We've spent the last week trying to exhaust ourselves of all that is Buenos Aires, but it' s not quite working. The city just keeps throwing more at you- more people (just back from the beach, from the mountains, from holidays in Mexico), more things to see, places to visit, things to eat.
The people are getting better dressed and more attractive by the day, yet the rudeness and pretension level stays consistently high. The kids are back in school, making out flagrantly every afternoon under every tree in every park, and there is a park on every block. The grown ups are making out everywhere, too, loudly. It's 85 degrees every day but the municipal pool is closed for the season because now it's fall.
There are more cars, more smog, more mulletheads, punks, transvestites, yuppies, fancy dogs, homeless dogs, teenage girls, artists, more rich euro wannabes and their well-heeled (and surgically enhanced) mistresses, hippies, jugglers, beggars, flower sellers, taxis, and tourists tourists tourists . Americans seem particularly rampant. You can't walk down the street without hearing a broad southern accent absolutely slaughter the words "Buenos Aires".
I rented a big cruiser bike for a week and took it all over the place. Biking in this city is great except for the cars, busses, motorcycles, pedestrians, and other cyclists. Everyone makes it difficult for everyone else to get where they are going, just out of principle. If you´re on a crosswalk in a green light, cars will speed up just to come closer to hitting you. Pedestrians will stand on the shoulder of the street and refuse to give way even though this is the only path for bikes. Other bikes will come the wrong way down this path and not give you the right of way unless you force the point.
Otherwise, the city is beautiful from a bike, and pretty accessible. You can peddle between the street markets, the protests, the gatherings in the parks, the swarming gallerias and pedestrian malls and start to get a complete picture of all the vitality and excitement that is churning all over the streets.
The nights are just as lively, but our quest for a great night on the town has met with limited success. Theres always something at the bars, restos and clubs- either the music sucks, or the musics great but it's too crowded, or the crowd is obnoxious, or the people are cool but the drinks are way overpriced. It's an equation we haven't mastered yet.
In the past week I've found the two D.I.Y. punk record stores in the city (thanks Eric!), narrowly missed a straight edge hardcore show, spent a night hanging out with ex-skinhead rudeboy reggae DJs in some hole in the wall bar well North of Palermo, and another night at a private party of someone we didn't know being thrown in some awful "ambient house" club, doing the worm and making large scale drinking straw sculptures with Genevieve, Georgia, Joka and Janneka, the tatooed Dutch twins that live at our hostal.
We've eaten Thai, Korean, Chinese, and Sushi twice. We visited the MALBA latin modern art museum, the stately Recoleta cemetery, the nature preserve south of the fancy seaport Puerto Madero, and ended up somehow at all three of Buenos Aires booshiest Gallerias. We found ourselves drinking in Plaza Serrano in Palermo at the wee hours of the morning twice without trying to go there once.
In kitchy San Telmo I bought an Argentine pressing of an LP called LETS ROLLER!, which has a rollerdisco cover of the disco rap classic 'Rap O Clap O'. At one of the trashy malls on Corrientes I found a pink tie/dyed tee shirt with a grainy picture of Joey Ramone on a drawn/in skateboard. Next to this is scrawled "Skateboard no es illegal", which is crossed out and replaced with "Skateboard no es punk", which is crossed out and replaced with "Skatebaord is Gabba Gabba Hey!"
At this point, now that we've crossed all the tourist attractions and must sees off the list, we could either begin the process of getting sucked into it all and becoming just as over-it as the portenos are, or moving on. We chose the latter and are now in Montevideo on our way to the beach for a week. "Punto Del Diablo" might sound like an inauspicious destination to some, but I'm all for it.