hay una luz que nunca se apaga

one outta three

2009-06-20T15:21:00.004-04:00

TRIUMPH! After spending waaay too much time working on it and an extremely generous and close read from an IFSA tutor (!!), I have finally finished my UBA paper. Clocking in a 18 pages single spaced pages of text with 60-something footnotes and six pages of bibliography it's easily one of the longest papers I've ever written -- and it's in Spanish. For a bit of trivia: it's the only serious paper I have ever written without using a library book. (JSTOR, ftw.) Pasted below is a sample of the articles that I used, but only the ones that a) came with the course packet or b) I planned to use so much that I deemed worthy to print.

For the past week or so they have been my only friends. (Am I joking? Not sure.) Now I am pretty worried about the oral presentation on the paper. Reading/writing and talking in front of the whole class on topics you're thinking about in English -- different ballgames.

Now that I've finished this paper and passed my film class, what remains?

- UCA Lit paper on The Politicization of Pablo Neruda in Spain (due Tuesday, barely started)

- IFSA music paper (almost done!, topic too geeky to announce)

- IFSA presentation Thursday (not especially worried)

- UBA presentation Friday (ugh at least I have the week to prepare)

2009-06-17T00:25:00.006-04:00

It's been a while. I apologize. Lots and lots of updates! But first: I was inspired to write because I was re-reading some older posts and feeling fairly humiliated and thinking adding some new content might take some of the shame away. If I said something especially stupid, I am sorry. I tend to do that.

Life for the past few weeks has been really excellent. I hear it's always this way -- that it's only at the very end when you start to feel like your normal self and understand what it is that you don't want to lose when you leave.

Here is a quick run down in LINKED photos.

Mom and Dad came to visit. I showed them around the city and we took a side trip to beautiful Colonia and Montevideo, Uruguay. They made my friends an awesome brunch. Mostly, though, it was great not really doing anything with them. I miss them.

The week after that Danielle came to visit. It was really amazing having her here, much more than I think we both had anticipated, and an incredible capstone to our getting close again phase.

First, it meant that we were able to do things that we were insanely stoked on that no one else would be able to appreciate. Case in point: Krishna Veggie Lunch dinner -- and our waiter who knew Shelter.

Second, she is much cooler and more fun than I am. I'm still not sure when the tables switched and I became the shy one of the two of us... In any event, everyone loved having her as much as I did. It was, as we've been saying, MUCHO BUENO.

Third, everyone loving her so much meant that I got to hang out with everyone much more than usual. MUCHO MUCHO BUENO. Trips (paseando and to La Plata) ensued, especially those in search of vegan eats. She was sent-off by an unfortunate early arrival of my unhappy host mother -- a snippet "SHEEEEILLLAAAA! se van a tener que retirar! y espero que no me falte nada!!" -- after some uncharacteristically bad cooking on my part. At least the company was wonderful.

After Danielle left, hangouts continued at Danie's super fun bday party. I laughed a lot, even more than usual. Here is why.

This weekend Natalie, Jasmine, and I saw Juana Molina at a touristy city event. On Satuday it was Shipwreck and Have Heart (videos from the show linked) in BA. It was pretty epic. Plus Pat opened their set with "this song goes out to the only person in this room who has been with us from the beginning" before breaking into the Intro and Lionheart. While that was pretty awesome, just getting to talk with him is really what made my week. ...that and hearing JD's Boston accent. It made me miss Meffid! (Disclaimer: I apologize that this blog has recently turned into a forum for my fandom. Consider it wrapped up as of now.)

In other news:

1. A week ago from yesterday I booked my flight home. I leave BA July 3 and will be home with plenty of time for fireworks!

2. I was sick last week, got better, and now I think I might be coming down with something again. That's a big problem considering that I am WAY BEHIND on schoolwork and can't seem to finish -- or, more to the point, ever take a genuine interest in -- this monografia for UBA and thus be able to start working on other things. Uh oh.

3. I walked past Hooters tonight on the way home from UCA and they were playing Boys Don't Cry. What?

On a final note, I was marking the end of my stay by the date of the Have Heart show as it seemed like a logical point in the distance from long ago. That I am leaving soon when I feel like I am just starting to feel totally comfortable being myself has just begun to sink in and it's a big bummer.

no words

2009-05-15T16:37:00.005-04:00

We all met at Axel's tattoo parlor and went 22 strong to Gerli for the show last night on the same city bus and train to the province. I thought that was absurd but I didn't know what was coming... Afterwards about half of the kids from the show piled in to the same post-show Line 37 bus back to the city. There are no words. Imagine a literally completely full city bus -- no two people were more than three inches apart from one another -- filled with stage-dive high hardcore kids screaming and laughing.

The forty-five minute ride consisted of soccer chants, Diego crowd surfing a good third of the way through the bus, and repeated screams for Oso to come to the back. Oso probably earned his nickname, which translates to bear, due to his large frame. The pleas continued until he finally yelled back "I can't, I'm too wide" to the hysterical laughter of literally everyone there.

As Dag Nasty asked, "What can I say?"

A related aside: Pauly Ramirez deserves a gold medal in the patience Olympics for her relentless kindness.

it's not the spectacles the pagaentry the thousands things you've got to see

2009-05-13T18:11:00.008-04:00

For only the second day since I arrived the weather in BA is really crummy. Skies are grey, it’s been lightly drizzling all day and the high humidity is making it feel even colder than its approximately 55 degrees. The somewhat Boston-like weather got me thinking about how it’s going to be summer when I come home which reminded me of the fact that I have neglected to mention what I will be up to this summer. Whoops.

I will be interning in the External Affairs department of the Center for American Progress hopefully working on legislative outreach (aka lobbying big scary word) but probably working on email contact management.

I am super stoked to be in DC again! I put together a rundown of my favorite things after last summer but there’s still plenty I am excited about for this upcoming summer.

On the agenda:
Now that I am 21+, I am stoked to start exploring H St. NE. Can’t wait to hang out at the H St Country Club, eat jumbalaya and while taking in Farina family member bands at the Red and the Black, and you know be old enough for shows at the Rock n Roll Hotel. I couldn’t really do anything cool over there last year because I was a young’n but thanks to a birthday that is otherwise meaningless to me I can start seeing some new places.

Food I haven’t yet eaten: Ray’s Hell Burger, Dairy Godmother, all of the schwarma places in Adam’s Morgan I seem to have missed at which I hopefully can eat Old Bay fries, and DC’s apparent explosion of cupcake-mania. And old favorites like BCB, Old Ebbitt Express, Taqueria Nacionale, San Miguel’s Pupuseria, Amsterdam, and 2 Amys where I eat cheap and well. Mmm already excited for restaurant week in August!

EATING BAGELS. I just miss bagels. I asked Fedex this weekend and he told me they don’t exist here. I don’t think I have had a good New York bagel in DC but apparently Montreal style bagels are coming which is sufficient, as I anxiously await a something bagel-like to enjoy.

I can't wait for: softball by the monument, summertime in DC jamming to the Bad Brains, walking past a Democratic contrilled White House and Congress, visiting and re-visiting Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence with Adams's notes in the margins, hardcore shows at the Corpse Fortress, making fun of the line at Smith point, the summer 09 Fort Reno line up and jazz in the Sculpture Garden, outdoor movies, and just walking up and down and up and down and up and down Embassy Row (and this time getting to make fun of Joe Biden instead of Dick Cheney).

amped!

things I am learning about myself, politically speaking

2009-05-11T18:21:00.004-04:00

On Saturday I found myself in the middle of a conversation I’d more of less had at exactly the same time a week earlier. The proximity of the two conversations, the extremity of the claims, and the ease with which they were voiced to me leads me to believe on an admittedly flimsy basis that these views are probably fairly commonplace among young people here.

First, young Argentines don’t think Barack Obama is black. Eminem, I was told in one instance, is black. Barack Obama and his million dollar Harvard education is not. I haven’t gotten the impression that middle aged Argentines feel the same, though I will own up to my my absurdly small sample that is mostly comprised of taxi drivers (how Tom Friedman of me) that distinguish the two impressions. This point is not entirely lacking intellectual merit if one considers sociological constructions of whiteness but seems to fly in the face of what I believe is an important accomplishment of the American people.

Second, I heard a certain degree of doubt that 9/11 was a terrorist attack exogenous of all motives except those of extremists, the average American belief, though I am still confused about who then is the guilty party. It’s too strange that the twin towers, so potent a symbol of American capitalism, would just fall like that – too coincidental, too structurally improbable – and it’s too coincidental that the 9/11 attacks would be used to justify an otherwise unjustifiable invasion of the sovereign state of Iraq. The second point I can hang with; the American people were repeatedly misled by false claims of ties between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. But the first reminds me of Holocaust deniers. Call me naïve but I would never dream that my government could ever play a hand in the slaughter of nearly 3,000 of its own innocent civilians. I wonder if the implausibility is diminished if you’ve grown up in a part of the world that still feels the impact of the other September 11 and a country which disappeared over 30,000 of its own citizens.

While I think I have a more-than-acknowledged conservative streak at home, it’s pretty clear that I fall to the left of the American political spectrum. Here, however, I feel like I go to bed with Milton Friedman and William Kristol books under my pillow. When Fede cheekily asked if I identify as neoliberal I don’t think he expected the answer to be yes. I do think that after a period of protected initial growth, it is in the interest of most states to be open to free trade. That does not mean entirely lacking export diversity and focusing on soy, as is the case here. It also does not mean that I think the results of Menem’s extreme privatization campaign have been wonderful for Argentina, as the foreign-owned outright monopolies have hindered competitiveness for what used to be public goods, driving up costs for consumers while reducing both domestic jobs and domestic tax revenue. But it does mean that I think foreign direct investment, international competition, and appropriately curtailed state ownership is ideal. As polemical and probably offensive it is to say so here, I do think the American idea of the liberal democracy is the ideal form of government.

With that I will go back to my pillow-worn copy of Atlas Shrugged and Ronald Reagan's memoirs.

100-something days

2009-05-07T10:31:00.004-04:00

When I started this blog I said I would write about three things: Buenos Aires, politics, and music. I’ve managed to cover two of those categories extensively while outright dropping the third. It’s not that politics at home haven’t been kicking ass – they have – I just haven’t really had it in me to write about them. But since I am comfy watching Trial’s epic set from Burning Fight and getting my chomp on some Oatmeal Squares, but not particularly interested in doing actual homework, I will finally address some recent thoughts I’ve had.

One party Congress? I was pretty stoked for Specter’s switch if only as some sort of shameful vengeance for my frustration with him during the Bush SCOTUS nominee confirmation process. But contrary to my well-known partisanship, it bums me out that Republicans are such an irrelevant party. For the moment I am happy to have a basically filibuster-proof majority in the Senate (oh MN!) because it’s about time the government got some serious shit done – thank you Republican Congresses for putting off healthcare and immigration reform, exacerbating the problem of global warming by doing nothing about it, etc. – but I would generally be happier if there was a more two-sided debate occurring on the Hill. In the most Mill of thought processes, I genuinely believe that public policy is of a higher quality when both sides shape the process and (Burke) curb each others excesses. Although I strongly disagreed with the arbitrary decisions of the “Gang” of moderates, and by no means mean to hold them as the ideal, it would be good to have a well-supported intellectual challenge to the borrow-and-spend policies of the Obama administration, not Club for Growth tea parties and Michael Steele temper tantrums.

About time! One of my favorite refrains about Barack Obama is that he was the first Millennial generation candidate and the first Millennial generation president. I know he is technically too old to be a member of my generation but I strongly believe that he resonated with the youth so much this fall because his political philosophy mirrors that of my generation. Examples of this abound but I will cherry pick three particular policies which confirm my expectation.

First, I am thrilled about the Ted Kennedy Serve America Act. The law triples the size of AmeriCorps and increases available education subsidies for said volunteers, a worthy example of presidential leadership – and a stark contrast to Bush’s post 9/11 request that we “go shopping…” At the bill signing ceremony, President Obama prominently acknowledged my generation’s commitment to national service:

It’s the same spirit of service I’ve seen across this country. I’ve met countless people of all ages and walks of life who want nothing more than to do their part. I’ve seen a rising generation of young people work and volunteer and turn out in record numbers. They’re a generation that came of age amidst the horrors of 9/11 and Katrina, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an economic crisis without precedent. And yet, despite all this -- or more likely because of it -- they’ve become a generation of activists possessed with that most American of ideas, that people who love their country can change it.

On some level I know that choosing this as my first example is kind of pathetic, a bipartisan pat-yourself-on-the-back bill that is about as controversial as loving puppies, but the truth is that I see a bill like this as a true act of leadership, a demand for Americans to serve each other at a time when we’re feeling alienated, scared, and expecting our government to serve us.

Second, thank you White House for fighting the good fight for students. It’s about time that student loan reform was a political issue. The plan ends the system of middle men, terminating private student lending and makes all loans directly through the government. It also adds a bunch more money for Pell Grants and Perkins Loans. I don’t think the plan is perfect – I continue to be concerned about the insufficiency of increases to financial aid in assisting middle income families – but man is it a step up from the predatory system of student loans currently in practice. I wish everyone, or namely just my favorite Senator Bill Nelson and his Nelnet buddies in Omaha, had the sense to see how good of an idea this is.

