a postindustrial era: its port. In this way, the use of old dock cranes as decorations around Puerto Madero doesn't come off as crass or tasteless.

But the idea of starting fresh, in a completely new part of the city, away from the hustle and bustle—and away from the social problems of the older neighborhoods (like poverty!)—is creepy and a bit fascistic. It's clear, however, that activists in this city won't let such an attempt to turn away from reality go unnoticed: in 2006, piquetero leader Raúl Castells opened a small lunch counter here to feed poor youth and elderly people, which was later shuttered by government order.

One imagines that the slogan "We fight for an Argentina where the dogs of the rich do not eat better than the children of the poor," however apposite, didn't sit well with those buying the exclusive condos across the water.

Since its "redevelopment," Puerto Madero has become a haven for speculators. After the economic crisis of 2001, real estate, especially in the form of speculation, has been the growth industry for two reasons: first, well-heeled Argentines no longer trust the banks as they once did, and real estate offers what seems like a sounder investment; second, overseas clients can purchase real estate of a caliber that might be out of reach at home due to the favorable exchange rate. Thus, Puerto Madero, which was basically a no-go zone at the end of the dictatorship, with disused warehouses and grain silos, is now the place for foreigners to buy up property. The number of high rises under construction or recently completed there is astounding. And, so, the repurposing of this area mirrors the overall retooling of the global economy under regimes of deindustrialization, financialization, and rampant speculation.

With all that in mind, who needs a pizza and a beer?

You don't want to know what we paid for it.

It could be better only with....bikes!

2008-06-19T19:10:00.007-03:00

After a few day-long wanders around the city, our feet were tired. My shoes were caked with red dust kicked up from footpaths in the parks in this city, and we had stomped on more dog shit than I think I've seen in the rest of my life combined. And we had done a lot in small amount of time:

We stumbled across a weird nighttime protest/reggae concert in the Plaza de Mayo surrounded by banners for organizations of veterans of the Malvinas War, full of pot-smoking hippies in funny hats.

We walked down to Parque Rivadavia in search of the elusive not-yet-picked-over LP bin. (The best stall we found was a bunch of grade-school textbooks and a single box of records, clearly someone's heavy metal collection being sold by his mom.)

We ran across insane 14-lane avenues to wander in the park.

We spent an afternoon wandering around the "reclaimed" waterfront area downtown, Puerto Madero (more on this to come):

And of course, as documented below, we'd been to the Recoleta, the zoo, and wandered around Palermo a lot.

But on a cool, brisk day, as we planned our afternoon huddled over the gas heater, our bike-fixing genes kicked in. The two jalopies that were left for our use were in sad shape, but we were undeterred, and in a few hours, we had 'em up and running!

With a little help from the friendly mechanics at Milenium bike shop on Bonpland, we were then ready for our first real bike jaunt, to the Club de Pescadores on the Rio de la Plata, near the municipal airport.

Maybe there was a better way to get there, but we didn't find it. We crossed a number of huge avenues, rode on some disintegrating sidewalks, walked our bikes across railroad tracks, and circumnavigated enormous construction projects to find ourselves on the wrong side of a huge highway leading directly into the airport.

But once we had crossed (witnessing a couple of heart-stopping near-accidents in the process), we were on a smooth, paved path heading north along the river, to the Fisherman's Club.

The view back toward the city was awesome, and made more so by the deafening jets taking off, so close that it seemed we might be sucked into the turbines as they passed overhead. Buenos Aires is so flat that you're rarely in a position when outdoors to see more than your immediate surroundings.

Of course, as is clear in the picture above, it was a tad breezy out on the water. Heading north, toward the Plaza Puerto Argentino, the wind was at our backs, and we could enjoy the sun and the view of an endless row of roadside parillas. We circled the Plaza, which is a small, strange park jutting out into the river at one of the airport entrances, but the wind was too much to stay there for long, and so we headed back south—straight into the wind.

The comical sizing of our bikes compounded the force of the wind, and we had to work strenuously to get back inland, and back across the highways, railroad tracks, construction sites, and avenues. Once back in the park, we stopped to rest our tired butts for a minute.

