Advertisement
Published: February 24th 2007
THE SHIRT
De qué estás hablando, Willis?If we were feeling sorry for ourselves on Thursday because of horrible traveling conditions, a sub-par food experience, and diarrhea that already had me and at 3am hit Meli like a baseball bat (her cramps were so bad she started crying, mine were never painful), we absolutely made up for it today.
It took us a while to get going because of the belly attacks. We traded off rounds in the bathroom before deciding to brave the world outside the comforts of the hotel…and nearby bathrooms. Both of us thought we were well enough to eat the continental breakfast at the hotel: cereals (corn flakes, something that resembled Coco Krispies), yogurts, juices, bread products (white and wheat toast, croissants, scones, biscotti), cheeses and fruits. I was conservative, choosing to go for the modified BRAT diet (banana, rice, apple sauce, toast)—there was no apple sauce or rice. Meli, on the other hand, was a bit more aggressive in my opinion, given her “worse than the worst ever PMS cramps” night. She swung for the fences by having cheese, butter on her toast…very anti-BRAT. When the G.I. is calling, go for bland. Oh boy, she paid
THE JACKET
Lamb skin side the price for her wicked ways. Hey…I warned her!
Reception had called the laundry people for us and they said that they couldn’t pick up our clothes before 7pm and wouldn’t have them back until 7pm Saturday. So we decided to drop them off instead. Dirty clothes in tow, we walked about 1000 meters (5/8 mile, we are dealing with the metric system outside the USA and I’m adjusting) to the tintorería. Back to the hotel, shower change and off to buy…LEATHER!
Gol! Argentina claims that it is the best at using all parts of the cow. Hard to argue with that, given their notoriety for steak and leather apparel. One nice shopping area is Calle Florida. Here, anyone who looks like a tourist gets accosted by leather salesmen and saleswomen. It didn’t matter though, the more proactive the person, the more interested Meli became. First, before leather, we bought tickets to Sunday’s soccer game with Rio de la Plata (River Plate), another beloved BA soccer team. I know in the last entry I said we were going to see Boca on Saturday, but the dude in the ticket/tour agency changed our minds saying that we should
THE JACKET
Carpincho patterned side see Boca only if they were playing at home and they were away on Saturday. Conversely, Rio is playing at home on Sunday and has a more intimate feel to the stadium. He said it feels like you’re on top of the action with very close to the field seating. Something interesting to note is that we were strongly discouraged from going to the game by ourselves, which is why we booked a tour. Lonely Planet recommends seeing the game with a guide and to leave valuables and anything that could be used as a weapon at home. The guides pick you up from home, take you to the game and look out for you, and bring you back. Done and done.
Christmas in February Back to the leather. As Roy Lee Sims would say, “you gotta put some leather on that…” We first go into the store American Leather, where Meli bought her leather jacket 7 years ago and has never stopped talking about the experience. “You pick out a design, they take your measurements, and a day later it’s ready and fits like a glove”—my bad, OJ. They have all kinds of designs and animal skins: cow
& baby cow, lamb, antelope, fake carpincho (carpincho is extinct in Argentina, in English it’s called Capybaras), and more. I walk in the building and I’m feeling myself—Bay area hyphy reference—and I’m digging the light brown suede jackets and the nubuck. The lady picks out a bad jacket for me, but they didn’t have my size. She leaves the store and comes back 5 minutes later with the same design that fits better, but not perfectly. No worries, because the measuring take is in her pocket. I really like the jacket, but when shopping I’m quite non-committal and always need time to think before making a purchase. Meanwhile, Meli hasn’t found anything she likes yet, so we walk. This is when she starts giving her schpiel about looking to shop in stores where people actively pursue you on the street. We pass many passive cat calls and then…this lady follows us and keeps asking us to come to her store. Meli smiles and we oblige.
