Buenos Aires
Parrillas have the best inexpensive food. The best wine is, well, ~anywhere, so long as you are not too particular about your Malbecs. Go to La Cocina for corn empanadas. I am not much into fancy, multi-course tasting menus, but there are many in Buenos Aires.
Buenos Aires has more bookstores, per capita, than any other city. El Ataneo is the most striking, even if you don’t like Art Deco. The croissants in the El Ataneo cafe taste like you’d expect. (That is to say, not very good.) Poor pastries are one way in which globalization norms have come to Buenos Aires.
Specialty shops outnumber grocery stores, even in the middle-class residential neighborhoods. Few retail chains, outside of fast food, operate here. Protectionist tariffs are one explanation.
The few grocery stores seemed to be run by Chinese immigrants, apparently from Fujian, and they were nearly the only places open on New Year’s Day. One New Years tradition in Buenos Aires is tearing apart your desk calendar and throwing its page out the window. It makes a pleasing mess.
I did not notice street crime, but I also did not go looking for it. Argentine women clutch their purses while walking down the streets.
Buenos Aires is the only city to which I’ve been where women wear floaty elephant pants non-ironically. If only the gap yah’ers came here.
The country that inspired Toms in North America (kinda) is now obsessed with birkenstock-y platforms. It took a few days to convince myself they were cute; I now own a pair.
This is not a city full of tourist-friendly monuments. Some of the downtown resembles Paris, all Haussmann-like. Palermo could be Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg (or vice versa.) Recoleta is the Upper East Side east of Lexington. (Here the window-unit air conditioners drip on you, too.) Puerto Madero could be in any “modern” riverfront where glass towers have replaced aesthetic sense. Overall, the city is great for walking: large boulevards, small streets, huge trees, and many places to stop for mineral water or green juice.
Wikipedia complains about the city’s lack of green space. There aren’t as many parks, and those here are not as nice, as other capitals’. It sounds like Buenos Aires is probably closer to New York City of the mid 1990s than New York City of the aughts.
Two- and three-bedroom apartments in the nicer neighborhoods (Palermo, Recoleta) start at $120k US. Maybe all of us in San Francisco should move to Buenos Aires.
My Spanish is barely functional, and my awkward attempts created many language-learning oportunidades. Most people seemed to understand the English to which I often defaulted (or maybe it was the hand gestures.)
Argentina used to be among the world’s richest countries, the gem of South America. That has not panned out. But Athens this is not — it’s more optimistic than that. Which made me wonder: under what conditions is national sentiment alone a compelling argument for currencies’ remaining flexible, at least relative to very specific geographic boundaries?
The new Argentine government is mostly former CEOs. I am curious to see how well they work together — and work with the world’s financial institutions. 2016, and we’re still learning about governance-by-technocrat.
Buenos Aires feels wealthier than you might expect. The most recent per capita GDP for Buenos Aires I could find is $40k, on par with Tampa and Madrid. Argentine GDP per capita is closer to one-third that figure.
Overall, the city feels more like one in Southern Europe than South America. The price level is low, relative to Northern Europe or North America, but its politics feel stable (for the moment.) This type of country — lower price level and higher political stability — seems the sort where short-term travelers are most likely to extend their trip .. and extend their trip ..
On my arrival, the immigration officer saw my sparkly iPhone case and called me Britney Spears. I was predisposed to like this city.
January 2016
