Casas in Caballito

Caballito is in the exact center of Buenos Aires, if you're looking at a map. It's center along Avenida Rivadavia between Parque Rivadavia and Primera Junta is as dense as Barrio Norte and almost a city unto itself. Wandering north or south, into the back streets of the neighborhood you encounter quiet streets, cobblestone streets and a very relaxed, barrio-feel.

New to the blogroll: On the Corner. Sartorialist for Buenos Aires. The fashions are interesting but I actually enjoy all the street scenes surrounding the figures even more. Sart is great but I get a little tired of parismilannewyork.

Ochava Shadows

Corner buildings are required to have a beveled edge, known as an ochavas, but only on the ground floor. When the sun is at the right angle you get these interesting trapezoidal shadows.

Tipas in Bloom

Spring in Buenos Aires is a march of successive blossoming trees. Tipas are one of the last with their small, yellowish-orange blossoms currently falling on the sidewalks all over the city.

Jacaranda

Buenos Aires is full of Jacaranda trees. While they are common in cities of similar latitudes [Los Angeles, Mexico City, Pretoria] they are actually native to Argentina. The purple flowers are brilliant but can be hard to photograph against a blue sky. The photo above is from my balcony. The dark green of the tree behind serves well to highlight the color of the blossoms.


In certain plazas the ground and sidewalks are carpeted with the fallen flowers.


And this was the gutter along Alcorta just outside the Bellas Artes museum.

New Sidewalks

The current city government is haphazardly replacing the old tile sidewalks with plain concrete ones. This is mostly going on around downtown and in front of a few important public buildings. Also, out in the barrios, just the corners are being replaced.

In the second photo you can see the new and the old side-by-side. On the left are baldosas or sidewalk tiles. Each property owner is responsible for choosing the style of tiles in front of their building and also paying for upkeep. Often this becomes a problem as certain buildings don't pay for the upkeep leading to broken and or loose tiles. The dreaded baldosa floja has been a tourists' nemesis for years.

I'm not sure how I feel about the new sidewalks. They are very practical and better than badly maintained baldosas but they also lack character or any connection to Buenos Aires' urbanistic heritage.

Chamuyar Obama

A post seen outside the old Molinos cafe just across the street from Congress. It roughly translates as "Cristina, go sweet talk the black-guy Obama into bringing some money. Rent is due." Presumably put up by people unhappy with her administration and proposed budget cuts fro 2009.

Pillow Fight Buenos Aires

Yesterday a couple thousand teenagers gathered in front of the Planetarium in Parque Palermo for a facebook-organized, flash mob pillow fight [lucha de almohadas]. Beatrice has a great set over at flickr and you should also check out this video from YouTube, it's from the pillow fight from 2006 but you get a sense of what it's like to be in the middle of it. The event also has it's own official blog, Lucha de Almohadas.

Casa on Helguera

Just a house on Helguera and El Ñandu. Boxy and simple. This is part of Barrio Nazca near the intersection of Avenida Nazca and Alvarez Jonte in Villa Santa Rita. There's a whole cone of the city between Caballito and Villa Urquiza that I'm just beginning to explore. For more on the area, please check out Robert Wright's incomparable Housing for the Masses series.

Warning Tape

Security tape, usually used to mark off construction areas is red & white striped, hastily tied around supports which are often just a metal rebar stuck in some small block of concrete.

Window Washers

Window washers cleaning a posh, new high rise in Belgrano. They look like they're having fun.

Cambalache Siglo 20

Cambalache is a junk shop. It's also the title of a famous tango from the 1930s that compares the politicians to junk and theives. Not surprisingly various dictatorships banned it. The name of the shop is clever, Cambalache Siglo XX references a line in the final verse:

¡Siglo veinte, cambalache
problemático y febril!...
El que no llora no mama
y el que no afana es un gil!