Third, the changes in the administration’s policy towards Cuba are a harbinger of good to come. They’re not extensive but they are at the very least an extremely meaningful act of political symbolism and, from all indications, step one in a series of new steps US-Cuba and inter-hemisphere relations. OAS leaders seemed also to think so. This definitely fits my generation's post Cold War attitude.

Hardest job in America. I definitely don’t think the administration has been doing an absolutely complaint-free perfect job. Governing, especially now, is tough stuff. To take one example, I’ve been frustrated not to see a decisive, coherent approach to Guantanamo. (Note what I am NOT saying here.) The Bush administration really cornered those who have come after, saddling the Obama administration with a furious collection of radicalized prisoners under dubious self-made constructions of laws of war. I do believe Obama’s people are stuck between a rock and a hard place – bringing the prisoners into the States means the application of due process for trials that lack enough evidence to be convincing and the impossible task of finding a place to house them in the mean time – however the administration has resolved not to leave them at Gitmo or to use secret prisons, so they have to do something with these prisoners that isn’t sending them back to Yemen. (Or, if there isn't a case to be made, the law is the law and they have to send them back to Yemen as tough as it is to swallow.) My complaint about the lack of a decisive and coherent approach reflects my frustration that administration has continued to apply this dubious definition of international laws of war rather than a more domestic definition of criminal law, thus opening possibilities such as the continuation of the prison at Gitmo, a continuation of the dubiously legal military tribunals, etc. However, it’s tough stuff. They didn’t pull these folks in so they’re left working with, and probably not enough around, the system the Bush administration gave them… in conclusion, I’m pretty glad I’m not sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office these days.

ANYWAYS, that’s just a couple of thoughts. I have plenty more, if you want to know just ask.

this is hardcore

2009-05-06T01:05:00.007-04:00

Trial at Burning Fight this weekend. Hat tip to Kris Mission at WMF for the photo. EPIC video of the whole set is here.

PS I know that this is supposed to be a post about Trial but I have to add something. At about 28/30 min into this video I noticed in the bottom front of my screen a kid that looked pretty familar, then I heard a voice I know: Patrick fucking Flynn. It's kind of an embarassing thing for me to be such a big fan of this dude, mostly because at this point I'd say that we're at the very least acquaintances, but it's what it is. It's not often you see the singer of what is essentially the biggest band in hardcore being as stoked and into it as the next kid. We all like to pretend that's how it goes, but it's not. Pat, on the other hand, still comes out to small shows like when he was going hard for Rival Mob at Oxfam and is apparently going all out for Trial when he could have a cushy spot wherever the hell he wanted in that place. Not to nerd out or anything but the amount of respect I have for that kid is literally limitless and I couldn't be happier for him the HH dudes for all they've accomplished. They're the hardest working band in hardcore (they're in the fucking Philippines next week and are touring officially from now until forever) and deserve everything they've been able to achieve plus much much more.

EDIT: They posted a flyer for the schedule of this out with a bang world tour: 98 shows in 104 days over 39 countries.

Oof. I get tired just reading it.

EDIT: I think I just caught another PF stage dive about 21 minutes into the incredible Bane set during my favorite of all post OG hardcore jamz: COUNT ME OUT. I don't know how to explain this but I am absolutely bugging out watching this Bane set. Seriously, like BUGGING OUT. Everytime I see them, everytime I listen to them it's the same fucking rush of emotions I felt when I heard Count Me Out for the first time and it absolutely changed my life. I listened to Holding this Moment pretty much every single day on the bus ride to school sophomore year until I switched to Give Blood, which might be only slightly edged out by The Argument by Fugazi as my most-listened album of all time. No matter how many times I hear the lyric "I'll be here tomorrow, I'll be here next year. Just like this X on the back of my hand [I'm] not going nowhere...." it will cause a wrenching, visceral reaction in me. I literally have goosebumps watching Can We Start Again right now.

I just opted not to go out tonight so I can continue to think about how I "will not let clean shaven boys that all look the same toss hand grenades into this my faith" while I keep watching Burning Fight sets.

EDIT again: Approx 28:30 into this set Aaron's speech is just dead on. No one speaks like that dude does. Chills, literally.

cuenta reg 01: MG RGN SUP

2009-05-05T22:45:00.003-04:00

List #01: preferred Argentine footballer

IMO, only one answer for this: MARCELO “THE DOLL” GALLARDO. I know I should probably say Messi (but he plays for Barca) or Riquelme (but he’s a diva) or even Palermo (a beast -- but he plays for Boca) but I have to say Gallardo. A) I have declared my loyalties. B) The former DC United player is ancient and a quarter the size of Palermo but still has been the fighting heart and soul of the River team this season, including the comeback goal in the last Superclasico. Too bad River lost to Nacional de Paraguay and were elimated from the Copa Libetadores. Oh well, it gave Gallardo an excuse to talk some sweet smack in the papers and hopefully means they’re better rested as the clausura finishes soccer season.

cuenta reg 02: I love livin in the city

2009-05-05T22:44:00.000-04:00

List #02: favorite places, loosely speaking

Abasto: My first two months I was kind of cranky that I lived in Almagro. Most of the other Americans are in Barrio Norte and Recoleta, really nice upper-middle class neighborhoods. But now I love no area of the city more than I love the Balavanera neighborhood near the Abasto mall, also called Abasto. Abasto is home to my favorite cheap Peruvian restaurant and many more I have not yet tried, the Konex cultural center where there is theatrical live musc like the incredible percussion orchestea Bomba del Tiempo, Club Atletico Fernandez Fierro and their rock/tango orchestra, and the most incredible thing I have seen in my time in BA – an adorable porteno block party of sorts with maybe 30 young beautiful hipster couples folk dancing in the street, with an asado and lights/flags hanging that we stumbled upon walking home from Marmani (Peruvian food) one day. It was like a scene from a movie. This neighborhood is known for being a bit dangerous, as people try to pick pocket mall-goers and many poor immigrants from Peru, Bolivia and Senegal live in the neighborhood, but I fucking love it. Makes me glad to live in Almagro and be so close!
Santa Fe y Pueyrredon: This is technically Barrio Norte but I point to this spot specifically for a couple of reasons. First, at this particular intersection is the Galeria Americana where Axel has his tattoo parlor and the Varsity boys are opening their hardcore record store. It’s also the approximate location of my friend Alana’s apartment and very close to where Natalie lives. To get to those places I usually take the subway to Pueyrredon and then walk straight up it for 10 or so blocks to Santa Fe, enabling myself to walk through the Jewish area of town. Tons of Orthodox Jews and their Kosher supermarkets, one in which I stumbled upon a beautiful three year old also named Shana. What more makes me feel like home than good friends, Jews and hardcore kids? It’s the spot in which I am most likely to run into someone I know and like, Argentines and Americans alike (see: when I met these American girls from GW who were super nice, the time I ran into Axel before meeting Anna and her parents, how I ran into Emma while waiting for Axel, and how I just ran into Kiko Fede and Fran this weekend). Also very close to my favorite bookstore (El Ataneo on Santa Fé) and ice cream (Volta).

cuenta reg 03: about this americana

2009-05-05T22:40:00.001-04:00

List #03: embarrassing ways that I stave off homesickness

eating peanut butter by the spoonful: I infrequently do this in the States but for some reason I have taken solace in doing so here. Each spoonful is an act of defiance, as I am pretty sure that the only two groups of people in the world who can hang with American style peanut butter are Americans and Israelis and it definitely seems like the Argentines frequently have negative feelings about all three of the aforementioned (Americans, Israelis, and peanut butter). Hey -- this beats going to McDonalds or Starbucks! Related honorable mention: Buying and destroying Oatmeal Squares for my late-night homework snack. I blame Andrew Helms for this.
downloading new old hardcore music: As you’d have to be a dolt not to notice, I’ve been really into hardcore lately. As a function of this, I’ve been jamming all sorts of bands I never listened to when I was in my many years of listening to basically the same 3-4 hardcore bands all of the time. This has been awesome but I am at a loss for a proper analogy to explain why. Maybe it’s because, without deviating from the same formula I love, I’ve been able to listen to things that a) seem new to me and b) are total classics / nearly perfect that I wrote-off long ago. Related honorable mention: I’ve been maxing the potential of my Google Reader and aggregating hardcore blogs. Now I get to read awesome back stories about said bands AND find inspiration for new ones!
The Wire: This is number three on the list because I finished the season that I had but in my first two months here I watched two whole seasons of The Wire. This was especially great when I had first arrived and felt super exhausted all of the time from being so new to Spanish all of the time and didn’t quite have a circle of people read for hangouts. I won’t say how quickly I watched each of the two seasons but let’s just say it was embarrassingly quickly. Related honorable mention: Happily, none! I’ve barely watched any TV or movies, The Wire phase excepted, since I’ve been down here as Silvia lacks a DVD player and I can’t deal with the stupidity of Argentine television.

cuenta reg 04: "snack attack bitchez," -- Jordan Fraade

2009-05-05T22:18:00.005-04:00

List #04: snack attack, Argentine-style!

alfajores: Imagine two soft cookies with dulce de leche between them, covered in chocolate. Super rica, super amazing. Favorite brand, hands down, is El Chachafaz because the cookies are cloud soft and the dulce de leche is wonderful. Havana’s (Starbucks, more or less) house brand is a close second. Mmmm.
pomelo (grapefruit) soda: It isn’t sweet at all but rather tart and super addictive. I can’t tell you how much I wish we had Paso de los Toros (a brand) in America. I would drink it all of the time. The closest American comparison I can think of is Polar Orange Dry, except that stuff tastes like artificial sweetener whereas Paso de Toros tastes like awesomeness sans sweetener.
medialunas: Medialunas are Argentine croissants. There are two types: manteca y grasa. The former are made from butter, are very soft and usually contain a light but sweet outer coating. From grasa, or lard, are harder but flaky and not nearly as sweet. Usually accompany a café con leche, or espresso with milk. My favorite medialunas are served in the UCA cafeteria and sustain me during the short break that arrives 4.5 hours into my 6 straight hours of class on Tuesdays.
licuado: They’re like smoothies but not. Blended ice, water/milk/juice and fresh fruit, without whey BS or anything. My favorite flavor is peach with milk. Can easily replace a meal.

cuenta reg 05: FML

2009-05-05T22:16:00.001-04:00

List #05: things about BA that I will not miss

Movistar: This is straight hate. You pre-pay for cell service instead of using a contract. Unfortunately said phone service is expensive so it’s never very long until your saldo está por aghostarse (you’ve exhausted your account), rendering you unable to send texts or make calls in crucial moments. Also they’re constantly sending texts to their customers, which leads to major let downs because who the fuck wants a text from their cell phone company? So much for thinking it was actually my friends, caring. I have friends?
switching into English: For all but the last three months of my life I have lived in America where I speak English every day. I did not come all the way to Buenos Aires to speak English. Yes, I know I am a gringa. Yes, I know I have an accent when in speak your language. But I seriously don’t need you to tell me that my empanadas cost “four pesos;” I promise I speak more Spanish than that. When you are trying to hit on my blonde friends and I in the street, you get no closer when you start yelling out, “Hello! Where are you from? What is your name?” I am thrilled that you a) passed elementary school English or b) speak English much better than I ever hope to speak Spanish without ever stepping foot outside of your country – and by thrilled I mean annoyed, so please allow me to fuck up so I can learn from my mistakes. (PS Movistar still annoys me more than this!)
honking at ambulances: I happen to live very close to a medical clinic and a major hospital, as well the major traffic artery and main road Avenida Corrientes. Every day at about 9 or 9:30 I lose the battle for my snooze button sleep because there is an ambulance and every driver on Avenida Corrientes decides to honk at every other driver to indicate the presence of an ambulance. Uh, hey guys, guess what? It has a siren for that! Ugh.
cubanas: The Spanish word for the phenomenon of dread tails / mullets. If I were Castro I’d be way more pissed that Argentines named their bad haircuts after me than I would be about American capitalism, sayin’.
that my professors smoke in class: Both of my UBA professors have lit cigarettes during class. Being the idiot American, I tend to sit in the front row in order to help myself hear/understand. Without any ventilation, this usually means I get to inhale some of that lovely cigarette smoke when I’m trying to learn. On some level I probably enjoy this because it’s so absurdly different from Tufts, but mostly it just makes me wish I wore a Swine Flu mask to class.

cuenta reg 06: overheard in argentina

2009-05-05T22:13:00.003-04:00

I started this at 2 AM last night when my essay due today was about 85% done going on 85% of the past two days but instead of just finishing the damn thing I keep adding to its insides or just procrastinating outright. To continue my goal of accomplishing as little as possible (note the sardonic tone), I present to you a series of posts of lists about my life and Argentina which I hope you enjoy!