We were then off for a delicious vegetarian lunch at Senutre:

And for a quick stop at the MALBA (free on Wednesdays!), the new-ish museum of modern Latin American art:

The majority of the galleries were closed, as they were installing a new exhibition of Mexican art from 1968 to 1997, opening this weekend (more on the MALBA after our next visit).

Our ride home took us back through Parque Tres de Febrero (and across more gigantic avenues and railroad tracks and past the Hipodromo, army and federal police barracks, and the polo grounds). On the way, we spied the Buenos Aires velodrome but, sadly, were in no shape to compete.

Maybe next time, boys.

Long Walk Number 2: Feral Cats, Rabbit-dogs, and Aquatic Rat-beavers

2008-06-19T15:34:00.003-03:00

There are few things more depressing than a fucked-up, run-down zoo. After visiting the San Francisco zoo with Layla and the maxi-rockers a few years back, I felt a nagging sense of shame for even partaking in what was an extremely sad spectacle. And then, of course, a tiger escaped from its enclosure, wreaking havoc and having its revenge. Yeesh.

For some reason (maybe it was the ridiculously cute TV commercial for the place?), despite the warnings that the Buenos Aires zoo would be one such place, we paid our 14 pesos each, which promised to allow us admission to the reptile house, the aquarium, the subtropical jungle, AND a boat ride in a lake, and gave ourselves over to the olfactory cacophany that was the municipal zoo.

We had spent the morning wandering in Parque Tres de Febrero, which was still lovely even in the winter drabness.

So first order of business was a snack. And since this guy was closed:

We settled for the requisite fast-food veg option: papas fritas.

The tone was set by the first exhibit we visited: the "subtropical jungle." A series of small glassed-in enclosures in the freezing hallways around a dying indoor "forest" (which had no animals), the place was painted with the worst "jungle" murals the world has ever seen outside a third-grade classroom.

We decided to move on and pushed our way through some slimy plastic sheeting back to the outside world, where were were promptly greeted by herds of mangy deer in every direction. All over the zoo, they were selling "animal food," and you could feed basically anything in the place. So the deer just followed people around their enclosure, begging to be fed.

Sadly, we had to leave Bambi behind:

When we were promptly assaulted by this thing:

I thought, "Oh, look! An otter! How cute!" But upon closer inspection:

and upon discovering that we were surrounded by hundreds of them, we sort of freaked out. When I saw one fighting with a feral cat in the middle of a flock of mangy-ass ducks, I almost threw up. Turns out it's a coypu. The dutch call it a "beaver-rat." That's about right. And they were fucking everywhere.

With my level of freaked-outed-ness climbing, we decided to head toward the birds—how creepy could they be? And then we saw this:

That's an OWL ON A LEASH. And some giant, freakish rabbit-dog creatures (which we later learned are maras—no, not MS-13. Patagonian Hares.) And these, of course, we also everywhere.

In fact, the zookeepers seemed not to care at all when a family of humans cornered a family of freakish rabbit-dogs and chased the baby around for a full three minutes:

They were too busy adjusting the band-aids hiding their facial piercings to help this hapless little critter while a three-year-old chased it around shreiking "conejito! conejito!" Eventually, the zookeepers got bored, picked up the little baby rabbit dog, and tossed it back to its mama mara in the bushes.

So, back to the feeding frenzy:

Maybe he was pissed that he didn't get hand-fed all day every day, but this hippo was looking at us like he wanted to pull a San Francisco:

By the time the visit was over, much like this kangaroo,

I totally needed a drink.

En Tu Recto!

2008-06-18T07:34:00.000-03:00

After the tragedy of defunct record shops (sob), we lucked out by stumbling across an online listing for a punk show in Palermo Viejo. It was a single-band show: En Tu Recto, a supergroup (of sorts) comprising members of other local bands, playing exclusively covers of songs by the classic Basque punk band La Polla Records. Their first EP, "Y Ahora Que?", one of the rarest Spanish punk records, is among our favorites. This band pretty much invented what is now called Basque rock radikal. Our pal Paco tells a funny story about how La Polla Records played a huge gig in his hometown south of Madrid in the 80s, deep in olive-farming country, and rather than being paid in cash, they took home a truckload of olive oil. (Total communal living! I'll buy the tofu and you cook it!)

