goat hair hat

san telmo bronx

thats the ostrich egg i didnt eat. it floated before i tried to boil it. and it weighed a good 2 pounds. things that weigh 2lbs shouldnt float.
san telmo bronx refers to the names theyve given different barrios, "palermo hollywood", "palermo soho", and san telmo was a lot more ghetto than it is now, and some parts still are, so the stencillos came up with their response. brilliant. look for ms s and i to be sporting the tshirts in 09. theres an ocean of graffiti on the streets and walls and buildings, especially the government buildings. i feel like i could wander the streets of this little neighborhood for the next 5 years and never catch it all...

san telmo te amo

shots from san telmo, our fond little barrio, the 2nd two are the view down to the corner of defensa y estados unidos and our balcony from the street.

contrasts...

we went here: carilo, AG for 2 days of the beach, the trees, and the quiet. totally gorgeous. we were taken there by a very sweet and cool couple who made us feel pampered and taken care of. worth the 4 hour drive south, worth the cash, worth it...and much needed after the noise and chaos of BA...

contrasts...

from this total madness on our street, once again. this was a friday night. about 30-50(?) competing drum groups from all over AG and the world going bonkers from about 5pm-10pm. they just. kept. coming.

but then...

la boca and marcel duchamp

a trip southward into la boca through parque lezama and on down through the ghetto, to arrive at what is, essentially, disneyland. theres all kins of warnings for tourists about going through la boca, do go there at night, dont carry any money, and dont carry around a camera. uh, ok. after a slightly sketchy walk through a dusty, residential and dog-filled barrio we got to caminito. which, for better or worse, has become one of the main symbols of BA. the immigrants were right there in the mouth of the port, and the story goes that they had so little money that they would beg, borrow or steal the paint used for coating the many ships that passed through to paint their corregated tin houses. so theyve mantained the colors on one street in particular, a tiny little street called caminito. and for a 2 block radius, it is a free-for-all outdoor fair, filled to the brim with tourists, hawkers, beggars and tango dancers. not necessarily our style.
so we went into the hyper-suave and new museum called PROA where they had a huge duchamp exhibit going on. the building itself looks like something that belongs on 5th avenue. this is directly opposite this first shot above of this rancid, rotting, stenchy inlet. the smell is that of your bathing suit left in a plastic bag after a day at the beach and then left in the car all the next day in the middle of summer. and the breeze is just blowing it in. the inlet is filled with tires and debris left over from years of neglect, but you do get to see these amazing half sunken barges (like in the 2nd shot). and from what we have heard, there is more work for the regeneration of the place, and to that end, theyve put this PROA museum down there, in hopes of raising the bar.
the duchamp exhibit was stunning. constant reproduction of his own work, in miniature, to create small versions of his work and a mini-museum that could be put up anywhere, to get around the entire gallery system, just brilliant. we saw reproductions of his work, both full sized and shrunken. the title of the show was, 'A WORK THAT IS NOT A WORK <>' found objects and a bicycle wheel mounted to a chair, a urinal on its side, a hat rack nailed to the floor. and of course, 'nude descending a staircase'. we walked out hypnotized and dazed and found this little statue of the mother and child, and then these 3 dudes having a nod against the wall...

4 guys

i love these guys. this artist is all over san telmo. these are the 4 ive found so far.

puerto madero and the veldt

these giant tonka toy cranes are right near our house, our cobblestone neighborhood and the tango dancers and ancient markets. gigantic cranes in puerto madero. las gruas. and if you walk another 3 minutes east, you get to the biological conservation park that is somewhat like an african plain, and somewhat like a tropical jungle. the air changes from being that of a busy deisel-fumed street to a walk in what this place mustve been like when the conquisatdors first came here, looking for silver... the 4th pic is of ms s standing on avenida achabal rodriguez, looking north. our feeling was that along this promenade, you should be at the edge of a river in europe, the vltava or the siene or the elbe should be there, but instead its this expanse of lush green grass and bizarre calls of native birds. to your left is the city, in all its modernity. and all along the promenade are stalls selling POUNDS of meat on the grill. its a bbq anytime you want it here. ms s observed that given the size of a sandwich here, and given the size of a big mac in the states, these folks should be gigantic. but theyre not. in fact, obesity seems to be almost non-existant down here. this last is a snap of their crazy pedestrian bridge, another symbol of BA. all of this is within a 25 minute walk from our front door.