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Pattern Recognition
2008-05-16 05:40:00
Buenos Aires is in its steady dip into fall. leaves on the ground, the homeless who sleep within the ruts of closed store-fronts now sleep with blankets,people in the street are short-nerved, in more of a hurry, more on the subways where each morning we pack on into eachothers´armpits, pressed into the intimate limits of physical confinement.river of footsteps at floodstage off the subway throgh the clicking gates up the stairs and in an instant to the roar of citysmall sidewalk overworked bus squeel car hornwarm exhaust, intersections filled at stalemantlack of patience. people who walk and weave within their own agendas, broken sidewalk, rubble, magazine stand with porno all over the placecafe cups to-go on trays as waiters run them through a block or accross the street.Forida ave. pedestrian mall shopping center that stretches the length of downtown. wide enough for lanes of cars but full with the motion of footwork. is a non-stop line of quilts spread where people sell maté goa...
More About: Buenos Aires , Pattern , Recognition , Pattern Recognition

Protests in Buenos Aires, 3-26-08
2008-03-28 00:25:00
For the past 2 weeks, people have staged massive protests throughout the country´s rural areas. Citizens have acted in response to newly elected president Christina Kirschner's economic decision to raise the export tax on Argentinian meat and grains. Christina would like to keep commodity prices affordable for Argentinians. In order to do this she has chosen to raise the taxes for those farmers and ranchers who choose to export their commodities. By doing this, she has made it impossible for Argentina´s farmers and ranchers to make a viable living by doing what they do. At this moment there is a huge movement to end the nationalization of these sorts of these industries. Over the last 2 weeks, farmers and ranchers have held massive protests through out the country. They have effectivly set up road blockades in order to stop trucks that are bringing goods into Buenos Aires . Their production has nearly slowed to a stand-still. Producers are dumping their meat and grains out in a re...
More About: Protests

Things that I have learned from Porteños: Tip #1
2008-03-16 01:24:00
If you are getting towards the end of a night of partying and have an opened glass bottle of beer that you would like to save for for the next day (or the day after, or the day after that), all you have to do is put a spoon inside of it upside down and store the beer in the refregerator. Yes, sounds strange, sounds insane, but it works. I don´t know how but it works. Is there any chemists or physicists who are reading this? I think that these sorts of dignified people might have a better idea why such a thing would work.Here is a step-by-step visual explaination in case you don´t know how to read:STEP 1) Drink beer freely and hopefully happily. Stop drinking when you do not want any more beer. If your beer is empty, stop reading this article, it is irrelevent for you. If you there is beer left in your bottle, continue on to step 2.STEP 2) Find a small spoon. These can usually be found in your kitchen drawer. Any spoon will work as long as its handle fits through the mouth of your be...
More About: Buenos Aires , Things , Learned

The Most Touristy Things to do in Buenos Aires
2008-03-08 23:57:00
Here are some of the most popular things to do while visiting Buenos Aires .-San Telmo on a Sunday. The San Telmo market is a huge market through one of the streets most historic neighborhoods. There are hand-crafted arts and there is tons of street music. If you happen to be in Buenos Aires on a Sunday, you HAVE TO do this.-Recoletta Cemetary. this is a cemetary that is filled with the graves of really rich people who´s familys built huge house-like structures and statues for their deceased relatives. Also where the body of Eva Peron is burried. if you are in Buenos Aires for more than 2 or 3 days, this is also a must do. (this is better to do on a saturday or sunday since there is also a market here on these days)-Plaza de Mayo. This is a plaza that is located in the middle of downtown Buenos Aires. This is the most important spot in regards to the political history of Buenos Aires. The Pink House, Argentinia´s national capital building, is located here. In the 1960s Eva Peron gave...
More About: Things

Plaza de Mayo 14/2/08
2008-02-24 07:15:00
After a protest for Casino: which I will elaborate on later
More About: Photography , Buenos Aires , Plaza , Plaza de Mayo

