Summer in Buenos Aires

The South American summer is coming to an end and I'd like to share some photos and stories with you.


I'm an illegal alien, but officially I'm a tourist. To maintain tourist status, every three months, I have to leave Argentina and get my passport stamped. Most people in my situation take the ferry to Uruguay for the day and come back in the evening. The trip is an hour each way. Max found a package that included the ferry, in first class, a tour, and lunch for $50 US apiece. So we went to Uruguay for the day, ballers in first class, and skipped the tour to rent bikes and go to the beach.
Colonia, Uruguay:





Colonia is a pretty town of cobblestones and motor scooters. People are nice and nobody hurries for any reason. Uruguay and Argentina have their beef, like any neighboring countries, but they have a great deal in common. Only difference I've noticed is the Portugese influence felt in Colonia, whereas Buenos Aires has a history of Spaniards, Italians, French, and Brits coming in and adding something to the cultural fabric.


Argentine Countryside:


Max and I spent time at his friends' country house about an hour from the city. There was a country club and equestrian center.





This gated community exists in the middle of the nowhere, with a poor small town to one side and the highway to the other. Like much of this country, the people with any decent income spend their time and money with each other, far from the riffraff. I met some of the riffraff at the beach a month later.

Pinamar Beach:

Dario, aka "El Negro," on the left, is from the town next to the place Max's friends rented for the summer. He was floored that I knew of it and was proud of his town. The guy on the right is Mattius, aka "El Colo," el colorado which is what redheads are called. From his nickname, I gained a new appreciation for the landscape of the state of Colorado and for my new identity here in Argentina, where I get to be colored.
I went to Pinamar with two girlfriends for the weekend. Pinamar is on the Atlantic coast about five hours from Buenos Aires. (More about Pinamar)

We took an overnight bus and arrived at 5am. We got breakfast in the station and then took a cab to our hostel at the beach. We left our stuff and went down to the water to watch the sunrise. There we met some boys ending their night with beers at the beach.

I was with Natalia, an Argentine who owns the restaurant on the corner of my block, and Nicole, whom I met at a wine event the week before. She's a sommelier on vacation from NYC. We had a great weekend at the beach riding bikes, getting some sun, and relaxing.


Before we got on the bus full of beds to head back home, the Pinamar boys cooked up an asado and we partook. It was Nicole's first homemade asado - a big deal here in Argentina - and they pulled out all the stops, which included lots of cuts of meat, bread, and wine and...that's it. Meat and meat and some bread - a meal Nicole and I, as Californians and females, likely have never experienced. Our carnivorous companions, being the gents that they are - even the one 17 year old - made it all lovely.


Back in San Telmo, we had a going away party for Nicole and the boys squashed into El Colo's SUV and came to Natalia's restaurant for the festivities. Nicole's last name is Heyman. For our last night in Buenos Aires, us H(e)ymans piled in the SUV and danced to cumbia all over town with Natalia, El Colo, El Negro, and the rest of the boys - two of them teenagers.


Quequen for New Years:

The best time at the beach this South American summer was with Max and Kasha. We spent New Year's Eve 2008 in Quequen, seven hours southeast of Buenos Aires on Argentina's Atlantic coast. Max's friends rented a beach shack and we joined them for a week. Kasha got to spend some time outside. She even made it to the beach.



Cats aren't big on open spaces so we hung out in the dunes



She had fun but her favorite was the garden at the house, laying in the sun and rolling in the dirt like a good little dog-cat.


New Years Eve was spent with this guy. Like any good NYE celebration, it included barking dogs running around with little boys shooting off firecrackers. There was breakdancing, booze, and a party on the beach. The sleepy town of Quequen woke up and managed to do New Years Eve just right - until the sun came up.
















Max started a cool new job this month producing a morning show on a network TV station. I've been busy writing for two new publications, in addition to my regular job, and we're working on music for a show and recording together. Our sound is acoustic guiar with Argentine percussion and we plan to play shows in California when we visit this summer.