So we hopped in a cab for a short ride to the show at Salón Pueyrredon on Av. Sante Fe. We knew we were close when we saw a skinhead in the shadows, peeing on a tree. Sure enough, the next corner was overrun with punkitos. We didn't know what to expect but we were eager to have a look around the show space. As the bouncers searched their bags, the kids in front of us at the door had to relinquish an enormous can of spraypaint (think the biggest can of Aquanet you've ever seen and then double it). Up a flight of stairs and we were inside a century-old (or more) space that could've been an old tanguería, or else a private gentleman's club for gambling and other, um, gentlemanly businesses. There were four high-ceilinged rooms and a bar bearing a sign that told us that no se vende cerveza—damn. The front room was the smoking room. And how. The middle room (with the bar), which was an atrium, included a dark staircase to another floor or two, but it was too dark and vertigo-inducing to see what was up there. The next room was sort of an anteroom for the actual show space, where there was a distro that sold exclusively photocopies of old anarchist manifestos and bootleg punk patches. And then the main room was probably 30' x 50'. Needless to say, no rock club in New York is quite as regal.

Before the band began to play, a La Polla Records documentary was projected on a screen. I noticed that the punters, mostly younger than us, were almost exclusively wearing La Polla Records shirts. The all-over print ones were pretty cool. Some shirts were obviously cherished and well-worn. In the US, wearing the shirt of the band that is playing is considered a faux-pas; in this case, La Polla wasn't playing exactly, so we unfortunately cannot discern whether that stigma exists down here as well. Other band logos adorning jackets and shirts were Eskorbuto and Ramones, who are apparently so huge here that you can make a whole album of, ahem, bossa nova Ramones covers:

Just to reiterate, this was a cover-band show, something we've never attended at home and would probably avoid except maybe on Halloween. So the unfamiliarity of being at a punk show thousands of miles from home was compounded by it being a sort of show that we might not quite consider punk were it in our hometown. That unfamiliarity burned off quite quickly once En Tu Recto (who are named for an extremely late La Polla LP) began to play. Immediately, the instantly recognizable swirling sea of bad haircuts in front of the stage reminded us that punk really is universal.

Every kid in the room knew every word to every song.

By the time they got to the last song, we were singing along as well, and we went home reeking of smoke and totally sober, but completely happy.

A Word on our Hosts

2008-06-17T20:08:00.004-03:00

As some of you know, we're here in Buenos Aires because we were presented with the amazing opportunity to dogsit by some total strangers (thanks, world wide web!). Flights were a totally reasonable $800, so we each dipped into the ol' savings account, and headed south to stay in this lovely apartment for free.

Having very little idea what to expect, we knew only that we were destined for the apartment of two former New Yorkers. Mike and Eliza seemed incredibly nice via email, and that proved true when we rolled up to the apartment at 10pm on a Wednesday night to meet Eliza, who despite trying to finish some work, run some errands, and pack for three weeks in the States, still managed to draw us an absurdly cute little map of the neighborhood and take us out to show us around—and even slept on the couch our first night here!

In a strange coincidence, it turns out that Eliza runs a hand-printed stationary business called Morris and Essex, randomly named for the train line that Stuart grew up on in New Jersey. But wait, it gets better! It turns out that Eliza is originally from Maine, and our grandmothers live two towns away from each other in New Hampshire. (I was all, "you know the Kancamagus Highway?" and she was all, "Yeah! I love the Kancamagus Highway!") As we swapped stories about summers in New Hampshire and the Park Slope Food Coop, I noticed their small DVD collection next to the computer. And dude—how could I not love these people?

SPECIAL ASTROTURF EDITION!

Hogar, dulce hogar.

Long Walk Number One

2008-06-16T22:45:00.008-03:00

There are a few subway lines in Buenos Aires. And they're useful—for getting you into the center and back out again. And then there are something like 200 different bus lines, which are so complicated that the bus map is 75 pages long. So unless you know the name of every street in the metropolitan area, this method of navigation is pretty much useless.