Bariloche at Sunset
2008-02-12 00:07:00
She whips her truck around a corner and it goes rocking back and forthA man in a cowboy hat and hand-held video camera. He points it at his wife as they are walking towards the sunset.The girl who reads intently, toes squirming in the ground.An el-camino, hip-hop beats, people on skateboards popping allies beside.A German Shepard that looks dead, splayed out in the middle of the roadThe patch of lawn is filling fast with people´s quiltsThree birds in a single line as they fly across the lakeMountains as they lose their light, look more sillouetteClouds that flair aboveCars continue to make that turn and gun their engines uphill.
More About: Sunset , Patagonia , Bariloche

Corral, Chile
2008-02-01 22:42:00
It was the reinactment of a battle between Spain and Chile . The remains of fortresses that were used to hold off the encroachment of Spain. The residue of awaiting eyes at cannons, hard rock walls with only ocean clashing at the other side. It was formal and thrown together: teenagers who dressed like soldiers who had once fought at the same age over 200 years before. People stood with cameras, leaning over balconies.
More About: Patagonia

In SchoppDog
2008-02-01 22:30:00
Antique tennis rackets, movie posters, fishing nets, a suitcase with stickers are all hung up on the wall. There are only families here. Waiters move between like screen door flies that cannot find direction to exit out the room. I swear I´m in America.
More About: Places , Patagonia

The Futelefú Story
2008-01-24 01:55:00
Roco, who met me at the Argentinian border to take me to Futelefu seemed nice at first, he laughed at me when i started frieking out at border control and wrote my name and country of origin and date of birth all in the wrong blanks, and he volentarilly filled it out correctly for me and even signed it for me! When we got to futelefu he dropped off all of the other 5 or 6 passangers at their doorsteps, he knew where they lived, kissed each on the cheek as they left the van. I asked him to drop me off at the doorstep of the officina de trourismo and tried to strike up a little bit of conversation. He said nothing and instead of the officina de tourismo he brought me to the doorsteps of a locotorio that had techno music blaring into the street and this dude waiting for the van who was wearing a gulligins island hat, a wife beater shirt and board shorts. When i open the car door he was immediatly in my face, in english ¨are you looking to go rafting, i can give you a really good deal¨ ...
More About: Story , Chile , Places , Patagonia , Backpacking

Lago Gutierez
2008-01-15 21:04:00
There are tents scattered every-where: car-campers, children who are running around the lake, young partyers with guitars and joints to smoke. People have populated the beach: sunbathing within the midst of passing patches of sun. Everybody is afraid of touching the water. I am the only one out of hundreds who has tried to go for a swim and they look at me as if i am the lockness monster once I climb out of the lake.2 fly-fishermen in the waders, walking out to their hips. One of them is smoking a cigarrete, the other keeps worrying about the water that is about to splash into his waders as he is fighting with a fish.An endless line of climbers who are all making their way to the top of the same mountain (Refugio de Frey).
More About: Places , Patagonia , Backpacking , Hitchhiking , Erez

Bariloche
2008-01-15 20:58:00
Bariloche city-square. Music, people laying in the grass in groups, with quilts, with backpacks. The grass is flickering with wind. Wind surfers hopping white-caps in the lake below. A constant mulling. Shoppers and shops that line the like with things to buy that fit the fasion of a warm-weather outdoors campfire cuddle: chocolate shops, restaurants, microbrewerys, overpriced guided excursions such as a city tour of chocolate shops, boat rides across the lake, elaborate border crossings into Chili: by bus then boat to train to boat. guided bike tours, hikes. I am not interested. I want to leave this place immediatly.
More About: Places , Patagonia , Bariloche

In Barlioche
2008-01-13 16:19:00
Ok so I have been slacking on my blog, but with good reason- I have been trecking through the Rio Negro province of Argentina and therefore have been without electricity, without internet. I will update this entry when I get the chance, but in short, a few friends and I went on a crazy backpacking adventure up huge mountains and back down them again repeatidly every day. Things were going well until it rained for 2 days straight and our gear and clothing got exposed to water. We had no choice but to crash in a refuge cabin with 70 some screaming 13 year olds while we watched it snow 6 inches outside. Some of the kids had never seen snow before and rushed outside to play in it, we went with them and started a snowball fight and got all of the kids in trouble with their councilers because they were not allowed to do such things. The next morning we walked from the mountains in our partially dried clothing. when we got back to bariloche we drank beer all day (there are alot of good mic...
More About: Places , Patagonia