List #06: expressions I hear most (in order)

che, boludo: Che is roughly dude. Boludo is roughly asshole. But the thing is, the expressional really isn’t at all vulgar -- even your grandmother probably says it. Due to its Italian influence, Argentine Spanish is extremely flowy. Adding in a che or boludo tends to progress a conversation while also expressing affectionate mocking. I don’t really feel like I can use it, being gringa and all, but I dig it none the less.
¿qué sé yo?: Its literal translation is “What do I know?” but it’s much more than that. You use it also to terminate a topic of conversation, a sort of bored flick of the wrist. Also used to dull a potentially polemical opinion.
mirá vos: The command form of “you look,” but more like “look at you.” Sometimes used to express shock, awe, mild interest… Mirá vos, I didn’t know Movistar had recarga triple today.
dale: I think of it as the adverbial form of “okay.” Example: You want me to go to the store? Dale. I’ll go in ten.
viste: Frequently used to display interest, sort of like we use “uh huh” to continue a conversation. Also used to underline/highlight a point, kind of like “got it?”
no pasa nada: As I’ve mentioned, efficiency here is subpar. Attitudes are generally pretty lax. Late to class? No pasa nada. See also, ni importa: Although it’s not grammatically correct, everyone says it anyway. An emphatic way of saying “no biggie” or “don’t sweat it.”

q descansen en paz

2009-04-30T03:04:00.001-04:00

This fall the 24-year-old singer of a MA hardcore band, Dominic Mallory, passed away. His band Last Lights had just played a set at BU. Dom was helping the band pack up the van when he started to feel dizzy. He developed tunnel vision. He couldn’t feel his legs. He collapsed against a wall and his friends called an ambulance. Apparently he impacted a nerve during a fairly routine stage stunt in which he wrapped the mic cord around his neck and ultimately caused the aneurysm from which he died just a few hours later.

Although we have a fair number of people in common, I’d never met Dom. I liked his band’s demo and 7” a lot but never got a chance to see them. However, although I hardly ever cry, while reading his obit in the Worcester Telegram-Gazette in my kitchen at Fairmount, I broke down and began weeping. (I’m not sure I could ever describe another experience as one in which I’ve wept.) I felt so intimately connected to him, to his friends, to his family… It was so tragic that a 24 year old kid could just up and die like that, and perhaps even more affecting because he could have been any one of many kids that I know. Perhaps this isn’t unfair. In some ways I guess we were connected. Bobby and I had helped put on a show at Oxfam that was converted at the last minute to a fundraiser for Dom’s family. I spent that day, maybe two days after his death, with many of his closest friends, singing along to the cover of his favorite song. And that’s how it was. Beyond simple acts of solidarity like changing band’s profile pictures on myspace or sending notes of support, people really came together to help Dom’s family to pay his hospital bills and funeral costs. I heard that when all was said and told, donations and benefit shows and merchandise – the support of the hardcore scene – raised about fifteen thousand dollars. It was certainly Dom’s friends and family’s tragedy but it was, in its way, our tragedy – all of us.

This weekend a participant in the BA hardcore scene killed himself. From what I’ve been told, he had a girlfriend of a higher social class. Her family pressured her to break up with him. He tried to hold it together and distract himself all weekend but Sunday night he saw that she had removed all of the photos of them from myspace and listed herself as single. Some time after sending text messages to friends with the words “true till death” (the name of a famous straight edge song), he was hit by an oncoming train.

It’s an eerie thing to see photos of Matute, as he was called, with my new Argentine friends. I don’t really know if I should do anything, say anything to them. I found out about what happened in an indirect way, putting together pieces of the story deposited in different outlets. But I can’t help but experience some of the same feelings that I felt when Dom died. I am not a true member of the BAHC. I’m not sure I had ever seen him before and we certainly had not met; yet I feel connected to this kid and the wounds he inflicted not only to himself but to those that loved him. And while I wish I could communicate all of this simply – enough to explain that I am not a tourist to your emotions in the most meaningful of ways – there’s nothing I could say anyway to the grief my friends are feeling.

RIP Dom and Matute

Amuuurrrrica (or: you ain't supposed to die on a Saturday night )

2009-04-27T21:38:00.005-04:00

I have pretty much exclusively been listening to old hardcore bands lately with one extreme exception: THE GASLIGHT ANTHEM. Normally I think I would find something like this corny and tooly and not be into it but inexplicably I am hooked. All of the hype is true. They really do sound like a cross between 1970's-era Bruce Springsteen and the Bouncing Souls, somewhere between the Jersey turnpike and the endless highway Americana of Lucero's That Much Farther West. Truly fantastic -- and just SO awesomely Jersey. (Dad, give it a shot.)

As I said, usually "youth anthems" about love or life/death/transcience make me roll my eyes a bit but this is perhaps the epitome of what happens when former hardcore kids grow up and make grown up rock music all while maintaing some semblance of Kevin Second's Young Till I Die and not being total tools. The whole album, The '59 Sound, is just awesome for all audiences. I assure you that if you are reading this you ought to listen because you will enjoy.

IFFFFF you really can't hang with rock music, I suggest partaking in this different but equally wonderful slice of Americana -- This American Life #328: What I Learned from Television. Although it made me feel like a latte liberal, I couldn't keep myself from laughing pretty much the whole way through.

As for slices of America in my life here:
Friday night my friends and I went to Disco, hit up the imported foods aisle, and made ourselves some super tasty burritos in Silvia's kitchen. Saturday we continued our culinary adventure with sheets upon sheets of M&M cookies, oatmeal raisin, peanut butter M&M, and PB oatmeal cookies. Mmmmm. Then yesterday I went again to Jumbo, the huge American-style supermarket (somewhere between Stop&Shop and Target) that I like to call "Amuuuurica," with Alana. What does that say about the States that I relate most to American when I am eating absurd amounts of terrible-for-you food or when I am in places where they sell it?

¿qué es Santiago? -- Beth's not too bright homestay mother

2009-04-27T21:04:00.004-04:00

I know I am a bit behind schedule about this, apologize.

Disclaimer: Santiago was where I wanted to go in the first place but Tufts only accepts transferred credits from its program there so I opted for Buenos Aires. On paper (and I think in reality), Santiago is a better fit for me. It’s not all about partying. It has a killer straight edge hardcore scene. People don’t speak as much English. I am much more familiar with its political history. Etc. So just sayin' I was pretty predisposed to be into it.

Chile was incredible. Kara and I arrived Wednesday morning. We did have to pay an entrance fee (bummer) but the flight was worth it both in terms of time (25 hour bus ride vs. 2ish on the plane) and in terms of the incredible view of the Andes from the plane. In that moment I understood so much of Gabriela Mistral!

After sorting out how to get to the city from the airport and getting really ripped off changing AR pesos to CL pesos, we arrived at our beautiful hostel in the boho neighborhood of Bellavista. We walked around all morning, saw a huge produce market and drank some sweeeet agua fresca type juice and shopped a bit, then slept most of the afternoon (panicked preparations meant that I arrived at the airport on seven hours of slept in the proceeding two days) and got some decent Mexican food as an excuse to see more of the city.

On Thursday, after a sweet maxikiosko bfast, we headed out to Valparaiso. Again, there was some confusion upon arrival at the bus station but finally we figured out how to take a bus to the hostel. However we arrived only to discover that the hostel we were planning to stay in was full. Whoops. We quickly found a new one – a hostel owned by a French immigrant to Chile hahaha – and I spent much the rest of the day worrying about how our friends Jasmine and Beth would meet up with us after the changed plans. (I was already nervous because they were flying into Stgo and had to meet us in Valpo. I didn’t know if they knew how to do that, where do go in Valpo, etc. And our cell phones didn’t work in Chile. We couldn’t contact them about the changed hostel using another method until we had arrived at the new hostel and after their flight from BA had taken off… I was nervous!) To wrap up this story and leave my Jewish mother anxiety at the door, everything worked out fine with the girls who arrived in our room at about 9:30 that evening. Phew.

Valpo is so cool! It’s the hub of Chile’s most active port and a beach destination in the summer but neither of those things are why it’s so cool. Valpo is awesome because it’s a small city of brightly painted houses built into the mountains.

To get to said houses in the mountains, one rides in a giant box up the side of the mountain called an ascensor or an elevator. They were built in the beginning of the 20th century which renders them somewhere between frightening and totally amazing. For the ascensores, Valpo is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Skipping some boring details, Kara and I went for lunch and ended up sitting next to a table with two Chilean dudes who looked about our age. Kara – being both pretty and outgoing – skillfully initiated conversation. We learned that they were engineering students our age and that they were absurdly nice. We waited out the end of the Colo-Colo game wit them (Colo-Colo won obviously) and they took us around the city, up and down the best ascensores, giving us an excellent tour. Best of all, even though I could tell they both spoke English, they continued to speak to us in Spanish the whole day. (This does not happen in BA where I have to fight to use Spanish some days.) Eduardo and Oscar were SO GREAT!

Our group was rounded out in full on Friday. The four of us went to Pablo Neruda’s beautiful house.

and to the National Congress which took up residence in Valpo after the dictatorship relegated it to Valpo to reduce its influence.

We had some lunch of seafood and chorrillana (aka French fry onion meat heart attack dish of death) at the Central Market, which was awesome.

On the bus back that night we met some Israeli travelers – yes, this is officially the South American stereotypical experience – who we later had dinner with. Fun night!

Saturday was a boom and bust day. Jasmine and I tried to go to the Salvador Allende Museum of Solidarity (socialism and 70’s pop art? yes please!) but we discovered that it had moved and didn’t have enough time to meet Beth and Kara for lunch if we went to its new location. It wasn’t a total bust – Jasmine is awesome and we had some great discussions through the streets of beautiful Barrio Brazil. After more chorrillana Jasmine and I headed over to Palacio de la Moneda, Chile’s executive office building and where Allende killed himself during Pinochet’s siege. You can’t take a tour but at 4:30 they let tourists enter the plaza within the building’s walls. All of government center Santiago was incredibly beautiful in a Washington kind of way, with lots of beautiful architecture. I was pretty much in love.

After our foray through downtown Stgo, Jamine came with me to a hardcore show back in Barrio Brazil. How lucky was I, really, that there would be a show the one day I decide to look in a safe/easy to find place?? Okay, first, I saw three Chilean bands and they were all good. My favorite, easily, was the opener REMISSION. I had listened to each of these three bands before but they were just as good / even better when I saw them. The Arg bands I’ve seen, on the other hand, haven’t generally provoked similar compliments… More than Remission being a great band, their singer Philippe was an amazingly nice dude and he ended up chatting with us the entire time Jasmine and I were at the show. (Philippe spoke perfect Americanized English, they only time I used it in abundance with an actual Chilean.) He asked what I was doing the next day (which, oh yeah, was Easter Sunday!) and met up with me to talk about hardcore and show me around Santiago. We were SUCH NERDS, in the best way. Our hangout commenced with the question (from him) “top five favorites, go!” He was an encyclopedia of hardcore knowledge (which I don’t say lightly) and isn't every day I get to have intense conversations about Turning Point and Dag Nasty, I was so grateful! Plus he showed me so many beautiful areas of Santiago, especially Cerro Santa Lucia which is the giant hill where the Conquistadores beat the natives and around which the rest of the city has been constructed since its birth.

Plus it's just crazy how small the world is. Philippe's band is on a label called Amendment Records that is doing a split between a Chilean band called Against All Fears (super 90’s) and Maintain who exist in my mind occupying a space somewhere between a real hardcore band and my being my friend Amanda Ferres’s housemates in Somerville…. Plus Philippe chats irregularly with my friend Keith from Springfield. Weird, right! I'll be really stoked if Remission makes it to the States to tour next year as is tentatively planned.

To wrap up some loose ends worthy of note: Saturday night we ate tradition Chilean food. Our waiter was hilariously condescending, oh man, but the pastel de choclo was fortunately worth it. Before Philippe hangout time Sunday was of the highest quality. After a trip up the ascensor (the furnicular) at San Cristobol, we visited Santiago’s insanely high statue of the Virgin Mary and saw an amazing vista of sprawling Stgo.

Afterwards we ate incredible sandwiches at TOP SANDWICH (mmmmm), all drowned Kara in now-permissible formerly Lent-forbidden sweets and saw Beth and Jasmine off. Fast forward a few hours: Kara too had a Chilean friend hangout and when I was wandering through Barrio Bellavista in search of a phone card with which say hi to the padres, I ran into the only two remaining Tufts-in-Chile students. Again, smallest world.

On Monday I wanted to show Kara Cerro Santa Lucia, then we enjoyed more Top Sandwich, and then (unfortunately) had to say goodbye to Chile, its vastly more understandable and patient Spanish speakers, the awesome tomato bruschetta they serve at every table that puts tasteless porteno food to shame, and to Chile’s awesome people. Big bummer. It was a great trip! Not the most traditional of Easters but worth it.

Also I bought postcards but after struggling to find a post office, then after it was closed twice, I still haven’t sent them. I suck.

ON THAT NOTE, if you want a postcard HOLLA. I am slowly but surely working on it.