Inside the store, the woman picks out 4 or 5 jackets for me, and about 30 for Meli. The thing is, Mel didn’t know what she wanted. She liked the leather with a somewhat
Calle Florida
Leroy pointing to a cool map, haha, I got him by surprise crumpled look to it, a semi-funky style (Ladybug Mecca meets Lauryn Hill) in my opinion, but it’s all about the look you want, right? For her, I preferred the smaller collar. That was my only input, though I knew that it would totally make the jacket perfect for her. Thirty jackets later, nothing as on point as we liked. The lady shuttled us across the hall to another store. Guillermo wants to know what I’m looking for. I describe something similar to the jacket that I really like at American Leather. He picks out a couple of heavy leather coats. Nope! He goes to the rack and…oh my goodness…love at first sight! It’s brown lamb skin on one side and lighter brown carpincho (but just the pattern, not the real thing as you can’t have two skins put together) on the other. Reversible too! Meli snaps a few shots of me in it so I can check it out. I do this when I shop because I believe that mirrors lie more than cameras do. No room for playing the “I’ll walk away to get him to lower the price game”—something Meli would be successful at later today—THIS WAS THE
ONE I HAD COME FOR.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. No matter what, I still have to think about it. I’m never an impulse shopper. I’m just not. Perhaps it’s the Roy Lee Sims in me…you squeeze that dollar until it almost rips before letting it go. Then you rub it to make sure it’s not two bills stuck together. So we leave. At this point, Melissa is annoyed because she’s tried on about 50 jackets and still hasn’t found one. And she certainly doubts she’ll fall in love with one the way I did. Back outside, we also search for soccer jerseys. I can’t leave without one of those blue and white one’s that the Argentine national team wore in the World Cup. I refuse to pay full price, however. Knock-offs are fine with me. Where we were shopping, not many of those to be found. What we did find was a crowd surrounding street performers dancing the tango. The day just keeps getting better!
Back on the trail for Meli’s jacket. The Leather Factory has a gigantic red leather jacket about 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide hanging off the building. I point
to it telling Meli that that’s the jacket she wants, but it looks too big for her. Nevertheless, we should see what they have to offer. Plus, two of the jackets in the display window look nice. Five jackets into it, a look upstairs and back down again, we are not feeling confident about making a purchase. “It’s all about the collar, I’m telling you.” The guy hears me, goes to the rack and… voilà. She really likes it, but is concerned because she doesn’t love it the way I loved mine. “Who cares, it looks hot on you!” Magic words. Now that he has found one for her, he tries to work on me. I don’t budge…I know the one I’m buying. Meli tells him, and I got mad at her for this, that we would go buy my jacket and come back. Inadvertently playing the walk away game. I got mad because now he tries to work on me and I don’t want anything he has to offer. He asks me to describe it and picks out a few to show me. An exercise in futility. Assuming that we might not come back, he drops the price of
her jacket by about $35. SOLD! And she wasn’t even trying. She’s good.
Guillermo’s store only takes Visa, which we find out on the return trip. Oh well, we can get it tomorrow, so we leave. But I just gotta have it. What if someone buys it before I get back. And I’m jealous because Meli has her hot new jacket in hand. It takes some effort to find an ATM that works for us (recall day one in Brasil), but eventually procure the loot and make the purchase. It’s Christmas in February for the two of us!
It takes two And at first, it seems that there really would only be two of us at Bar Sur. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Once the “this jacket is so fly” purchase has finally been made, we hit up a cab and head to San Telmo, one of the oldest neighborhoods in BA and one of my favorites when I was here in 2000. My friend Athena, from college and our study abroad in Spain, lived in BA for almost four years as a journalist, and I visited her for 11 days. At that time, I was
Bar Sur
A brochure of Bar Sur on the table, wine glasses, and bottle of Trapiche Malbec a web developer and in between independent contractor jobs, I liked to travel. It was good times for Argentina too, the peso was marked to the dollar 1:1, which made the leathers and steak a bit pricy for me. Now, I guess it all equalizes. I don’t have the disposable income, and the peso is now 3:1. What I remember about San Telmo were the narrow streets and the awesome
parrilla, or barbeque, called Desnível. I am excited to get out of the cab and take a peek. Our Tango show includes dinner, so we can’t eat there, but I just want to look. As we pass it, Leroy spots a shirt in the window of a boutique store. This neighborhood is so fun to walk around in. The shirt is yellow, with a silkscreen print of Gary Coleman’s face, and the lettering says “De qué estás hablando, Willis?” Leroy falls in love with it instantly, and even though it’s a little bit small (a large and not an XL), or “young” as Leroy calls it, he buys it. “It’s the best t-shirt I have ever had!”