Sundaying in Puerto Madero (from 12/16/07)
2007-12-28 07:59:00
Street musicians scattered along the peer, people strolling between. A pre-dawn glare. Six drumers with base and snare. Each of them with a set of symbols that shatter with the rhythms of their dance.They have conquered silence. They empower the mothers with toddlers who are dancing too.Mothers with barbaric arm-fling pelvic twists then squating to the ground.I am making perfection out of this instant. It is garnished with greatness. Family-farming. High culture happiness. A beer bottle polluted lagoon.But I am alone right now. Drinking a beer and a guy approaches and asks if he can have a drink of it. I say yes because this sort of thing is normal and I dont want to be an asshole, but he and his friend want the whole entire thing. After a series of concessions that i make in the conversation I realize that I am a stupid foriegner and his friend walks off with my beer. I am a stupid foreigner. What else is important?Only sometimes this is the way.
More About: Buenos Aires , Sundays , Puerto

Graphiti En Ave. De Mayo Dispues La Manifestacion Para Trabajadores De Casi
2007-12-27 23:09:00
¨30 años y sigue las impunidada¨ ¨Basta de experimentar en animales¨ ¨cenasa=muerte¨ ¨no a la heterosexualidad obligitoria¨ ¨trabajo estudio y cambio sociadad¨ ¨aparicion con vida de Julio Lopez¨ ¨No pasaran¨ ¨Veganismo eticacion el planeta¨ ¨estado asesino¨ ¨y Julio Lopez donde esta?¨ ¨Periodico el espejo¨ ¨fuera sionistas de Palestina y el Libana¨ ¨A 30 años los pices seguen escribienda¨ ¨Juventud Argentina¨ ¨Viva la rebellion popular¨ ¨Aparicion con vida de Julio Lopez¨ ¨30,000 razones para seguir luchando¨ ¨Patriz si, Coloniz no¨ ¨Armenia vive¨ ¨Prensa tortilleba¨ ¨las calles son nuestras¨ ¨Basta de Sakeo y muerte de pueblo¨ ¨Basta la impunidad. Carce3l ya a los genocidas¨ ¨Tomemos el conirol sobre nuestras vidas¨ ¨por la revolucion y la socialima¨ ¨Prohibido fijar carteles¨ ¨de los 30,000 razones justica popular¨ ¨basta de salojos huracan¨ ¨masculinidad es dominacion¨ ¨sus ganacias son nuestras enfermidades, Basta de contaminacion capitalismo¨
More About: Buenos Aires , Para , Festa

Cosas Para Hacer Si Necessitas Monedas Para Un Collectivo
2007-12-27 06:01:00
-Quadate cerca de la bolitera de un subte y espera a las personas que no queran sus cinco centavos de vuelto.-Hace un disface de Santa Clause. Para ese busca en la calle ropa roja y blanko. Dejate crecer una barba que sea blanka y muy larga. Vestite y lava las ventanas de los autos que esten espirando en simaforas rojos. Es muy importante que digas ¨ho ho ho! Feliz Navidad!¨ repetedamente.-Podes conducir auna unicycleta si te sientas 2 metres arriba del piso y hace malabares 3 mechetes, mientras usas solemente un pie para conducir la unicycleta.-Preguntale a un amigo para centavos.-Si tenes una computadora y algo para imprimir, es muy facil preperar una carte del gobierno que diga que tenes una disibilidad. Con una truchada como eso, podes entrar a una collectivo gratis, sin preguntas del conductor.-Robo a otra persona, pero solemente exigile las vientecinco centavos que necessisitas. No robes una polocia, ni un hombre muy grande, ni un niño.
More About: Buenos Aires