All in all, after all of that panicking about finances and meeting up with the girls and about the lack of proper planning, trip was totally incredible. If you enjoyed this post, donating to the Shana Hurley Poverty Fund will ensure that similar travel diaries follow.

the informal economy

2009-04-17T22:44:00.002-04:00

Since I have been rather dilligently working on actual schoolwork today and have earned / would like a somewhat productive break, I am going to touch upon a couple of political economy questions that have been of interest to me lately. Disclaimer: I will be the first to acknowledge that I am no economics ace. (Perhaps the first to acknowledge that would instead be my very kind Principles of Economics professor, bless him...) However, fulfilling my destiny as a northern hemisphere and generally left of center college student, I have a profound interest in development economics and political economy. We can catalog this one under "Stuff White People Like."

The political economy of Argentina is fascinating stuff, even excluding the 2001 crisis. At the start of the 20th century, Argentina was the 7th wealthiest country in the world. Wealthy people lived in splendor in the still-beautiful neighborhoods of Barrio Norte and Recoleta, reaping the benefits of Buenos Aires's wealth-inducing port and Argentina's fairly extensive railroad system. But the history of Argentine glory ends pretty early, followed by decades of stop-and-go self-perpetuating political and economic crises. (It's no coincidence that the first coup occurred in 1930, the same year as Argentina's first economic collapse.) While that former luster remains the lusty twinkle in every porteño's eye (sorry, is this creative writing 101?), the reality on the ground is that Argentina has fallen far behind Brazil, Mexico, and Chile. A quarter (!!) of the country's population still lives under the poverty line and unemployment hovers at about 10%. And in the most unofficial of ways, I personally genuinely struggle to understand how the Argentine economy functions. There are many stores and many restaurants, few of which I ever see with customers. From what I understand (again, I am no Paul Krugman here), if you lack customers your business will not make enough money to over its overhead costs and it will fold. Somehow these empty businesses keep chugging...

Aside from the storefronts, it seems to me that economy has an other active side. Both in EPIIC and my development economics class sophomore year I spent a substantial amount of time studying informal economies. At home I generally wrapped my brain around this concept by thinking of, say, urban drug trade in America's poorest communities. But in my time here I've been able to develop a fuller sense of that which comprises the informal economy -- and never moreso than when I come home from class on Tuesday nights.

I don't leave UCA (Universidad Catolica) until usually 9:15 or so on Tuesday nights. Depending on my mood -- which, after 6 hours straight of class, can be quite testy -- I either opt to take the subte (longer walk, shorter ride) or the bus (longer ride, shorter walk). I walk to the subte along Paseo Colon, one of the major traffic arteries that runs parallel to the water and along the government buildings. At this time of day, the office buildings have emptied. Thus, at 9:15/9:30, all of the garbage is thrown out of its buckets or dumpsters to be picked through by cartoneros (garbage pickers) in search of sellable recycable goods. If I take the bus I see the cartoneros sorting through the garbage between Uruguay and Lavalle, near Plaza Tribunales. Most of the sorters are young men but many are children. In my neighborhood there is a ciruja who piles his recyclables onto a donkey-drawn cart. Beyond that, there are many other signs of the informal economy. Pretty much every trip someone will enter your subway car and try to sell you socks, pens, notebooks, anything. People wash windshields or direct your parallel parking for tips. Some folks sell homemade food in high-traffic areas, from the immigration office to touristy Calle Florida. And as mentioned, petty crime is a problem.

Attempts have been made to convert some of these informal activities into formal employment, like the famous example of Argentina's organized and collectivized garbage pickers. Generally speaking, however, these examples showcase the odd duality that beautiful Plaza San Martin is merely a few blocks from the tent city at the Retiro Train Station. In the end, it's a reminder that the Argentine economy, though considered upper-middle income, is still in the developing end of the spectrum.

speaking of hardcore......

2009-04-15T23:24:00.002-04:00

I know I should be writing more about things that aren't hardcore and, for that, I apologize. However, esto vale la pena. I wrote this piece for Melisma, the Tufts magazine of music/alt culture, about straightedge (in a word: my decision to abstain from drinking, drugs, and permiscuous sex as tied to my participation in the DIY community of punk/hardcore). Since Melisma came out last month, I don't feel bad publishing it here too. If you're on campus and you didn't pick up a copy, please do!

When I was fifteen and a sophomore in high school, I wrote a zine about straightedge, the decision “live on the edge” – by being involved in the punk rock subculture, for example – while abstaining from drinking, doing drugs, or having promiscuous sex. For the zine, I interviewed the singer of one of the most hardline active bands. Hardline, or the militant strain of straightedge, had dominated in the 1990’s but fell out of fashion; however, certain kids and bands perpetuated that anachronistic spirit. Clean Steve, of Massachusetts’ Embrace Today, was one of those kids.

Steve was a fascinating interviewee. We ended up talking for upwards of 3 hours. (In fact, I ran out of tape on which to record.) I asked wide-eyed questions and he answered without skipping a beat. Steve, a long eight years my senior and associated with the gang-like Courage Crew, debated me intellectually and answered my questions sincerely. At age 15, it was one of the most meaningful demonstrations of adult respect I had experienced.

Steve was emblematic of why sophomore year of high school was possibly the most transformative year of my life. I remember it as a montage of highway: Exit 10 for the Depot in Darien, 46 for the Wallingford K of C, and 83 for New London’s El’N’Gee. There were close calls when sing-alongs almost met road dividers, when a turn in the road was barely edged out ahead of a crucial steering wheel finger point, and when several wrong turns on scenic back streets never really reached destinations at all. There were trips to Long Island, New York City, Poughkeepsie, and Providence filled with throats screamed raw. And best of all, there were packed house shows in Stamford and all over in which kids bumped up against each other, the shelves, the walls after sharing potluck rice and beans with not-quite-strangers in the kitchen.

Ascribing words to these memories doesn’t do justice to the sense of community. Occasionally those feelings come back to me and I long for those times, that sense of ownership in something bigger than I. Hardcore immensely changed my perception of where I grew up – for the first time in Connecticut I met kids who identified as middle class instead of my upper middle class hometown counterparts whose lifestyles were often out my reach. It provided an immediate sense of kinship, as personified by a one-in-the-morning sing-along on the subway with a total and complete stranger, a South Korean who had been in the States for only two days but who was a friend of a friend and, therefore, a friend of mine. It works both ways, too. This summer, when my friend Fred’s band toured Guatemala, a random kid asked in broken English if he knew someone from Connecticut named Shana. The kid was Andres, whose email correspondence had allowed me to practice Spanish and learn about the community and culture in Guatemala, all in the context of the impossibly small world that is hardcore.

At this point, my participation in the community has ebbed. Instead of attending Food Not Bombs benefit shows, I cloak my righteous indignation in talk about fiduciary responsibility and campaign for Democratic candidates. I no longer wear band shirts and scribbled-on Chuck Taylors but collared shirts and cardigan sweaters. I attend Tufts University, an institution antithetical to my inclusionary values in its stringent admissions process and prohibitive costs. However, although I’ve changed in other ways and have considered letting go, I have held fast to my straightedge identity. The last strong link within my sometimes tenuous connection to the hardcore community, straightedge sometimes feels like all I have left.

When people meaningfully ask me why I don’t drink, I usually give them intellectualized answers. I talk about the link between sexual violence and blood alcohol levels. I mention boycotting massive corporations whose politics I reject. Occasionally, I’ll even get personal and talk about my Irish Catholic family’s long history with self-destructive alcoholism. Only to a select audience will I mention the community that I respect and, in other ways, have abandoned.

So, Tufts, I will out myself: I am straightedge. I don’t X my fists, I don’t wear X watches, and I wouldn’t be caught dead with a straightedge tattoo. But I am as strongly attached to my edge now as I was when my South Korean friend Ki Seok and I sang “Thinking Straight” on the Broadway local after seeing straightedge legends Insted reunite at CBGB’s in July of 2004. It means as much to me as it did when I sang along to Bane’s “I’ll be here tomorrow and I'll be here next year" two weeks before my sixteenth birthday, truly faithful that "just like this X on the back of my hand, I’m not going anywhere." I believe in it now like I did when Clean Steve and I occupied the back room of a Cromwell church basement, sitting on Fisher Price furniture and feeling like two adults nonetheless. I may not continue to identify as straightedge in two years – or even two months – but it will still be one of the most important factors shaping who I have become today.

Perhaps my refusal to let go of straightedge (such a curious remnant of my relationship with hardcore!) reflects a certain immaturity. It is possible, of course, to have merely a glass of wine or two with dinner. Clearly an after-dinner drink does not immediately result in alcoholism. The vast majority of alcohol consumption does not result in sexual violence and one can easily avoid supplementing the Anheuser-Bush family’s right-wing war chest by supporting other fine microbrewers. As for me, there are other options than straightedge. I could connect with the community in other ways. What if I went to more shows? Wrote another zine? Finally picked up my dusty bass guitar and started playing in a band? Even by hanging out at the right places at the right time I could seamlessly reconnect to the community that I have distanced from. But nothing makes me feel more sincerely connected than truly sharing Have Heart’s “Something More than Ink” as the voices of the kids – our voices – overpower the amplifiers: “In the core of heart, this is something more than ink.”

According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism only 12% of college students don’t drink. Very few of my friends also abstain from drugs and alcohol. Indeed, even most of my straightedge friends have taken different paths. Despite the alone-in-a-crowd feeling that occasionally hits me at parties on campus, I know that my straightedge identity will continue until I can truly divorce my feelings for straightedge and for hardcore as a whole. I will sustain this somewhat anachronistic token until I can find another way to satisfy my longing for the community to which I identify. In the meantime, I’ll carry seminal hardcore band Youth of Today’s torch when I say that “my flame will keep on burning strong” and “I will continue to sing this song.” What’s keeping me going, as singer Ray Cappo wrote 21 years ago, is that “I know I’m not singing this song alone.”

desde stgo, con pasión

2009-04-15T23:04:00.004-04:00

I am having a really satisfying email exchange with the kid who runs Amendment Records in Santiago de Chile. I thought I might post it here for those of you who might be interested in a true window into my relationship with hardcore down here, the scene, and the ties between the scene here and in the eeuu. I suggest running it through Google Translate.

The italicized text is from Pablo. The regular text is my response. This is email #5 in our exchange.

Yo ire probablemente al ultimo show de Verse en RI en mayo, asi que quizas ahi nos veamos. Estare un tiempo en los Estados Unidos, pero mayormente en la costa oeste (Portland, OR).

El show será bueno – el espacio (AS220) es muuuy chico. Vi algo de mis shows favoritos allá – la comienza de las dos giras más grandes del verano 07 con have heart, verse, down to nothing, ceremony, sinking ships, allegiance, soul control, y I rise. Cuando Have Heart tocó, porque era tarde, llegó la policía para terminar el show. La gente cantó Watch Me Rise sin los altavoces y la banda…. ¡Re bueno/divertido! Aunque quiero, no voy. Cuando estarás en los EEUU, todavía estaré acá. No regresaré a los EEUU de Buenos Aires hasta julio y viviré y trabajaré en Washington en vez de Boston hasta septiembre. Y si tú estás en la costa oeste (¡e inferior!), pienso que es muy improbable que nos veamos.

Me parece muy interesante, y a la vez, comprensible el tema de que hayan investigado sobre el hardcore en Argentina y Chile. Aca el hardcore lleva casi 20 años y jamas, creo, se ha sabido algo de eso alla en Estados Unidos sobre todo. La escena es muy elitista y la gente solo escucha lo que esta de moda, la prueba de ello es que en Sudamerica, Europa hay muchas bandas increibles, pero nadie las pesca porque no son cool o porque no son de Boston, hahaha. Aca cuesta 5 veces mas hacer las cosas, las bandas nunca obtienen dinero y todo funciona con el dinero que obtenemos de nuestros trabajos. De todas formas, agradezco que te des cuenta y que digamos, apoyes el hardcore de aca, porque aca no hay duda que esta hecho de corazon, y lo mejor, es que tiene un mensaje importante, muchas veces ligado a lo politico o social. cosas que nos afectan a todos.

Es raro porque allá mi vida diaria es bastante separada de hardcore. Voy a una universidad donde no hay más de dos personas (incluyo yo) que les interesa hardcore como a mi me gusta. Pero porque estoy en un lugar distinta con una idioma que no es mía, me siento más los sentimientos que influenciaron mi interés inicial en hardcore. Tengo un interés nuevo y estoy averiguando grupos viejos que son nuevos para mí etc. La simpatía que he recibido de la comunidad de hardcore me muestra todo lo bueno de esa escena y me da mucha entusiasma.

Estoy de acuerdo contigo. Para mi parece que hardcore de acá nunca llegó a los EEUU. Yo no sabía que lo existía acá por 20 años, pensé que es más nuevo… Allá la escena es muy separada -- en Boston no hay mucho intercambio entre, por ejemplo, Kris Mission y los grupos más ignorant que tocan en Brockton (cerca de Boston) como Death Before Dishonor o Colin of Arabia, los más punk como Positive Reinforcement, y los más vieja escuela como cuando Stephen de The First Step vivió cerca de Boston. Es una pobreza de riqueza, quizás. Lo que quiero decir es que es bastante difícil ser una banda nueva de Boston y ganar la atención de la comunidad, aparte de ser de un país diferente. New Lows y Rival Mob, por ejemplo, son muy populares pero también son amigos de Lockin Out y tiene vínculos con ellos que son los influénciales. No es suficiente ser de Boston – se necesita ser cool de los que hacen los decisiones también. Que sé yo.

