Goodnight, Recoleta ... good morning, Belgrano

This is my last night in Recoleta, living on the corner of Pacheco de Melo and Pasaje Bolllini. I've lived here for three months plus I lived not far away during 2005 for a month so I know the neighborhood well. In Belgrano, I will be starting from scratch. Luciano's shop is there and my friends live there also but the new apartment is in a different part of the barrio so I'll need to explore it as terra incognita. I was there today to meet the owner and pick up the keys. It's very nice and the view is awesome from the 10th (or 9th in European/Argentinian style) floor.

I'll have one of the most coveted addresses, after the Casa Rosada (presidential palace), in the city: Avenida del Libertador. People here practically sigh when I say I'm moving to Libertador. Luciano says we'll be conchetos. I don't have a good way to translate that. An old-fashioned term would be dandies and a modern one might be pampered rich kids. It's used for young men with plenty of money, fancy cars, prestigious homes, and so on. I think I'm a bit long in the tooth to play the role of concheto convincingly.

Since we got back from La Pampa, we've mostly been domestically dull, I suppose. Cooking dinner at home, long conversations (my Spanish is improving dramatically from living with an Argentino), reading or browsing the web, etc. We went to dinner last week at Garbis in Belgrano, a middle-eastern restaurant serving a mix of Arabic and Armenian cuisine. We ordered Pilav Persa, a very rich rice dish with chicken, almonds, and raisins designed to be shared by two people. It was delicious and filling all by itself and we were glad we hadn't ordered anything else with it.

Price for Persa Pilav and 2 beverages: 47.50 pesos (US $15.07).

Sunday we roamed a great deal on foot. First we walked to Alto Palermo Shopping so Luciano could take some photos there for a friend in Boston. We did a little clothes shopping and Luciano found a shirt he loved at Kevingston, an Argentine clothier with branches in other Latin American countries. We found one for me also but they didn't have it in my size so we decided to look for it at one of the other branches in Avenida Santa Fe. Ultimately we ended up walking all the way to Microcentro (downtown) and up and down the lengths of both Florida and Lavalle before buying the shirt at Kevingston in Galerias Pacifico. Then we headed to Las Cuartetas for quick empanadas, grabbed a bus back to Recoleta to drop off our purchases, and zipped over to a nearby cinema just in time to make the 10:30 PM showing of Hairspray. I was a bit uncertain about it because I love the original version but the new one is equally good, if not better in certain ways, although it's impossible to ever equal the glamor of the late Divine. My young fay hero, Justin (Mark Indelicato), on Ugly Betty does a wonderful job of re-enacting "Good Morning, Baltimore", the opening number, for his parents on the subway. I just love that kid, he's such a terrific role model for young gay people. He's happy, well-adjusted, and his family totally loves him just as he is.

One night last week we went for a long walk after dinner through Recoleta, ending up at the other end of Avenida del Libertador before heading back home. The contrasts are striking. Near Libertador and Callao are jewelers like Cartier and European couturiers vending items at astronomical prices. Just blocks away is a world away, Villa 31, one of the villas miserias (shanty towns/slums), where a single bauble from Cartier would probably feed all of the inhabitants for a month.

Riches and poverty co-exist here in a strange symbiosis. There's no official recycling program like we have in California. All of your garbage is tossed in the same bag and the building's portero (doorman) hauls it out to the street each evening. Then an army of the impoverished, estimated at 25,000 people, descends on the city to sift through the trash and pick out anything that can be processed and sold (paper, plastic, etc.). You see whole families including children working through the night in a struggle to survive. The government supplies a train, known as the Ghost Train or White Train, to bring these cartoneros into the city at dusk and ship them back out to the slums in the morning, a train without seats, heating, or air-conditioning. Walking down a street in the richest part of the capital at night means encountering the faces of the desperately poor yet most porteños seldom seem to even notice them. Do click the link above, the photographs are incredible.