Assembly
2007-12-11 05:26:00
This moment is spawning into itself.There is time left in the day,enough that the sun continues to burn the crowdinto particulars.Vendors minglingtrays of beer that they carry above their headsthrough the peoplewho are holding flags and waving themunder the sound of fireworkswithout the their light that is outspoken by the stronger light of day.Loudspeakers, moving movie screens with changing images of attendees who are standing in the crowd. Everything is taking place directly outside the nation´s capital buildingon a stage somewhere with some man screamingwho is too submerged with people for me to see who he is.The function is for Christina Kirschner, who assumed the presidency yesterday. She is now Argentina´s first female president.Right now this is unimportant to me,it is a function for Christina turned tributefor the Justisalista party, Eva Peron, Democracy.While I am standing here I am not speaking, I know nobody here,I am sending invitations to friends with insistant text me...
More About: Assembly , Buenos Aires

The Flash Thought Selections that People Make as they Walk By
2007-12-10 04:35:00
Leaps of fath are determinateland breakers that send mysights into motion. A decision I makewhen I feel life in your handsis boundless but stagnant in sudden flight, imagination,foot stomping on the floor of a bar.I meet people and am trying to bridge that gap.Right now I have broken pastthat weekly orchestration that I am used to now:Drummers who lead a marchthrough Defensa Avenue, accross the entirityof the San Telmo market.The gathering of drummers is a ritualistic dancing past,a solidification of something that already is,a presence that is more perminant than the surfaces of stationed vendorssince the drummers are moving at the paceof the mulling crowd.
More About: People , Flash , Buenos Aires , Thought , Make

La Radio Publico in La Boca
2007-12-02 05:56:00
La Radio Publico de La Boca is one radio station of many within Argentia that has been created by factory workers. The stations bring new sorts of commerce and income into these factories. Along with the economic benifits of these stations, they also serve as a medium for public expresion and community inolvement. Most of these stations can reach an audience within the radius of a mile. The content of the majority of radio programs is therefore catered to the respective communities that each station exists within. The radio stations recieve a small amount of public support, but the majority of funding comes from the D.J.s themselves, who pay a fee of 100 pesos for a month-long set of weekly programs.I think that this is a great program because these factory workers are able to bring money into their communities. Most of these communites are impoverished since their once thriving industrial base no longer exists. It is therefore important that new mediums of communication are availab...
More About: Movies , Buenos Aires

Las Calles Grandes en Buenos Aires Son Peligoroso
2007-11-30 05:16:00
Hace un mes, aprendí que no puedo confiar otras personas quienes cruzan calles grandes. Estaba caminando por el parque de San Martin cuando nessisité cruzar El Aviende Del Liberador. Era con dos otros personas que paracieron conocer el lugar and cuando era un buen tiempo para cruzar la calle. Cuando la señal en nuestra directión cambiaba a verde, un groupo de 15 personas empecieron a cruzar por la otra lado de la calle. Tambien, los dos personas a mi lado empecaron a cruzar. No existia una senala peatonal. Por eso, fui con los otros personas en la calle. Cuando estaba en el media de la calle la señal cambió a rojo. Autos y collectivos empecaron a avanzar en los dos directiones por yo. Necessití correr en frente de una collectivo y dos taxis que casi me golpieron. Cuando estaba en el otro lado de la calla todos los personas alla me vian como si fuera un idiota sin una cabeza. En ese momento me di cuenta que habia tomado un mala decisiona. Nunca en mi vida voy a tener confianca en los...
More About: Buenos Aires , Aires , Andes