Cuando vino Have Heart, digamos, fueron las unicas personas, sobre todo Pat, que se intereso en la escena de aca. Fue muy bueno experimentar eso.

Al final, el hecho de que uds trabajan mucho más para tener la escena es la razón porque grupos como Have Heart disfrutan mucho estar por gira acá. Especialmente para los grupos de los EEUU que no tienen el reconocimiento que merecen allá (no como los graaaandísimas como Have Heart), es mejor ir a Europa (o Sudamerica) para que experimente gente de bienvenido. Fue el mismo Pat de Have Heart que me aseguró que yo pueda hacer amigos de la comunidad amable de Santiago y Buenos Aires porque eso pasó a él. Ellos disfrutaron mucho la experiencia de ir a Sudamerica. Pero sí, espero que nosotros podamos dar apoyo a uds y asistamos en popularizarles en los EEUU. (Por lo menos yo quería darte una gira de Boston – con toda la historia de la revolución norteamericana, soy una nerd/empollona – alguna vez.)

Con respecto a los vinilos, pues, los amo hahaha. Esa es la unica razon porque hago los discos en vinilo y no en cd por ejemplo. Tambien a las bandas que he sacado, les gusta el formato vinilo, asi que por ahora no he tenido problemas con eso. El sello es una de las pocas cosas con la que yo puedo hacer lo que me gusta y lo que yo quiera, asi que lo administro a mi modo. Si a la banda le gusta, los saco, sino, se puede negociar algo, pero asi funciona basicamente esto. Ahora recien saque un LP de Against All My Fears que es una banda que toco el sabado pasado, y ahora se viene el debut LP de Remission, y un split 7" de Against All My Fears con Maintain de Boston, quizas a estos los conozcas. Yo hablo mucho con Enrique, el bateriasta y son Chris, el guitarra.

hahahaa dicho como un hardcore kid verdadero. Me gustaba Against All My Fears (re de la decáda 90). Será difícil esperar para el LP de Remission – a ellos me encantan. Y sobre AAMF/Maintain, ¡q chistoso! Mi querida amiga (quien la extraño mucho) Amanda vive con Sean, el cantante de Maintain. En la universidad, mis amigos Bobby y Geoff y yo arreglamos dos shows con ellos. Además de eso, no conozco a Enrique o Chris jajaja.

Bueno Shana, ojala nos veamos en los Estados Unidos para cuando vaya, y te reitero las gracias por apoyar lo nuestro. :D

Mil gracias por los mails. Me gustaba mucho el intercambio. Con hardcore, es como tengo un pedazo de mi vida de allá pero también en una forma sudamericana y es el mejor. Y te agradezco por aguantar la escena y tener Amendment y (lo más egoísta) darme Remains to be Seen, que son reeeeeee buenos.

un abrazo!

*Note for those who speak Spanish: "re" is bsas slang for "very" and demonstrates the ways in which bad porteña castellano is invading my vocabulary.

la UBA

2009-04-15T16:57:00.005-04:00

I promised Uncle Jeff that I would write more about school so here I go, fulfilling that promise. I am taking one class at the big public university here in Buenos Aires. By big, I mean big. La UBA has 180,000 students. Although it is without a doubt my most difficult class, I also think it is my favorite. Simply, la UBA is the experience that I came for.

Some useful background: (1) UBA is free for all Argentines. The way this works out in practice is that a schmillion people enroll and only a few actually graduate. It takes significant strength of will to overcome all of the bureaucracy/obstacles, especially the ones you're fighting while also holding down a full-time job. (2) From an administrative perspective, cost per student is very low. This is because overhead costs are kept to a bare minimum. Professors barely earn a pittance and almost none are full-time. Buildings are dumpy and inadequate. As a result, striking occurs often (it's happening right now) and school resembles a cross between a prison and a middle school gym, except that it's covered in leftist newspapers and grafitti.

Because of the way the university system is governed, students have a substantial amount of power. The state doles X amount of funding to the university but, from what I understand, does not impose strict restrictions on how that money is spent. In that determination, parties representing the faculty, the students, and I think one other stakeholding group (but not an administration per sé) meet in Congresses to represent their groups and interests. Student government, therefore, is legit and a big deal. Student parties, it follows, are legit and a big deal -- and given that this is Argentina, these student parties are super lefty and very active.

Frequently someone will enter in the middle of class and, upon receiving a nod from the professor, will plunge into a rehearsed 30-60 second spiel about their student party, student congress, student strike, etc etc. I usually have to bite back laughter as I imagine the student who tried that during, say, one of Professor Taliaferro's classes. Oof, it's fighting tears. In those moments, above all, I realize how very far from home I am.

For me, all of this ridiculousness works out swimmingly. Not to sound all Edward Said orientalizing on you or anything but I really dig that UBA is a different world from Tufts, perhaps even in another universe. IFSA handles the internal UBA maze and I get to enjoy the Che Guevara t-shirts and Popular Student Movement posters.

migraciones

2009-04-15T15:41:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I told Silvia something that has been told to me many times: There are many places better to learn Spanish than Argentina. Bolivian Spanish, as I've heard from native English and Spanish speakers alike, is better for learning because it's much more like peninsular Spanish, isolated from regional influences by its unforgiving terrain. To this, Silvia bugged out. Según mi querida anfitriona, Bolivians are a dumber people, a less educated people, a more indigenous people... that just couldn't be. It could not be possible that BOLIVIANS, of all people, could speak a form of Spanish closer to the Real Academía de España. What was the silly American saying?

The Peruvian neighborhood here in BA, Abasto, is considered unsafe at night. All porteños, even of the standard middle class, don't do the dishes or make their beds because that's for the Paraguyan/Bolivian/Peruvian household help to do. Undocumented immigrants are routinely beaten by the generally untrustworthy Argentine police.

...and despite all of this, the largest collections of people I have seen in this city have been in the MERCOSUR line of the immigration office, a huge line that all of the IFSA students passed by during our trámite at Migraciones, and outside the Paraguayan embassy.

When I was in Chile this weekend our new Chilean friends compared the Peruvian and Bolivian populations of Chile to the Mexicans in the United States. Yes, but worse.

cathartic, really.

2009-04-06T20:31:00.000-04:00

I have to confess that one of my goals for this trip was to prioritize academics less, in favor of life experiences. In this spirit, I am pretty sure I am about to go to Chile for Semana Santa on shoe-string planning and a shoe-string budget. I say pretty sure because although we are planning to leave Wednesday morning (uh the day after tomorrow), nothing has yet been booked and we're stil not entirely certain who is coming.

A symptom of this EXCELLENT planning: I most definitely am almost out of clean laundry but neither the past track record of the lavadora nor the fact that I am in class 3-9pm bodes well for getting my laundry back tomorrow. Also, I still don't know if I will have to pay a fee when I hit the Chilean border, thus drastically increasing the price of this visit. (Though in my defense, no one seems to know this.) We were supposed to pay when we got here and didn't have to. However, there is a reason the Chilean economy is booming and the Argentine economy only sort of exists (coughefficiencycough). Finally, I most definitely have not done my homework that must be turned in on Wednesday before I leave -- and rather than do it, I've been updating this blog and rocking out to some CIV -- and I am happily skipping my absurdly difficult UBA class to go.

QUE BUENO that Kara and I are acting this way! We're usually so on top of it! I know this is the opposite of the attitude I should have but I think this is healthy for once in a while.

what you've been waiting for.... food

2009-04-06T19:51:00.002-04:00

Last night my host mom and I debated over one of my favorite topics: FOOD. Food in Argentina is and is not what you think. Yes, it’s cheap. When David came to visit, we had a wonderful and huge parilla (grill) dinner for less than US$40. The most expensive places at which I have eaten generally charge AR$35 per entrée. When dividing by a favorable exchange rate of more than 3.5 pesos to the dollar, even an expensive meal is not breaking the bank – and most meals are not even close to that price range. Lunch today of two empanadas and a huge peach licuado (an amazing smoothie-like contraption of blended milk, ice, and peaches) cost me less than AR$20, or about US$5, mostly because my licuado cost more than both of my empanadas combined.

So, I bet you are wondering, what is there to complain about?

BA has incredible and plentiful mom-and-pop ice cream shops. I can dig classics like a humita (corn) empanada and a tostada miga (toasted white bread ham and cheese with the crusts cut off) for sure. Heavily influenced by BA’s montons of Italian immigrants, pretty much every corner café carries pasta, pizza, and milanesa, a breaded meat (or chicken or soy) cutlet. But, as those bland staples suggest, the food here is just not that flavorful. Contrary to the expectation drawn from the wonderful chimichurri I’ve had in restaurants in the States, I can’t seem to find cilantro in a grocery store to save my life. Tomato sauce rarely comes with oregano or even much basil; I gave up on local brands and bought a jar of imported Newman’s Own to stave off the boredom on my tongue. The concept of picante (hot/spicy) is a city myth. In fact, even when we went out for Mexican food here the picante condiments of pickled jalapeños and salsa picante were terribly bland and on a different occasion a requested hot Indian dish was mild at best. Every table comes with salt but I’ve only twice been given the option for pepper. For someone who enjoys the processes of cooking and eating, BA can be surprisingly disappointing. For those of you with milder gastos, I assure you that I’m no buffalo wings fan, that don’t like spicy food for spicy food’s sake. Plus there is just not that much variety: ham-and-cheese empanada, ham-and-cheese tostado mixto, ham-and-cheese miga, ham-and-cheese torta… you get the point.

To be fair, regional/traditional Argentine foods like cazuelas (stews, I guess?) and traditional corn tamales (not really like the Mexcian kind) are not spicy but definitely flavorful. Street food like choripán (chorizo + pan (bread) sandwich), though potentially deadly, can be quite saborizado. I would be remiss not to clarify that there is incredible Italian food in the city, from wonderful pizza a la piedra (brick oven – literally pizza by the stone) to freshly made ricotta-and-spinach gnocchi. But by far and away my best spice-satisfaction has stemmed from abundant (and amazingly cheap) Peruvian food, which is both well-spiced and is served with a flavorful and spicy yellow salsa picante in which I frequently drown plates of French fries. That is helping to make up for the Salvadoran and Ethiopian I miss from DC, the Indian and Italian I miss from Boston, and the amazing dishes prepared by Georgetown Road’s own head chef Ed. (Yo, dad!)

I still have much food exploration to do of course but my once-high hopes for encoutering well-spiced foods and sauces are dimming. While I live near a barrio with a large Korean population and am looking forward to sampling Korean bulgogi asado as soon as possible, I know that if it’s anything like much of the rest of what I’ve eaten here the hot sauce that defines the best bibimbap will be dumbed down for lame porteño taste buds and I will be lucky to find the soy/curry/sesame/scallion marinade I desire. Bummer.

RIP Alfonsín

2009-04-06T19:24:00.004-04:00

Raul Alfonsín died last week of lung cancer. Sorry I have been sluggish to comment on it – perhaps Argentine time is impacting me more than I would have expected.

Alfonsín, as you probably read, was the president of Argentina from 1983-1989. While his presidency was fairly mediocre – he ultimately fell from grace because of a major crisis of hyperinflation – Alfonsín’s transition from power is legendary. A committed democrat, the Radical-Civic Union leader (center-right) handed over the presidency to Peronist Carlos Menem in July of 1989 peacefully. In Argentina’s long history of election-junta alternations, the Alfonsín-Menem transition was the first truly democratic handover of power in 61 years.

Alfonsín was not a saint and his period of governance is marked by failures, from the aforementioned crisis of hyperinflation which he failed to ameliorate to the serious concessions he granted former junta leaders, including amnesty for war criminals, after facing threats and pressure from military powerbrokers. However, unlike many of his predecessors and followers, Alfonsín was honest. When the talk of the town centers upon favorable deals the Kirchners have awarded themselves and the ongoing corruption scandals of President Carlos Menem, when the society lacks a strong sense of social democracy and faith in their democratic institutions, this unique feature of Alfonsín is particularly meaningful.

Upon finding out that Alfonsín had died, my host mother bestowed the highest compliment she could pay: Alfonsín, she said, was the only living president of Argentina who could walk through the streets without having eggs thrown at them or being spat at. She withheld the four-letter-words with which she usually labels her elected officials. For the first time, I heard her cynicism replaced with respect.

Clearly, Silvia was not the only one. Tuesday at midnight my friend Beth and I walked to Alfonsín’s home at Santa Fé and Rodriguez Peña where there was a sizeable gathering. Acknowledging the solemnity, I did not take photos. I did however take photos of the huge crowd outside of Congreso, the Argentine capitol building, waiting to pay respects at Alfonsín open-casket wake the next day.