The site TangoDC translates the line as follows:

O Twentieth Century—you fever-ridden
pawnshop in revolt!
If you don't cry out, you don't get no milk,
and if you don't filch you're a dolt! [Link]

The most amazing line in the tango is the first:

Que el mundo fue y sera
una porquería, ya lo sé...
(en el quinientos seis
y en el dos mil también!)

"The world always was and always will be a pig sty, I know (in 1506 and in 2000 too)". Prophetic lines from a song written in 1934. Here's the song on YouTube.

Also I'd like to thank Taos of The Argentine Post and Nancy of Trendy Palermo Viejo for adding me to their blogroll.

Verduleria

Peppers at a verduleria in Villa del Parque.

My friend Stephen, who joined me yesterday, found the answer to the question, Where Would Jesus Shop?

Fileteado Porteño

Fileteado is a decorative style that's original to Buenos Aires. Whole books have been published on the topic so I can't hope to explain it all in a single post but I'll return again to examples of fileteado. The decoration can be used almost anywhere but one place where it's common is on the city's buses. They're not as outrageous as the buses in Panama City. Rather, the fileteado are small details which accent the design and paint job. As usual, wikipedia and flickr are good places to start exploring.

Pintada on Libertador

Pintada Politica under the train tracks along Libertador & Dorrego. You can see that the message has been painted over many times. Certain high traffic spots attract the painters. La Pared Mutante is a very interesting fotolog that has been documenting the successive pintadas politicas painted on a single building since 2006 [Via PeruFotoLibre].

Faculdad de Medicina & Jacaranda

The Jacaranda are in bloom. They're all over the city. It's hard to take a good picture of the flowers, however, as the purple against the blue sky doens't contrast very well. Here's the medical school, built in 1937, on Paraguay & Junin.

Barrio Chino

Buenos Aires' Chinatown, or Barrio Chino as it's known, occupies just two blocks along Arribeños between Mendoza and Blanca Encalada just steps away from the Barrancas de Belgrano train stop. There's a cluster of chinese restaurants, import gift shops and food stores. There's a couple of supermarkets with imported foods and spices from not just China but also Japan, Korea, Brazil and the US. The food here in Buenos Aires is wonderful but I do occasionally get tired of eating pizzaempanadasmilanesapastacarne so a fortnightly trip to the Barrio Chino has become one of my routines.

Calle Nueva York in Villa Devoto

I couldn't resist reposting this from my personal blog. Since I used to live in 'Nueva York' I just had to take this picture. The street is way out in Villa Devoto near the city limit.

Statue of Liberty in Belgrano

There's a small, rust-colored statue of liberty in Barrancas de Belgrano. New York and Buenos Aires actually have a lot of similar details like subways under avenues, italian and jewish immigrant communities, while, overall, looking nothing like eachother. In the desire to uncover the secret brotherhood of these two New World metropolises I've created a new label, 'new york in baires'. Check it out.

Tipas in Spring

The Tipas all over the city have recently sprouted their leaves and they are an absolutely incredible shade of green/chartreuse. These are on Avenida Olleros in Belgrano. From a comparison of how they looked just a few weeks ago, check out this post on the Tipas in Plaza San Martin.

Paging Dr. Robert

There sure are a lot of Beatles cover bands playing Buenos Aires at the moment.

Chalet in Flores

I'm fascinated by Chalet-style houses. They vaguely recall the Tudor-style architecture of Mar Del Plata and the English influenced estancia houses on the Pampa but they've long since evolved into their own creature--some architectural platypus that's evolved on it's own way down here in the Southern Cone. Here's a longer set on my personal website and a flickr set with even more Chalets.

Tiled House on Lavalleja

I love the deep color of the tiles on this house, on Lavalleja in Palermo Viejo.

Ornate Garage Door

I was impressed by how ornate the iron work on this garage door was. I believe this is on Argañaraz or Lerma in Villa Crespo.

The Letter E

Today's post is brought to you by the letter E. As in estacionamiento. A garage on Acevedo in Villa Crespo.

Cosa Nostra Parking

The mafia has their own parking lot. Actually, it's for an Italian restaurant named Cosa Nostra in Palermo.