Cobblestones for City Streets

It's a beautiful sunny day in old town, Buenos Aires where we now live. Max calls San Telmo the "real Argentina." Since we're a couple blocks away from the plaza that's the touristy part even, our neighborhood feels pretty legit. So far I've found some empanada spots, my favorite local graff artist (www.elodio.tk), and a gorgeous venue to dance or watch Tango with live bands (looks like an old school nightclub - like where Ricky played in I Love Lucy).

Kasha has found a spot on our balcony to eat cat grass and watch noisy traffic rumble by. Buenos Aires is rated the fourth noisiest city in the world - in Palermo you'd never know. Here it's much more city.
Here's her view from the balcony:

A view of our building on Brasil street:
target="_blank">

We're in a two bedroom apartment with a loft. From the style I'm guessing it was built between 1900 and 1930 (the loft is kinda new though). The entryway and elevator are cool.
The apartment has french doors throughout and high ceilings and wood floors. It has a servants quarters off the kitchen with a loft too. I'm feeling the bathtub.


We're still moving stuff over from the old apartment. We've been moving for two weeks - they do things at a slower pace here. I'm trying to adjust - so far I find the inaction kind of depressing but I figure I'll get used to it. New York City to Buenos Aires is a big stretch.
(Or not - this isn't too different than the East Village in some ways.)

We've been acquiring furniture and getting rid of stuff - this is a bigger space and was built before cupboards and closets really. We've been armoire shopping which is fun. Weekends there's an antiques fair and the shops are full of vintage to archaic. Our friend found this armoire and painted it nice.


We had a traveler staying with us and this is me hooking up her bed with new sheets. It was fun playing bed and breakfast.
Max got tired of bugging his eyeballs out in photos and has switched to cheek biting.


Friends from LA were in town on business - their zine assignment was to eat their way through Buenos Aires. We thought we should join them. The last day they made it to San Telmo (thanks to Ryan for the photos):


Argentine version of a pimped ride:


Today we came back from seeing Manu Chao play a free show at a psych ward (more blog later) and there was a parade of drum lines and dancers down the street. We joined the crowd for a minute and danced our way home, loving San Telmo.

Monkey Man out of Chile

Okay, this has little to do with Buenos Aires but it's mad contagious - and it's Chilean, not too far off. Straight out of Santiago is an artist I know from NYC. Sebastian paints on skateboards and apparantly makes sick music. His band is Los Mono and Kanye West is blogging about them. It's a small blog world.

Apartment Hunting

We found some great apartments - one was here.

We'll lock down our new home this next week and I'll let you know what happens. San Telmo is the old city with cobblestones and antique shops.

Sleeping and Meeting Babies

I may be catching up on the sleep I've missed my entire life. Is it normal to sleep so much when you are relatively happy? This month I don't have any nightlife crowd shots or smiling, beverage-in-hand pics. Besides sleep and watching the Hallmark channel in Buenos Aires, I've hung out in family settings with kids and ate large meals and relaxed a lot on couches. I'm thinking this is what well-adjusted people spend time doing.

Maxi's new neice and four-year-old nephew.

This is okay as a novelty but not sure I can hold out sitting so much. I'm hoping there's another segment to this settling down thing. We're hunting for an apartment which is more my speed. Think I need to turn up the volume - maybe if there was some kind of sunshine going on - it's overcast here in sunny South America. The city generally has a lot of Naples, Italy going on but lately it's doing its best imitation of London.


This month I made a trip to LA which included one funeral and three visits to the dentists. Despite those, I got to enjoy some quality time with friends and family - even some good times with family in there between the neurotic moments.

Mindy and Mom in Malibu

Len-dog with Maria and Hayden

Aunt Rita with granddaughter Laila (Len-dog is jealous)

Brandon and web wings. Carmen and Maxi have the same eyeball fixation.


Aww yeah, I'm the jewish godmother!
mommies and babies are beautiful




Okay, I did go out a little bit - forgot - just over to the Standard and Chinatown.
Crowds and cocktails.


Richard Ray - there is no other Hollyhood


Remember "where's waldo?" Can you find Dr. Oop and Loco in the crowd?

And Max and I went to a big show before I left - something sponsored by soda.

Mataplantas played at "Pepsi Music"

Max and Mataplantas



Argentina's star emcee - Dante. He's also the son of the most successful rock artist of the past few decades. Even the stars, and children of stars are nice here. It's an amazing culture.

Coupling

It's the strangest thing in the world to go from single to coupled. I don't mean, "Ooh, it's so novel to hold hands walking down the street." I mean, live with, clean up with, go out with, talk about money problems with, go to sleep and wake up with another person. I've never done it - not even close. I have to tell you, it's not as bad as people make it out to be. So far (which granted is not very long) it's good. It's cool to have someone to cook with and eat with. It's cool to talk about what's going on day to day. It's really cool to know someone has your back. It's nice to be off the market too - instead of expending energy primping and pimping. But it's really strange.



Maxi likes to do strange things with his eyeballs in photos.

We went to a party at Marcela's work with really good jungle juice and next level German beer.


Marcela serving me another (this one was for you, Tracy).

Pete visited from NYC and Maxi and I met him for lunch his first day in Palermo Soho.


We went to an arts and crafts fair in a park where Max's band played. I got homesick for LA for like the first time in my life. Maybe it was seeing Mother Teresa repping for the westside? I officially miss you now, Los Angeles.
The weather got warmer here all of a sudden. I'm scared of what summer will be like. Kasha is too - no AC in most of the city.

Choripan stands are the answer to LA's taco trucks, and NYC's pizza spots/hot dog carts - chorizo sandwiches. Maxi wore his special socks to the party and drove us to the good choripan after. We ate them at 5am and they were muy rico.

Today

What I'm doing mostly.


Found a teaching job and hunting for more writing work.
What Kasha's doing mostly (besides eating - la gordita!).



Redheadphone made it into the LES Crown Point Festival (music/film/theater) and is invited to play the ING NYC Marathon's Central Park stage. Those events, coupled with the fact that there's still a bunch of stuff leftover from my apt that I need to get out here, is inspiring me to try to make a visit happen in November. Peep the festival video here:
http://www.crownpointfestival.org/Page-2.html
I miss you NYCrs.

Argentina Look

This site:
http://argentinastravel.com/destinations/top-10-destinations/
has some great info on this country. This colorful street is La Boca here in Buenos Aires.


These are all spots outside BsAs that I haven't been to yet since I haven't seen much outside the city. Visit and let's go see some waterfalls and stuff.