If Saturday Night Live ever decides to do a Mr. Rodgers parody set in Buenos Aires, they can use this post to write the lyrics to Señor Rodgers' new hit song "Who are the gente in your barrio?". In my daily walks through my neighborhood to class, the subte, the bus, or anywhere else I might be headed, I have come across three distinct professions that don't seem to exist in the United States.
1) THE DOG WALKER
To compensate for the amount of time lost in the beaurocratic disorganized mess that is Argentine society, many porteños choose to outsource their dog walking. The legal limit is 8 dogs per person, but this is rarely challenged and seems to be enforced about as strictly as the Sullivan's Island whistling ban (or at least I hope that isn't really enforced). It's very common to see a guy walking down the street with 10-20 dogs at a time and just about as common to see all of those dogs tied to a telephone pole while the walker is picking up/dropping off a customer or taking a cigarette break. Don't believe me? Check this out: http://www.tripfilms.com/Travel_Video-v113-Buenos_Aires-Dog_Walkers-Video.html
2) THE FLYER-ER
This is exactly what it sounds like. A walk down any commercial street here usually means being bombarded with leaflets advertising restaurants, clubs, English classes, legitimate churces, less legitimate looking religious-y things, POLITICAL PROTESTS, and just about everything else you have no desire to be bothered with. These guys (and girls) are everywhere, and they must be able to make some kind of money doing this despite the fact that no one cares about anything they hand out.
3) THE SIDEWALK CLEANER
Okay so I have to admit that this one is kind of made up since it's actually a part of another profession. Despite providing free healthcare and education, the goverment here is not in charge of maintaining the sidewalks. Instead, these generally tiled surfaces seem to be maintained by whatever building they happen to be in front of. On most blocks, the pattern/type of tile is different in front of every building. Just about every building has some type of super/land lord/maintenance person, all of whom stand outside for 23 minutes and 34 seconds hosing of their sidewalk territory beginning at 7:30 in the morning, so the morning commute means dodging hoses and artificial puddles. This way, the sidewalk is free of litter and presents left by those 23 dogs for at least 40 minutes.
The song would probably continue to describe the vegetable lady, the empenada stand guy, the husband-wife bakery team, and at least one person with a pretty bad plastic surgery battle wound. These are the people in my barrio, the people that I encontrar cada día (the song went something like that, no?).
And now on to bigger and better things:
It just so happens that Victoria's brother Gonzalo (that would be my brother's girlfriend's brother) is an incredible/really well known oboist and was recently on tour in South America. I was able to go hear him perform at the Teatro Colón, which is certainly an item on any Buenos Aires to-do list. There's no need for me to write what wikipedia can already say better (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teatro_Col%C3%B3n), but the important part is it's huge, well-known, old, beautiful, and was just restored last year. I do have a few pictures, though--enjoy:
This picture is from the building's incredibly grand lobby. I couldn't do it justice:
The front of the theater from my 5th floor seat:
The end of the concert:
I was able to hang around afterwars and introduce myself to Victoria's brother:
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