Lines wrapping around themselves in coils of four stretched four blocks from Rivadavía and Callao until Sarmiento, then as a solid line to Corrientes. Sporadically, these large groups would break into claps of “Al-fon-sín,” which seemed to help along the several hours wait of the after-work crowd. I saw plenty of flowers, many teary eyes, and lots of folks wrapping themselves in Argentine flags. Many were supporters of UCR, to be sure, but I am certain that many Judicialist Party (Peronist) members stood among their ranks, in an appropriate stand of democratic solidarity.

Although I experienced them, I did not write about the Day of Human Rights or the Mother of Plaza del Mayo, who march every Thursday to honor their disappeared, but I will acknowledge them now. In the midst of cosmopolitan, modern Buenos Aires, it’s sometimes easy to not see Argentina’s tragic and all-too-recent past. Alfonsín’s transition of power to Menem is considered the embodiment of the consolidation of Argentine democracy and his death is a poignant reminder that Argentine democracy, both politically and institutionally, still has much more to grow.

For more reading on the subject, I suggest the flattering NY Times obit and today’s similarly-themed article, “Argentina Mourns Raul Alfonsin, an Honest Leader.” In Spanish: Clarín’s obit.

no hay monedas

2009-04-04T16:22:00.006-04:00

Rather than buy a reloadable plastic subway card or paper 10-ride passes, I buy my subway cards in two-ride or occasionally even one-ride units. This means that one out of every two rides requires standing on line and waiting to buy a subte pass. What is the reason for this madness? If I didn’t buy individually and in small quantities, I’d have to wait on 45-minute lines at the bank to get enough monedas (coins) for the privitized -- and therefore, non-uniform -- bus system, which doesn’t accept bills or any sort of prepaid cards. And even if I did wait at the bank, I’d probably get no more than $5 pesos anyway.

Even though BA doesn’t usually feel all that different from other busy noisy highly developed cities, it’s amazing how inefficiencies lead to other inefficiencies: no monedas, long subte pass lines.

For more on the moneda shortage, read Slate’s funny piece.

battery says it best: i spend half my time with friends (friends!) hoping it never ends (ends!)

2009-03-29T12:07:00.004-04:00

Sometimes I feel just so very lucky to have hardcore in my life. In many ways, it’s been a gift that just keeps on giving. I’ve always seen it as a refuge for kids who felt different. Lately, perhaps as a consequence of feeling the alienation of being someplace new, I've been thinking about hardcore all of the time. After neglecting the habit, I’ve been reading hardcore blogs (oh doublecross is too good) and discovering new (to me) music, listening to a crop of stuff that I’ve always wanted to listen to but am just now really getting into for the first time really (see: BATTERY, bt1k, early shelter, common cause, remains to be seen, and CIV). And just as I’ve always felt about it – this asylum for kids who feel somehow a step apart – hardcore has been embracing me.

Wednesday I had some extra time after a visa appointment so I stopped into Axel’s tattoo shop, which was later followed by a conversation about the Disengage EP and how hardcore might not have recovered from the awesomeness if YOT had made a full length of Disengage quality. Then Friday night I literally ran into Axel and his friend as I was walking to meet up with a friend and her parents. I was majorly running on Argentine time (aka late) but it was just so great to run into a friend like that. Stressing that is important; it’s not uncommon for me to run into American kids from my program around town because we all tend to hang out in more or less the same places, but it was a sublime thing to find myself cheek-kissing with a real porteño before hitting a series of subjects about which I have something substantive to say.

Yesterday I was cared for (babysat?) by the kids down here. When I didn’t hear from the kid who was supposed to take me to the show, his bandmate answered my call for help. I met up with him and friends and they brought me to the show, even paying for my bus fare. At the show, I received a steady stream of hellos, introductions, and unbelievable warmth. Most of the kids I met last week were there and it was super exciting to see them and to see how excited they were to see me. As they say here, it was baaaaarbaro. After the show Fedex brought me back to house, no invitation truly stated, with his friends. I listened to them and their friends and tried so hard to understand (through the slang and speed) to their talk about dudes/bands and then we played a game of charades against the Rosario kids which I totally sucked at even though I didn’t really need Spanish. It was probably the most normal night I’ve had here except that it was all in castellano!

On the one hand, it was super amazing. I had a fun night Friday night going out with some American friends and their two British friends but it was really nice not to be made to feel like the boring/awkward person because I don’t drink. It was incredible to have a night that was just so very perfectly normal, about hanging out for hanging out’s sake. I’m so absurdly grateful for how much they went out of their way for me. On the other hand, it was bittersweet. Nothing makes you miss your friends quite like being happy and hanging out in the same way with new friends, you know?

On a final note, it occurs to me that I haven’t used this blog to talk much about Argentina but mostly to talk about me and occasionally to use that as a prism through which to talk about Argentina. In large part that’s been because I’ve been struggling to find my place and to encounter truly authentic experiences on which to reflect. I will post more very soon – last night gave me much ammo.

¡oye esteban!

2009-03-25T21:57:00.006-04:00

If you come to the home page of this blog, you'll discover the subtitle "hay una luz que nunca se apaga" which translates into Engish as "there is a light that will never go out" aka the famous (and gorgeous) Smiths song. Perhaps now I can justify the connection.

Tonight when I was halfheartedly working on some homework for my Spanish class I happened to also be partaking in my favorite form of procrastination -- watching Morrissey videos on youtube -- and I foudn this incredible gem: Morrissey on TELEMUNDO in Spanish.

If after this Telemundo video and "First of the Gang to Die" you still have any doubts about how much Morrissey loves the Mexicans that love him more, drink in this lovely photo of Moz in a Chivas jersey at a CHIVAS USA game. That's right, folks, MLS Chivas not even Guadalajara Chivas. Wow.

In related news, I have plans to go to a hardcore show on Saturday and the cancha between River Plate and Racing this Sunday. Hopefully the suspense matches up the awesomeness of stoppage time of the match between River and San Martín de Tucuman last week. I still can't believe it took River almost all game to come back from San Martín's weak early goal.

If Sunday works out, it brings my life in BsAs part circle. To explain: I passed the Racing team in practice sweats outside of their hotel two Sundays ago, ostensibly waiting to go to a stadium in GBA. (They play Sundays... there is no other explanation.) Full circle would be if I make it to a Lanús game, as I passed those guys wandering around AEP Jorge Newberry in practice sweats while I was en route to Bariloche. Both times I will admit to finding the experiences extremely strange. Just sayin'-- when's the last time you saw members of your favorite football or baseball teams loitering about?

Finally, I have a confession to make: I have been courting fandom CA River Plate. I have until April 19th's Superclasico to decide. Updates most assuredly to come.

hardcorelyrics.com ctrl-c ctrl-v

2009-03-20T19:37:00.006-04:00

I had probably my favorite conversational exchange last night. It went like this:

Shana: ¿No hablás ingles? ¿Pero escribís tus letras en ingles? (You don’t speak English? But you write your lyrics in Engish? NOTE: Check out that castellano riplatense in action!)

Frederico: No, seriously. Hardcorelyrics.com. Ctrl-C. Ctrl-V. That’s it.

Jajajajajajajajaja says me.

Hat trick to Marie on this one: When I talked to her this week in my generally down state, she encouraged me to put myself out there in order to make Argentine friends. After a fierce internal debate and an extremely lucky venue change from the province to 8 blocks from my apartment, I made the incredibly wise decision to go to my first Argentine hardcore show by myself. Because I went by myself, I didn’t have the luxury of withdrawing into myself. I was forced to be friendly as fuck. It paid off.

The strategy: Take pictures of random kids waiting for the show to start. Successful? Yeah! Because it’s pretty awkward to just snap photos of some dudes, I told them that I was American and taking some photos for my friends to document the scene here. Okay that’s probably equally awkward… but it was also true and it worked on two separate occasions to strike up conversations, one of which was extremely successful. Marcelo, Axel, Ryan, and Paula -- featured below in their Verse shirts har har – were super friendly and nice and patient about my Spanish and helpful.

From BAxHC

Marcelo gave me the lowdown on some of the who’s who – pointing out the 674 crew with neck tattoos and DB4D shirts and Red Sox hats (so much like I never left!), the kids in important bands I hadn’t heard of, and the kids I wanted to meet – while also listening with some degree of really adorable awe about Boston. We talked about bands we all liked and the hilarious National Geographic doc about Edge Day and straightedge. The best part was that none of those dudes really spoke English and for the first time in way too long I was forced to speak Spanish to execute a conversation. (!!!) They also introduced me to their awesome friends Carlos and Magalí, who I especially loved and with whom I spent most of the rest of the show.

From BAxHC

In addition, Marcelo pointed out Kiko, the amazing kid who runs Varsity Records whom I emailed my first week of being down here and with whom I’ve been doing some MSN chatting. OKAY Kiko is seriously one of the nicest people I have ever met in my whole life. He immediately was super warm to me, asking me lots of questions about how I’m doing, how I got to the show, etc etc. He introduced me to his friend and bandmate Frederico, of the infamous Ctrl-C Ctrl-V quote, who also went out of his way to be super friendly and who also knew way too much about American college sports and that Tufts was good at crew (uh?). Frederico introduced me to his gf (I think) Pauly who was super adorable and with whom I waited after the show ended because Kiko had asked me to stay. He promised to meet me in the city and literally take me to the show next Sunday, which is just amazing considering he doesn't even live in the city. And when I parted ways with them, he gave me a sincere “cuidate.”

Check out their band Reconcile on myspace or in youtube video.

From BAxHC

As for the show itself: The opening band was terrible. They were followed by a hard, New York influenced band and their singer, of course, was the dude with neck tattoos. Reconcile was legitimately really good and it was great to see a hometown band that hometown kids were into. No Turning Back (Holland) was just hilarious. Their singer was a Dutch version of Scott Vogel in Greg Mental's oddly proportioned body. I took some video which I am stoked to show Bobby in the fall. Only about half of the kids knew enough English to laugh at his jokes and participate in his requests for call and response. I laughed throughout the whole set, pretty much. Plus they played covers of Negative Approach and Alone in a Crowd, which allowed me to participate a bit thank goodness.

Although I feel a little bit embarrassed admitting it to folks, especially when they don’t really understand hardcore at all, last night demonstrated the success of my logic: I picked BsAs in large part because there is a hardcore scene. With all of those kids I met last night, I spoke Spanish, exchanged contact information, and just generally had a meaningful experience over which to bond. For the first time, although I obviously felt like an outsider to some degree, I didn’t feel like such a tourist or such an American. I felt like a hardcore kid. And with the greatness of the smallness of the hardcore scene (¿hardcore es un panuelo?) I had more than just interests in common but also some friends as well. It was pretty incredible to explain where I live in the States by proximity to the Anthrax Club, to discuss kids I know from Boston, and to be able to share in a way I hadn’t yet been able.

All in all, an extremely awesome experience on which to build! Already super stoked for the 28^th in Gerli (which I can now finally pronounce).

what my parents are paying for

2009-03-20T18:21:00.002-04:00

This will be the first in a two part series on why I went from feeling pretty crappy early in the week to why I am feeling loads better now, as the week ends. It’s amazing what a difference a few days make.

I finally know which classes I’m taking! This is huge for a lot of reasons but instead of just telling you that, I will show you.

I registered for all of the following classes:

At the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella: Comparative Politics and History of Peronism. (2)
At the Catholic University of Argentina: New Latin American Cinema, Contemporary Short Stores, Nobel Prize Winners of Literature, Comparative Revolutions, Comparative Political and Social Processes in the Southern Cone. (5)
At the University of Buenos Aires: Political Parties in Presidential Democracies, Forms of semi-directed democracy and political participation, and Political Leaders and Leadership in Latin America: A Study of Carlos Menem (Argentina), Fernando Collor de Melo (Brazil), and Hugo Chavez (Venezuela). (3)
At the University of Salvador: Argentine Literature, History of Hispanic Art, Comparative Latin American Political Systems, and Comparative Politics. (4)

Of those 14 classes, for which registration took place at different times and in different locations and which take place at four different universities, I have attended seven with some degree of regularity. On top of that, my Spanish class has started.

Why, might you be wondering, would someone subject oneself to an unnecessarily large number of courses in an exorbitant number of universities? What a great question! It’s necessary that I attend as many classes as possible to ensure that the ones in which I end up have professors and TAs that I understand, students with whom I am capable of interacting, and reading that I am capable of understanding. This is no tiny feat, seriously. Furthermore, the registration process here has been a shitshow. As mentioned, registration took place at different times and via different methods. After registration, many of the schools have lotteries because they limit the number of spots foreign students occupy. Of course all of the foreign students need to fulfill basically the same credits and register basically for the same courses aka the classes which we all want to take are competitive and randomly selected. Again, it is important that one keeps his or her options open in case that Spanish language/culture course closes… understand?

At long last, my schedule is finally pretty settled and I have been to almost all of the classes at least once. In addition, que suerte!, I am pretty sure my courses fulfill the credits necessary for Tufts: Spanish language, culture/literature, and comparative politics. It is as follows:

- Tuesday: New Latin American Cinema (UCA) – for foreign students

- Tuesday: Nobel Prize Winners of Literature (UCA) – for foreign students

- Wednesday and Friday: Leaders and Leadership in Latin America: A Study of Carlos Menem (Argentina), Fernando Collor de Melo (Brazil), and Hugo Chavez (Venezuela) (UBA) – difficult!

