strange encounters of the buenos aires kind

Yesterday evening, after a very long day, Paul and I were strolling in front of the Abasto Mall (a giant shopping and cinema Mecca housed in the old Mercado Central). An Asian woman, well-dressed, heels blazing, slightly frenzied ran up to us shouting in broken English. Paul and I stop dead in our tracks. I think we were startled by the appearance of such fashion choices outside of Palermo Viejo and also someone of such elegance deigning to speak to us, schlepping around the city like two idling backpackers. The encounter unfolds, in English, making the whole the even stranger:

Woman: (shouting) Excuse me, excuse me! Where can I find more shopping. (Holds up shopping bags to emphasize meaning of the word shopping)

Paul: (Looks at Clare as if to say, 'Is she kidding?' then points at giant, unmissable landmark of Abasto Shopping Mall) Um, that's the biggest mall in town.

Woman: (frantically checking watch) It open until 10? 10?!

Clare: It's open late for the movies.

Woman: (Sound muffled by frantic heel clicking in direction of Abasto) Thank you!!

We walked away towards Carlitos totally baffled and still in search of Peruvian hot sauce. Very, very strange. Was the woman on an urban scavenger hunt? Did she have a 12 hour layover in Buenos Aires to max out her credit card? Had the throwers at Ezeiza carefully misplaced her baggage? What was the big consumerist emergency? We may never know. But I suppose when you need to shop, you really need to shop.

me da bronca

Maria France writes in Bad Times in Buenos Aires, “That morning I had nipped out to buy a pair [of tights], not yet having learned that in Argentina nothing could be nipped our for; even fast food was slow. I had ended up in a special hosiery boutique looking on as a beautiful and disdainful woman produced individual pairs of tights in different shades and deniers from tiny drawers. The tights were expensive and they were already leg-shaped, which I found a fascinating novelty, but when I got my pair out of the packet at home, the exuded a forceful scent of Parma violets. There was nothing to be done about it now; I resigned myself to an evening spent apologizing for my legs.”

How true it is. I spent the good part of a year feeling like an American consumerist slut longing for my bygone days whipping through the SuperTarget in Oxnard buying everything I needed under one roof and throwing countless more items in my cart for good measure. What’s an extra $50 in crap you don’t need when you get everything you do need simultaneously?

It’s true that nothing in Buenos Aires can be nipped out for. Invariably, if you live in Buenos Aires there is a chino, or Chinese owned grocery store, down the block for emergencies, but you can’t shop there for everything you need and they give you candy instead of change because of the ever-mythical moneda crisis. The big supermarket is usually 10 blocks away. The big supermarket is where you can find all your groceries and they have groovy names like Disco, Eki, Coto, and Norte which give a false sense of shopping time fun. Going to the supermarket in Buenos Aires generally takes no less than 2 hours and you can get everything there provided they still have bread, milk, and other items that are constantly missing from the shelves for a plethora of vague reasons. Invariably there is one person in line in front of you with a cart full of meat. I have never figured out who these people are feeding. Are they buying a thousand pesos worth of meat for a restaurant? Are they raising lions and tigers in their backyard? It’s still a mystery but the one person in line in front of me adds one hour to my supermarket experience every week. Then I have to wait while the only-one-step-from-comatose-sleep checker wipes the conveyer belt with a bloody rag where the meat juice has been running everywhere. Tasty. Yup, really get my apples right in the blood. Nice.

BA does have its version of the SuperTarget in the form of the Jumbo and French-owned Carrefour – two stores where you can get everything from peanut butter to canned jalapeños. These are generally miles away and require a half day-long investment in you precious city time. Chinatown has everything exotic too but most people don’t live anywhere near there.

There are other options. The best bread comes from the bakery and the tastiest fruit comes from the bolivianos faithfully littered around the city every couple of blocks. The best meat comes from the butcher shop and… so on. Combine this with the chino and you almost have everything you need for good eating in Argentina. Now, however, you have at least 4 stores on your list and another several hours invested. Make no mistake, the meat is the best in the world.

I just try to use this as explanation for why my blog goes neglected for long periods of time, why I generally haven’t spoken to my family for weeks at a time, why I am always behind in my workload, and why the women of Wysteria Lane have no idea what desperate really means. Call me on my cell phone. I have hours free everyday in the line at the super.