This week I'm headed to New York to play with Redheadphone and meet Manny Jr., new baby in the Bronx. Argentina has turned cool and rainy and everyone is back from their two-month vacations. Fall in Buenos Aires will be nice.

South Americans Empowered by Technology

Can't get enough of those South American power to the people via technology news stories. An email blast from NYC's Mean Red hipped me to this one. It's the continuation to where John Perkin's Confessions of an Economic Hit Man left off, with strategies to use global techniques to fight back against corporate global domination. In Ecuador the Shuar tribe is getting loked to fight off the oil companies sequestering of tribal lands and demolition of the rain forest. A nonprofit out of Virgina has equipped the tribes-people with GPS devices to successfully map the forest. The devices aid them in "territorial vigilance" - they chart and deleniate boundaries to assert their interests. In other words they have lawyers and the shit is written out and documented so they can prove they own the land when the bulldozers show up illegally.

Next I read about Facebook bringing about global protest against guerrilla terrorist group The Farc in Colombia:

The protesters waved flags and wore T-shirts with the slogan: "No more kidnapping, no more lies, no more deaths, no more Farc." Some estimates put the number of people protesting in Bogota at between 500,000 and two million. The protest was started less than a month ago on the social networking website Facebook by a 33-year-old engineer, Oscar Morales, from his home in Barranquilla on Colombia's Caribbean coast. Over 250,000 Facebook users signed on, and the movement was taken up by newspapers and radio and television stations across the country...BBC News

When government fails, Google Earth and social media prevail. I'm hoping Bay Area techies work on Superfriends powers next - like Wonder Twin rings available at Radioshack.

Fun Tonight

Zizek happens Wednesdays and has been on hiatus for the past month and a half and tonight it is a brand new party.

Zizek was named after a well-known Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, who married an Argentine lingerie model. The party includes live cumbia and South American rap acts along with resident deejays and global guests like Diplo. Villa Diamante is a resident, Zurita makes appearances, as does El Remolon, Daleduro, Oro11, and Marcelo Fabian. These are the members of Buenos Aires’ rat pack of hip hop/ cumbia/ reggaeton. Whatever you call it, they bring the street to the club. In March, they’re taking their sound of urban Buenos Aires mobile; not to Punta Del Este or even to Rio, the chicos are bringing Zizek to South By Southwest......more

Better Looking V. More Fit For the Job

Hillary, please.
If America was so ready for real change, as Obama says, it would have done something to stop all the criminal activity of the past eight years while we were as one nation, under oil.

Of course I like him myself and would like to see change. But I don't think he can bring about change with inspiring speeches. I don't see him as ready to fight the bad guys properly and they're not going away anytime soon. Thinking their time is done is incredibly naive. There will be more Cheneys and they will kill more people, steal from entire nations and generations, and the American on his couch enjoying Obama's speeches will continue to do nothing to stop the empire.

In 2008, most Americans are too busy working to approach critical analysis of the propaganda thrown at them by advertisers and media. Many haven't been provided the opportunity for an education that teaches you to read between the lines. Real change takes time and effort and America isn't in a position to do that hard work right now. The country has been debilitated by eight years of fear, manipulation, and of the pillaging of the economy. What America needs is a competent leader like Hillary who will clean up the mess that is our foreign policy, economy, and education and health care systems. Despite his popularity, JFK didn't do much as president. He was great at being Hollywood. Obama isn't prepared to do battle with the repubs and push through key policy. He's approached the race without an economic proposal and is banking on his public image to put him in the seat of world leader, rather than real know-how.

Hillary is fit to fight the anti-democratic forces in Washington, like those in this past administration, and win. To fight the machine of politicians engaged in a policy of self interest, you must be in the machine with your own mechanized army. If Obama wins and if he is then elected to the presidency, he may easily become a do-nothing president, and possibly through little fault of his own, but rather through not being prepared to work the machine. The country can't afford that at this point in our history. I hope he gets his chance to work for change. In about eight years from now.