At Parque Del Centenario
2007-11-29 05:33:00
Birds flying, flocks, people feeding them.They are a nuesence in a day long chase of mating seasonbuzzing by your headthere is a circle of six drummerswho have been banging mallets for as long as i have been here.two women, sprawled in the grass, tanning in their bra and underweara man in cargo shorts, with a fanny pack, skate shoesis laying mangled, facedown beside his toppled bikethe wind is rising, people are puttingtheir shirts on, moving fromthe grass, walking, inhaling the benchingssurrounding a pondfor a second the drumming hasstopped. I can now hear the jazzwith a non-distinct origininflating the park birdspulse of sirenslow end engine roar.beside me there are a pile of bikes,five people practicingthe coreography for a movie scene with martial arts.it is smooth like a dance: one kicks high,the otherducks and slide-kicks low.There are five people doing this,a constant rotation with two groups of two.They are side by side moving to their own music.none of them are wearing shoe...
More About: Buenos Aires , Parks

In the evening rush
2007-11-21 04:42:00
Giant roomwhite-light hum of linolium freshreflections, escelator belts.I am not addapted to these artless walls,the lack of movment. We are grazingas we wait.The subway is emptyit rattlesstrings of light strike seats.Above ground, in Plaza de Miserereevening has dropped into the air.the night-time processionof vendor disassemblence, busesspilling people,streets that lurch and red-light honkthe sun that spills from residuelike something that has passed.
More About: Buenos Aires , Rush , Evening

Weekend at Villa Hesson
2007-11-21 04:42:00
It was a dream. It was filled with us six. We were up 24 hours straight. We were on the beach in the middle of the night, blanket huddled, blowing wind. We were body warmth, changed our possitioning until all of the blankets were built into a barrier that was breaking the wind. We passed around a bottle of diluted whiskey, the waves swept.
More About: Weekend , Villa

At parque Chacabuco
2007-11-17 03:17:00
Thick with the mass of bodies. It is impossible to tell a tale without drawing conculusions: snipping off everything that is hypothetical until the body of it is either compressed until it breaks or is spread too thin.The day is an opened vault, spilled sunlight, sidewalks, pool glimmer. Everybody is revolved around a park bench.There is a woman with a stroller and two children. She has to lift the stroller over each step of this park that is built of stairways. She wants to be back home, too many sun-drenched tiles, she can´t see straight. Then she is hit by a soccer ball! She collapses to the pavement, even though it barely hit her. She is laughing now. The child who hit her is laughing too.A swimming pool that is empty, children are playing baseball in it, or is it hockey?A tree with graphiti on it.A running track that is full of people, one man is running with street clothes.A group of teenagers smoking joints under a tree.Dogs chasing each-other.Everything is moving and i canno...
More About: Buenos Aires , Parks

Florida Avenue, Buenos Aires
2007-11-04 05:37:00
Florida Ave. A group of people dressed as Native Americans playing flutes over prerecorded drum and base electronic music in order to sell an album that they apparently made. A pedestrian street for hardcore shoppers who are always holding shopping bags that are full of clothing and knick-knacks, the crowds move at an annoyingly slow pace since nearly everybody on the avenue is looking to buy something. This is the only part of Buenos Aires that I get flustered, need to escape the head to head contest of mid-day traffic. Half of the people within the mass are trying to sell something. Mostly it is people who stake out spaces within the crowd and hand out businness-card sized fliers: free tanning salon sessions, fast-food discounts, business clothing, ready made vacations, hookers. The people with flyers for hookers are the worst. Usually he is an adolescent who has barely broken puberty, and he lays it on hard, he will not leave you alone until you walk two full blocks ahead with hi...
More About: Florida , Places , Avenue

Puerto Madero: election day
2007-11-02 01:14:00
Everybody has voted, is strolling through: families, couples. There are dancers, they have attracted hundreds of people to watch- a michael jackson impersonator to ¨billy jean¨. People love it, are clapping to the beats. A little farther down the walkway: hip hop music, tango dancers, children running, a ferris wheel, adolescents making out, strollers, food vendors. Fading day light accross the lake, swans, sirens, music: all over the place there is music, hip hop, reggaton, tango, afrobeat. People laying on the hoods of their cars. Moving, I am moving through.
More About: Buenos Aires , Election , Sundays , Puerto