So in our first few days of exploring, we've been doing a lot of walking. The toes-numb, back-aching, come-home-and-collapse kind of walking. Oh! and the sidewalks in Buenos Aires are maybe the worst we've ever seen. Insert 1980s-style jokes about Beirut here, and you get the picture.

But we've gotten to know Palermo pretty well in just a few days—which is saying something, 'cause the neighborhood is huge. On Friday (the 13th!) we decided to check out La Recoleta, the most famous cemetery in the city.

After passing a bizarre, four-story, faux-mud-covered "arabian-themed" restaurant, complete with an enormous fake camel out front, and after a slight mishap at the entrance gate when I was suddenly and involuntarily on a first-name basis (mine, not his) with the overly friendly man collecting money for "AIDS orphans" at the gate, we were confronted with the decrepit beauty of La Recoleta—which is basically a feral cat farm with some crumbling mausoleums.

Of course, not all are crumbling—some of Argentina's rich are still rich enough to hire help to sponge-bathe the boxes in which they keep their dead. But for the most part, the most fascinating aspect was how run-down this ultimate tourist destination was. Advice to the rich: even if you can take it with you, eventually your coffin is gonna split open and let it out:

And all around, in what is one of Buenos Aires' glitziest neighborhoods, there are high-rise mausoleums for the living:

And yes, Evita Perón is buried here. But her tomb is mad boring compared with some of the others. For instance, she's got nothin' on this lady:

(There is a story that three days after Evita died, her little pooch Canela died, as well, presumably of a broken heart. But no room for Canela in the Duarte mausoleum, I suppose. The family of this creepy Nightmare-Before-Christmas lady apparently felt differently about it.)

Next, to make Stuart feel more at home, we were off down Guido Avenue!

And past the Guido Palace!

(East Hanover, eat your heart out.)

We traveled down into the Microcentro in search of record stores we didn't find (if anyone reading this knows what happened to Duck-o-Homo, please let us know!).

But first, our first vegetarian restaurant of the trip: Lotos, a cafeteria-style lunch spot with a health-food store in the basement (to which there was an escalator—can't health nuts walk down a flight of stairs!?). Lunch was a veggie casserole of sorts, which was quite tasty, and a salad with some pureed winter squash dumped on top, which was not:

After crisscrossing the neighborhood, Stuart bought an Argentine press of the first Violadores LP (so that the sealed Peruvian press at home can remain that way, natch) and we headed to the Subte to trek back to Palermo.

Upon arrival back at home, we made brilliant decision number one: try not to do more than one thing in a day.

Getting Situated

2008-06-15T21:02:00.006-03:00

Our first few days in Argentina were completely lovely, if slightly intimidating.

The apartment we're staying in is absurdly cool. It's in Palermo Hollywood, named for the many TV and movie studios in this low-slung, shit-strewn part of town, which is apparently mega-hip—read: gentrifying rapidly. Our side of the tracks (literally) is the "up-and-coming" part of the neighborhood, the poorer cousin to the shopping/eating/boozing district of Palermo Soho—we might as well be on Montrose and Leonard.

Our apartment is in a "PH"—propiedad horizontal—also known as a "casa chorizo" (sausage house): a low, long building that was once probably a single private home, but has now been turned into a small series of apartments. Ours is a duplex of sorts, with a solarium for a dining room on the first floor, together with the kitchen and living room.

There is a dangerous, narrow, and short staircase leading to the second floor, which has a sunny bedroom with an outdoor terrace, complete with hammock.

And we're here, of course, to dogsit Emmy Lou, a sweet and hilarious scaredy-dog:

She's scared of everything, but ridiculously smart: She's learned that my camera occasionally produces a flash, which she mistakes for lightning, causing her to go hide under the bed—so just the sound of my camera turning on, or even just the sight of me picking it up, sends her scurrying upstairs.

Just a few days into our stay, we've become hyper-aware of the immense scale of gentrification in this neighborhood. On every block, there are high-rise apartments and condos going up, often towering over the nearby (sometimes crumbling) belle-epoque homes. More on that later. For now, remember (with thanks to the neighborhood chapter of the Workers' Party):