Floods, Presidents, and $$

Tuesday night the city flooded. The rain crashed down for hours and the sky broke apart in wave after wave of lightening bolts and sonic boom.
The city cracked - the subte (subway) stopped working and the roads became creeks with hydroplaning cars and wading pedestrians. There'd been a flood in a neighboring city that required the evacuation of 400,000 residents. With visions of Katrina in my head, I went to meet some friends around the corner for a going away dinner and some anglophonic company.

Jim is an American who'd been living here for some months and he was preparing to go back home to Wyoming. A seasoned traveler, Jim had a great group of friends who'd miss him here and I anticipated good times and good conversation - despite the tempest raging around us. Lobo and I went to Palermo House to meet Jim and our friend Sebastian from "Nueva Zealanda." At the hostel we were treated to an impressive view of the storm - the wall of windows in the loft space showed what the sky was really up to out there. Sebastian told how he'd seen a lightening bolt hit one of the towering buildings nearby - from my LA eyes the windows looked like a widescreen plasma and the thunder was surround sound. Except my galloshes were totally coming in handy and Loby kept shaking himself to get the rain off his coat.

We splashed a few blocks away to drop off El Lobo and got to Eros - where the steaks are six pesos ($2) and you can watch people practice indoor soccer while you dine under flourescent lighting. We met up with Kurt - another expatriot living here in the capitol, otherwise he lives off of La Brea and Wilshire in LA. Libby came in just after us - it had taken her two hours to get to us, with the subway not running and cabs super scarce. She's from London and has lived in Venezuala and traveled the continent. Normally a vegetarian, she's making concessions for the happy cows here. They are so good - have I told you how good the steak is? Even vegetartians get down in BsAs.

Our waiter is a fixture at Club Eros and is the cutest man. Jim nicknamed him "El Penguino" because he looks strikingly like the Penguin from Batman. Or because he just looks like a real penguin - puede ser. He lectured me on how "rare" is the same as "raw" and that there's really only two ways to prepare a steak; raw, or cooked. He was passionate about that since I'd ordered it rare and I had to return it cause he'd brought me seared flesh. He came back with a "cooked" steak and managed to get us some ketchup even, for the fries. Jim said it was the first time he'd seen him ever smile and thought I'd had some special effect on him. I figured Jim may not have ever dined at Club Eros with a female who debates with Italian waiters on the regular. El Penguino and I did have a nice moment though.

With a table of lefty first worlders in the third world, the conversation of course turned to politics. I noted how funny it was that there's a grafitti stencil "Bush Fuera" (out with Bush) asking for his impeachment. Like I wrote you here, I find it striking that a foreign country is concerned with US domestic politics to the level that it's street grafitti here in Buenos Aires. Libby said she'd been to a lecture in Chile or Bolivia, I think, where people called Bush "our president." She learned that many South Americans feel their leaders don't have enough power to make any changes and that the US president dictates enough of their policy wherein he is effectively their leader as well as ours.

Their attitude makes sense and it's an uncomfortable reality. With media and consumer market domination aligned with policy authority, it's an ambivalent reality being a leftist expatriot in the third world. It's disgusting being the perpetuator of the disease. At the same time, my dollars are making my experience possible and the locals I come in contact with would gladly change places with me and be carriers of the disease. Capitalism is king, regardless of what national is ordained omnipotent.

Here, families sift through garbage to collect recycling - even in storms - and live in tin and cardboard squats behind the train station. Little kids peddle sundries at sidewalk cafes. Rayon is considered quality fabric and no one ever has change for a $20. There are lines at the bank every morning and the ATMs - that are few and far between - are often out of cash. For a nation in the midst of a depression, Argentines definitely put their best face forward. Maybe it's because they're well fed?


A former carcel (prison) turned street art.