- Thursday: Spanish Grammar and Popular Urban Argentine Music (IFSA)

In the mean time I will probably also continue to try out:

- Comparative Politics at USAL (because I want to be sure I get a comparative politics credit while I’m here and need to confirm about UBA)

- History of Peronism at Di Tella (because I LOVE the professor and would be sad to see him go)

This way I am a) pretty set course-wise and b) leaving my options open.

I am by far most excited about my UBA class, even though it’s already kicking my ass. He’s the hardest of my professors to understand – of all of the courses I have tried out! – and there is the smallest concentration of foreign students. By the end, I need to produce 30-40 page paper IN SPANISH about a particular case study, about which I am at present totally uncertain in large part because all of this history is totally new to me. But UBA (or la UBA, as I might also call it) is also the coolest thing about being here and I am certain it will prove to be the most authentic experience I will have in my time in Buenos Aires. I will post separately about UBA for y’all as soon as I get a chance to snap some photos because you seriously just have to see it to believe it.

Also, since I only sort of came here to work and don’t want to give you the wrong impression of my striving high, I assure you that my two UCA classes fall somewhere on the scale between completely manageable and absurdly easy. This is good because I have Mondays off and they meet on Tuesday, giving me plenty of absolutely true long weekends to travel or look up every other word in my UBA reading.

Finally, I really can lay off my academic neuroses because I thought about taking Portuguese while I was here and decided in the end against it. I am confident that it was the right decision.

A few regrets, when all is said and told: I will miss my comparative politics class at Di Tella and, if I really don’t continue with Peronism, I will miss Di Tella generally. It is basically like Tufts – small, wealthy, and with generally smart and amiable students. I have already made a friend from Di Tella with whom I can continue a friendship, even if we can’t continue class together. Also, as stated, I definitely will miss my Peronism professor. I also majorly lament that I really only have one class with Argentines, the UBA class. If I don’t continue with Comp Pol at USAL, which would be pretty stressful because I’d have less than a half hour to get from USAL to UBA every Wednesday, it will be only one Arg class. That’s a bummer.

If you have thoughts, please please please let me know! Right now, although I’ve really been putting it off, I think it’s finally time to start some homework.

not the happiest birthday

2009-03-18T01:30:00.003-04:00

It pretty much sucked to have a birthday abroad. I was trying to be more diplomatic than that because I like my friends here and ended up having a lot of fun at the folklorico show but basically that’s how I feel and I want to own it.

It was not because having class all day was rough. In some ways that helped take my mind off of my general dissatisfaction with having my bday abroad and was beneficial. It was not because we didn’t adequately celebrate; I didn’t contribute any good ideas to planning for my birthday and the show was as good as anything I would have come up with, to put it in the most negative framing possible. It wasn’t exclusively because I felt sad about not being home to share it with my friends and family for I had many ambivalent feelings about being away for six months, some of which do not look very favorably upon my life at Tufts. And it really wasn’t because of some birthday-related existential crisis that I think happens to everyone almost every year.

I will confess that I cried a little on my birthday. I almost never cry – except when I choke up while reading or during a movie, but hardly even when instigated by my own life or my own feelings – but I couldn’t help getting emotional while I walked home from UCA to meet David before going out. I think I always find birthdays disappointing – there are always a couple of people who I wish had called to send their love, for example, and I always feel uncomfortable about the way in which a birthday gives one license to call inordinate amounts of attention to oneself – but this was different: this was a conscious understanding that, on the day I most want the people I love to reach out to me, the interactions we could have were guaranteed to be disappointing. In that way, it was a very pointed reminder of how I truly know no one in this city, how I could go through a whole birthday and should not expect any calls or texts, and struck me with a profound sense of isolation. When compounded with some other feelings addressed above, it stung.

I don’t mean to sound melancholy or pathetic or anything of the sort. I received some fantastic emails and facebook messages from friends from home (Andrew Helms, you clearly take the cake on that one) and had what ended up being a good night out with interested and caring friends… but, for the first time since arriving here, I felt legitimately and profoundly homesick. It put a damper on what ought to have been a happier day. And in the interest of being honest, that's the truth about my 21st.

David comes to visit OR a photo tour of Buenos Aires (click the links!)

2009-03-17T22:47:00.004-04:00

In an excellent birthday not-surprise David came to visit last week! Since the Bursteins and the Hurleys are perhaps the only people who read this blog, I will catalog for posterity his awesome visit with selected photos from his ample collection. Photos are linked, rather than pasted, because then this post would be waaaay too long. Please enjoy the photos because without them I assure you that this post will be rather boring.

On SUNDAY, we first explored Plaza San Martin, the beautiful playground of Argentina’s formerly rich and famous. To celebrate peace (or something?) there is this excellent collection of “Buddy Bears” with whom we had perhaps too much fun. David posed with the Cuban bear (complete with a cigar). We walked down touristy Calle Florida before meeting my friend Brenna for coffee and sandwiches at a café. The three of us headed for San Telmo, stopping to explore Plaza Del Mayo, the Catedral http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30439274&id=1088130041, and snap some shots of the Casa Rosada. We somehow managed to miss most of the antiques at the San Telmo Fería but it was aight because that Sunday walk up and down Calle Defensa is still a good time. We capped our day off with ice cream at Volta, the best I’ve had in Buenos Aires, where we found ourselves laughing a lotttttt. One of the questions that had been bugging me most – do waiters in bsas carry two wallets or just give you change from their own wallet? – was finally answered and I was heartily encouraged by the resident pep squad to ask the waiter out on the date. (FYI I did not.) David and I later enjoyed parilla in San Telmo where we had yet another extremely nice waiter who took almost as much pleasure in affectionately teasing David for his bad Spanish as I did.

Fortunately I had no class (yay!) on MONDAY so we returned to Plaza del Mayo, wandered a bit around the city, and then decided to go to Montserrat to tour Congreso. We were a bit early so we walked around the Plaza of Two Congresses, towards Argentina’s high court at Tribunales, the reconstruction-laden Teatro Colon, and the Israelite Congregation Synagogue while also passing a rather irrelevant-seeming protest and the highest density of musical instrument stores I have ever seen.

From Congreso we hopped a bus to beautiful Puerto Madero. Enjoy the many photos taken (each different photos) in Puerto Madero. We then walked to the Ecological Reserve where we encountered amazing green parrots and gave our tired feet a little rest. Finally we capped off our day at a nice dinner in San Telmo in which the waitress and I did some expert translating for David and I fought my shy instincts to literally run down some hardcore kids wearing Integrity and Black Flag shirts that I saw through the window, most of whom were from Chile but one of whom lived in bsas and happened to also have lived in Boston. Hopefully we have a friendship to follow!

TUESDAY was my birthday. I will write separately about my feeeeelings but here address that I had class almost all day (4 classes, three of which were 3 hrs long). At night we went to see Alana’s host mother’s folklorico dance troupe at la Pena del Colorado. It was super awesome. Definitely not a 21^st birthday rager, but all-in-all a good time.

It was threatening rain on WEDNESDAY but stayed nice when we needed it to be. We headed out to the Recoleta Cemetary, which is quite literally like a city of the dead, to explore. I went last week but after some good lessons in Argentine history was able to appreciate so much more! Expecting the rain, David and I took up shelter at the amazing MALBA where we saw incredible works from Xul Solar, Luis Botero, and Frida among others. Later we journeyed to Abasto where we met up with Natalie for some amazingly tasty Peruvian food and introduced a new crop of friends to the Orq Tipicia de Fernandez Fierro.

On THURSDAY I had still more class so David packed up and went to Tigre. I enjoyed a quiet day in bsas before we went to a tango show at the classic (and touristy) El Viejo Almacen. It featured whom we enjoy believing was the Argentine Liza Minelli and some amazing dancing, as well as the happiest collection of senior citizens I’ve seen in a long time. Much enjoyment was had.

David’s last day, FRIDAY, was jam-packed. I walked him through a short Retiro tour that was my best attempt at mimicking the miraculous Gabi, my UBA-grad tour guide. We visited palacios, the former site of the Embajada del Israel, and saw some awesome Spanish and French architecture. After my class and his explorations of San Telmo, we headed to La Boca which was beautiful, touristy, and to our liking.

I had a great time with David last week. It turns out, also, that what I had suggested to him upon initial confirmation of his visit was true: I am definitely hitting the abroad-rut right now and his timing was truly perfect. I think he helped me stave off a week of the inevitable feeling of homesickness that sets in about a month into everyone’s abroad experience. Partly because we did lots of touristy things and I saw new areas, David helped me preserve some degree of good newness about being here; more importantly, he distracted me in the best friend-from-home way from the academic frustrations and general unease hitting this week. On this subject, I can only say that there will be more to come.

things I love in Buenos Aires #1: domingos y futból

2009-03-16T17:13:00.003-04:00

I love Sundays in Buenos Aires.

On Sundays, the only people at Plaza del Mayo are tourists. Ferías populate most prominent plazas and draw in all of the city’s English speakers. Some porteños go to church; others sleep off a long Saturday night of partying. Streets, generally, are quiet.

…except in the same moment when, no matter where you are, shouting or sighing escapes every bar and café in town. Argentine soccer devotees (aka everyone) don’t scream at the TV during the game. They watch silently, intently concentrating. But in the best moments for River or for Boca, everywhere you can hear GOOOOOO-AAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLL!!!!

Yesterday Natalie and I went to the fería in San Telmo where we miraculously didn’t die from an excellent street-vendor choripán sandwich, enjoyed street tango orchestras, and scoped a crazy assortment of antiques and artisanal goods. After sitting in the quiet grass of a pretty empty Plaza del Mayo, we split a peach licuado at the corner of Santa Fé and Pueyrredón while watching the River – Velez game and leaving the café in the same second everyone else did. I later walked to the bus stop to the sounds of the Boca game spilling out of the cafes. Finding the bus stop proved difficult and I consequently made a new friend, a very amiable, non-English speaking porteño whose somewhat lonely American girlfriend gave him cause to ask me to join them for an outing soon. I happily promised to do so.

It’s been a month as of today and yesterday was perhaps my favorite day since arriving. Probably because my classes still aren’t official and I barely know any real Argentines, I still feel like a tourist. I have a feeling, though, that more Sundays like yesterday will help me feel like I actually live here. That would be great.

sea lo que sea, pase lo que pase

2009-03-07T09:58:00.004-05:00

Thursday was Manu Chao at the Club Ciudad de Buenos Aires in Nuñez. If you're curious (aka if you're Jordan), the newspaper Clarin and hipsterblog vuenosairez have reviews of the concert in Spanish. Some basic thoughts:

He played for over three hours, with three encore style sequences. These often commenced and ended with Manu smacking himself with the microphone against his chest plate. It looked painful. He played literally almost everything in his catalog with many mash-ups of songs (as he frequently does on his albums). One of my favorites was mixing the clasic folklorico song Se Fuerza la Maquina with his own Luna y Sol. Many of the songs I hadn't heard, presumably from the 2007 Radio Bemba Sound System's La Radiolina were played much faster whereas many of the old songs took on a more reggae vibe and were slowed down. The GANJ was abundant -- I saw spliffs in all directions -- and the whole event took on a pretty leftist spin, with ample criticism of the States in the form of poetry from members of La Colifata, a radio collective run by inpatients and outpatients of a mental hospital in Buenos Aires, and general hating on Bush. (Obama wasn't lauded especially, though, either.)

All in all, I had an awesome time doing the reggae sway with the dreaded portenos for at least 2.75 of the over 3 hours of the show. I frequently have moments that remind me of the scene in Half Baked where they start listing all of the things that are better ON WEED. Here it's that some things are just that much cooler for experiencing them in Buenos Aires, Argentina, or a Spanish-speaking country generally. Seeing Manu Chao was definitely one of them.

Enjoy this pretty rough clip of the show from youtube.

Orquesta Típica Fernández Fierro

2009-03-05T08:42:00.004-05:00

Went to see these guys last night in the neighborhood that birthed Carlos Gardel. It was super amazing.

It was definitely a more modern spin on traditional tango and definitely awesome.

fuimos a Patagonia este fin de semana

2009-03-03T20:28:00.010-05:00

Sorry for the long delay in writing. Things got busier just before I left for Patagonia for the weekend. Rather than write about academic stuff, which I will soon, I’ll instead talk about and show pictures from Bariloche, a small touristy city in the foothills of the Andes in the Río Negra province.

SATURDAY

AIGHT so I met up with my friend Alana on Saturday morning on Santa Fe. While I was waiting for her to pack up, I saw so many Orthodox Jews going to services. I never go to services, don’t have any particularly strong religious inclinations, and usually feel a fair amount of chagrin about Hassidim. However, the sight of brown members of la colectividad just made my morning. (More on this later, I think…) It then took us about half the time we budgeted to get to Aeroparque Jorge Newberry so we spent over an hour people watching. Some of the people we happened to see when we were bumming around were none other than the LANUS FUTBOL TEAM, the dudes that upset Boca last year for a remarkable win in the Apertura and then upset Boca again last Sunday, wandering around in their team sweats. (Of course, I didn’t realize this until we had been in Bariloche for a few days. I thought they were some junior level team or something.) That, in retrospect, was pretty awesome.