We walk one more block and head into Bar Sur. It is
intimate, the curtains are drawn and it is dark inside. The décor is old school, with small circular cloth-covered tables, dim lights, and pictures from decades ago lining the walls. There are eight tables arranged in a U-shape around a black-and-white checkered floor; this is the stage. We are seated near the stage, as every table is near it. There is a Dutch couple who arrived before us. We are seated, and I quickly notice an elderly gentleman in a white shirt and red bowtie seated in the corner. He looks like part of the décor, as if he has been sitting there for fifty years. The show starts when he shuffles over to the piano, bent over with age. We guess he is 80 years old, maybe even more. Once he is seated, an older woman with red hair stands in front of us, microphone in hand. She introduces the piano player as a legend, El Maestro. The show begins with her singing tangos and waltzes… and it continues for the four hours we were there, and who knows how much longer. After El Maestro comes another pianist and singer pair. Then a trio of pianist, bassist, and accordion
El Espectaculo
The show begins player. Finally, the dancers. The Japanese dancer in her burgundy dress steps out, followed by her dark-skinned partner in his black suit. They dance a slow tango, sensual and passionate, her brows furrowed and her eyes downcast. I cannot help but be reminded of the Tango scene in Moulin Rouge, which is for me the most harrowing and tension-filled moment in the movie. That feeling permeates the room.
Another trio follows, this time with a violinist instead of a bassist. Another singer, this time a man in a white jacket with black pants, comes out full of energy and belting out Tango classics. Another pair of dancers strides forward, this time the girl is Latina, but young. She does not have the strong lines of a dancer. She still has baby fat, and her face has a mischievous smile. Perhaps she has not had enough experience to draw on, not enough for her face to contort into that expression of pain and yearning, that spirit of Tango. Her partner is dressed in a black and white zoot suit, and he too is young, but with a sad face. There are maybe 15 performers in all, and they take turns.
Our dinner is pathetic, made up of empanadas, salami and cheese, bits of a cheese pizza, and a meat stew with bell peppers (which I can’t eat as my body does not tolerate bell peppers). Our wine is decent (better with the sausage and cheese in Lee’s opinon), but I can’t bring myself to drink more than one small glass. By show’s end, El Maestro emerges as Leroy’s favorite, while I am partial to the Japanese dancer. Perhaps it’s because she’s Asian with a Latin flair… perhaps it’s because she is the quietest, with a shy smile such that you would never suspect she could dance with such ardor… I don’t know. At 11pm, they turn the lights on and give everyone a glass of champagne. We toast in celebration of their 40th anniversary, and each performer stops at our table to
brindis, or toast. We take the opportunity and snap a photo of El Maestro with Leroy. The night is complete. We stick around for another hour of the show then jump into a taxi exhausted. We had started the day late, and we are pushing our energy and stomachs to the limit as we did in Brasil. The
ride home is long as we cross the city. Going down Av 9 de Julio, claimed to be the widest street in the world with its 16 lanes, we see the landmark obelisk approach us. Buenos Aires lights up.
We plop into our bed at FIVE. I pick up Isabel Allende’s “Daughter of Fortune,” found the day before in the hotel lobby where travelers exchange books. I only have 25 more pages to go in this 450-page novel, which I have come to love. But sleep and exhaustion overpower me, and I turn off the lights with only 10 pages to go.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.104s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 8; qc: 19; dbt: 0.0405s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Bruce Edwards
non-member comment
Must Be Nice
I see you Lee. Great to finally get a break and travel the world. Enjoy your vacation and time off. It is truly well-deserved. Take Care. Bruec