Shoeless Joes
2007-10-31 07:57:00
I am eating a cheeseburger at the only american bar in Buenos Aires . It took two hours to get here. There are 8 tvs, each is showing a different football game (American Football!) and i cannot get enough of these chatty businessmen who just finished closing a deal with Nike and Telephonica. I could not be happier for them, but frankly I dont give a shit. We are Detroit Lions fans. I am here to watch football. They are here to watch football. There is no place except for this bar. We are blabbermouths when the Lions score, a psychosis of nonsensical words. We give eachother five, but not five, this guy in the corner (perfect hair, skinny and tall) insists on giving ten, plus ten shots and also a kazoo. Erupting, we are members of a circus.This happened at Shoeless JoesUruguay 1175, Buenos Aires
More About: Places , Sundays

San Telmo on a sunday
2007-10-23 06:37:00
The san telmo weekend market, a road closed pedestrian mall where bands play sporatic shows and venders have layed out their quilts in the street. There are antiques, plastic action heros, mate goards, lots of mate goards, jewlrey, paintings, peacock feathered pens. There is a constant crowd moving through, half pace. There are more tourists here than there are locals, half of the poeple were speaking english, one lady with a giant microphone, mp3 player, headhphones and a camera. she was standing in the road trying to flag down a taxi without any luck and she seemed to be getting angry.
More About: Places , Sunday , Buenos Aires , Sundays , San Telmo

Street-Side Timed Display
2007-10-23 06:30:00
The worn out sun sits like lazy shoproom light at night, metalic walls and one bank vault to place things. The walls are glass, shared, people who poke and tap at it, they smear their noses against it, pass with children loud and a child screams after the popped balloon sets him off. There is nothing to satisfy, a river, flood that fills alot of ears. It is a sticking point for some who cant stand the straight the chaos of his pronouncement.A police officer who is passing circles around this single indistinguishable restaurant that he was hired to gaurd. His peering eyes, a passing girl, his compartmentalizations: her breasts as she streamlines past. She pays no sort of notice to him and he makes no effort to hide the gaze of his gaping eyes.I am trying to be extravigant right now- people who act in ways that i can´t get over, the shock effect, with barriers drawn, entertainment of pushing against glass. Outside lies the currency of stereotypes, the unreal made real because it has b...
More About: Display , Street , Buenos Aires , Side

(Poetry)
2007-10-18 05:31:00
Subway flow, we are in the mix. A hallway closed tight, crowds thick, strewn, stairs, small door where we enter up from underground, A new location, falling daylight, dampened world. Rush hour, whirlwind pick and grab. With percision we weave through crowds as if we are the only ones there. This is a mess, there are children, white gown uniformed, out of school. The sidewalk cannot fit them all and they are in the street as cars are passing, swerving, stomping, honking- drivers outraged at coincidence. This is day rush, a red faced madness. The family seekers, dinner maker wives who wait and can´t get home- multiplied into millions, horns, exhaust, wafting ¨hallejuha!¨above the buildings sits the greenish air of atmospheres. A halo that rides low, fits firm, drifts away with wind.In the evening it whirls circles around rooftops, against walls, bursts of misfit drifts. Like the sound of cracking backs is the reason a child wakes for warm milk at 2am. An invasion of this space made pe...
More About: Poetry , Buenos Aires

Rain
2007-10-16 05:38:00
It rains alot here. More than half of the time it is raining. As of yet i have refused to buy an umbrella because when it is raining, there are always a bunch of people who are selling them on the streets, and they push them at me. It is not that i have anything wrong with these people, or what they are doing, or the price that they are charging for umbrellas. When i walk into the rain without an umbrella, it is as a form of quiet protest that i trudge through mud, allow myself to be splashed by a bus, stand under trickling awnings, walk into a park, through a through sole grass patch that is saturated into swampland water.People tell me that it is not normal to have this much rain, that it is not right, that it is torture for us all, and they are right. I feel like a fish right now. I look like an idiot. I am taking the rain with me as i walk into the supermarket, am leaving a sludge behind as i cruise between the aisles.
More About: Rants , Rain , Buenos Aires