The flight was too short to nap really but they did serve bang-ass snacks. We then took a bus tour of the Circuito Chico, the shorter version of the path around Lake Nahuel Haupi, overlooking peninsula Llau Llau (pr chau-chau), on this awesome bus. Check out that little dude’s hat!

From Bariloche

We drove to an aerosilla (air chair aka chairlift) for some wonderful early views.

From Bariloche

Then we went to San Carlos de Bariloche, the huge tourist town in Argentina’s Patagonia. There I bought Silivia a b-day choco gift at Mumushka, which is just as good as the Rupprechts suggested it would be. YUMM.

From Bariloche

After Bariloche, our journey continued. We had a guide who explained things but she didn’t have a microphone so it was either look at her to try to hear better or stare at the gorgeous views outside. Take your guess which I chose. We stopped at some spots with good views and did a short hike for a beautiful view of Llau Llau. Here is one more of the beautiful vistas:

From Bariloche

It made me very happy to see how pretty everything was.

From Bariloche

By the time we got back it was pretty late and we were exhausted. Dinner was late, then an earlyish ending hangout sesh and dinner in the city center. High points included death by narrow roads and insane bus driving (INSANE), the hilarious crew of Israeli backpackers, the extremely drunk Argentines who directed unpleasant piropos at us while we waited for the bus that didn’t come, then the nice taxi driver who made A$77 driving the five of us all the way back to Llau Llau where we were staying. Ask me sometime and I’ll tell you how he distinguishes good chocolate from bad chocolate or about how he thinks Obama is a socialist.

SUNDAY

The weather in Patagonia is pretty crazy and it was supposed to be cold and rainy so rather than do a boat excursion, a hike, or go rafting, Anna and I decided that we would go back to downtown Bariloche to hang. We met up with other folks and headed down together. We, of course, went back to Mamushka and followed that visit with a taste-test tour of the many touristy chocolaterias. Excellent decision.

The saga of DIEZ:

What followed was a hilarious adventure that will forever be known as DIEZ, Spanish for the number 10. The plan was to head to the Swiss Colony where there is a fería (flea market, I guess?), supposedly much cuteness, and where we were meeting with our guide for a short night hike (to miss the rain) that evening. We took the crazily driven by the same driver 20 bus out of the city to the 18^th KM mark. Our bus driver told us something in poor English about 5/10 and it wasn’t entirely apparent if he meant the 10 bus would come in 5-10 minutes or at 5:10 so we waited. And we waited. A pretty stray dog came to hang out and we waited with him, who we decided to call Diez after the absent bus, even more. Our 20 driver “friend” passed us in one direction, and then stopped when passing us in the other. Trying to explain but then just taking pity on us / thinking we were retarded, he wrote 17:20 on Christine’s hand so as to indicate when this nonexistent bus would arrive. Then we another forty minutes.

We waited in this totally random place on the side of the narrow road for over an hour and fifteen or. Then, around 5:10, it came. But the driver, despite seeing us waving for him to stop and actually making “no thanks” motions with his hands, passed us by. YEAH. I KNOW. We were a cross between furious and hysterically laughing, given how ridiculous the whole situation had been. We decided to walk up a bit and see if we could ask anyone why this bus decided not to stop for us. A very kind girl at a nearby restaurant told us that the next bus would not be coming for another two and a half hours, too late for us to make it to the Swiss Colony to meet up with our group for the night. She helped us call a remís (group taxi) and suggested, since it was close, that we wait outside for it. After literally two minutes, A NUMBER TEN CAME followed by none other than our taxi. This time the bus stopped for us but we had to take our taxi. (I still can’t really believe this.) We were basically splitting at the seams from laughter.

I want to complain about this but actually the trials and tribulations with the buses made the trip to Bariloche so great. BsAs is a city, a pretty westernized and modern city with full services and a European flavor. I had not felt more truly in Argentina than I did while my Linea 20 bus drove impossibly quickly down a rainy narrow cliff-side road in the dark. Definitely the most memorable part of our trip to Patagonia.

/ story of diez

At Colonia Suisa, all we wanted to do was sit inside. It was super busy because there had just been a big two-day trekking race that had commenced and terminated at Colonia Suisa. We had coffees and visited the fería. The most memorable moment was when I turned to a friend to ask if she was okay – I don’t remember what prompted the question – and, in response to my question, a random dude apparently replied quite loudly “Estoy bien.” Oh Argentine men… We then waited for our late guide, about whom many of us had our doubts she was going to take our prepaid money and run. But she came and it was awesome!

We took 4x4s up a mountain which was simultaneously amazing and unbelievably scary, as we definitely very easily (and at certain moments very nearly) drove off the side of the mountain. We stopped about 2/3 of the way up the mountain, then received a nature lesson about birds, tectonic plates and the formation of the Andes, etc. in the form of a hike up to the refugio (summit house?). The sun was setting as we walked up and, as is the theme, the views were just amazing. At the refugio we ate pizza and laughed SO MUCH before one of the guides played and sang Argentine folkloriko songs before passing his guitar to some of the IFSA students. It became a night of folklorico and Elliot Smith, then, with some gringo dancing in between. Then we went outside and I saw more stars than I think I’ve ever seen. Truly amazing.

MONDAY

Monday almost the entire IFSA group took a six hour hike up to the refugio at Cerro Lopez. The refugio, oddly enough, was pink and it was sooo incredibly beautiful. It was the best view of the weekend of the snow-covered Andes in the distance. Oh man. The weather in Patagonia is notoriously odd and yesterday was a perfect example: it was really chilly. Afterwards we went back to Bariloche and got ice cream at what was supposedly the best heladería in Argentina. Hopefully my eating habits this weekend were offset by all of the hiking….

TODAY

Today I had my first class which meets at 8 AM in Belgrano. I left my house around 7:05 and was still late, grrr. I don’t know if I am going to be able to stick with this for a whole semester, especially knowing that I have other options. Despite the earliness and that Patagonia was really beautiful, I’m pretty happy to be back in the city. Walking from Di Tella (UTDT) to the subte this morning, I walked through some of Belgrano’s Chinatown, and my subte ride was filled with more beautiful Argentine commuting men.

My full photo album from Bariloche is linked to this photo below!

Bariloche

tengo amigos yo?

2009-02-24T23:47:00.002-05:00

I didn’t write again the other night because we lost power (therefore internet access) on account of the record heat and record electricity usage. It was not a city-wide blackout but I think just certain buildings in Almagro. We got it back later that day and it was good in that it forced me to go to sleep pretty early, which I needed. However, what I was going to write about was the fact that I’ve been surprised about making friends—and I left that deliberately without an adjective/modifier.

Many people came with friends from school and have already formed little groups. Others came because Buenos Aires is a lively, partying city and that’s the experience they’re bonding over. While I’m sureeeeee rationally of course that I’m not the only one, I’m feeling a bit out of place. There are people I like and people I want to get to know better – and, to be honest, plenty of people I don’t – but I’m impatient about the time it takes to really friends and wish I had even just one person immediately at my disposal. I also like three groups of people who haven’t really mixed socially very much yet, but am not really of any of the three groups yet. Sometimes, then, making plans is somewhat intimidating.

Most of all, seeing the way other friendships already are, I wish I had one person with whom I could especially bond and explore with, a go-to hangout sesh target. Usually that one person is all I want. In addition, I am anxious to make actual Argentine friends. Hopefully that will commerce soon.

In other news, I went to see the small carnaval parade downtown today with some of my new friends after a day of exploring on my own. I walked from Almagro up through Palermo Hollywood (shopping) and Palermo Soho (bars and cobblestone streets – gorgeous) to the botanical garden, then down to the Recoleta Cemetery, down Purreyedon and finally down Santa Fe. This is a gorgeous city. Pictures to come.

If I don’t write beforehand, Bariloche this weekend. Pictures most definitely to come.

some thoughts on

2009-02-19T18:18:00.002-05:00

Right now I’m sitting on our balcony that overlooks Avenida Corrientes. The sun is setting and it’s pretty beautiful. As in all times of day, though, it’s extremely busy! See?

Almagro y Yatay

I live in Almagro, a working class barrio in the west of the city. It’s south of Calle Rivadavía which, it’s generally accepted, divides the city into its richer and poorer barrios. As I said, Silvia walked me around Almagro a bit on our first day but today was the first day that I was able to contextualize better the character of Almagro.

Yesterday morning, we took a tour with an awesome and adorable (and Jewish!) guide named Gabi around Retiro, one of the nicest areas of the city. The palacios of rich portenos past – generally the landowners of European descent – are in Recoleta. Plaza San Martín is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, as was the monument to Carlos Pelligrini and surrounding French and Brazilian embassies. Plaza San Martín spills into Calle Florida, a touristy shopping district that is also very beautiful. That part of the city, of which I have TONS more to see, feels very European, historical, and beautiful.

Where I live is completely different. I’m now looking onto dirty buildings. As far as I can see are tons of apartment buildings crammed into a tiny space, with a few multi-story houses with clothes lines hanging everywhere. Instead of the glamour of Retiro, the flavor is much more South American. We have kioskos everywhere, places where you can buy perhaps a bottle of soda or a card to recharge your phone. The stores are generally very utilitarian; rather than sell clothes, they sell paint or cheap lunch or photocopies. I like that a lot.

I walked home today, about 30 blocks, from Recoleta/Barrio Norte to Almagro. In some respects, probably a bad idea. It was over 90 degrees F today and I’ve had a dehydration headache for the past few hours. But I appreciated seeing so many different faces of the city. I am sure that I will continue to write about this until the cows come home, as it’s an integral part of the porteno identity crisis, but this city really does balance two very distinct identities. Two blocks from a packed Starbucks and Plaza Lavalle is the Paraguayan consulate where long lines seek Argentine citizenship and a better life. Really fascinating.

As for some other thoughts:

1) Argentine women have a reputation for being really gorgeous. However, I am certain that men are the fairer sex here. Almost all of the Argentine young men are insanely attractive. Seriously so. One big caveat: someone should tell many of these attractive young men that removing their mullets would make them even better looking.

2) I have been resisting picking up an Argentine accent and using vos instead of tú. It’s pretty fun to say Calle Callao in an Argentine accent (cay-yay cay-yao in normal Spanish, cay-jay cay-jao in Argentina) and to say “vos sos de Boston, ¿no?” but I feel weird copping something that isn’t authentically mine (or, rather, so unauthentic as no Spanish is authentically mine…). On the other hand, I don’t need to call any more attention to the fact that I am a foreigner by using an grammatical form that pretty much doesn’t exist here, as I seem to be doing a fine enough job of that on my own. I think I will lose this battle in the end. I give you full license to mock me.

3) Instead of drawing bus routes on maps like normal cities, bsas has the Guia T. The Guia T is like an Atlas in which you locate an address on a map and then look at the corresponding box on the corresponding page to find which buses go to that place. The exact location of the stop isn’t marked, nor is it at all easy to determine which direction a bus is heading without assistance. This is some Southern efficiency, if you ask me.

4) I passed a tattoo parlor today called True Till Death. It was in a shopping center called el Centro Americano or something similar and its explanation on the sign outside, aka that it was a tatuaje, was (the only one) in English. I am visiting ASAP to ask if they named themselves for the Chain song but I am asking in SPANISH. I would have today but I got shy.

I will post again tonight because I have something else to say but don’t feel like doing it now. I was going to go out tonight but I have, as I mentioned, a major headache so maybe not. If that’s the case, I will definitely post again.

he llegado

2009-02-16T20:47:00.002-05:00

I am in Buenos Aires now. It's very hot and humid. (You should see my hair. Or maybe not.) The sun set very late. I keep having to remind myself that these things are not necessarily because I’m in bsas but because it’s summer here. Still, after the harrowing winter plaguing home it’s still kind of shocking to have sunlight after six and to be sweating while taking a shower. I frequently begin my thought process for a sentence in Spanish, which I’m taking as a sign of good things to come.

I was lucky enough to have serendipitously booked a ticket for the group flight, meaning I met a bunch of kids in the airport. I’m already seeing a North Cafeteria/South Cafeteria divide among the students, which is pretty crazy considering we don’t even really know each other’s names yet. Everyone is being righteously nice in that way that you could sit as anyone’s table in the dining hall during freshman orientation and ask the same six questions, more or less, that we’ve been asking each other now: What’s your name? Where are you from? Where do you go to school? Oh, do you know so-and-so? S/he goes there too. Where are you living in Buenos Aires? Oh, that’s kind of like how I live in ____. I hope I don’t sound pessimistic or like I’m complaining. Actually, I’m quite grateful we have these topics to canvass and am genuinely interested for now.

The flight was nothing worth writing about except that an Argentine man sat next to me and for the entire ride proceeded never to remove his headphones or speak to me. At first I thought it was because I was so unabashedly gringa but when I asked him for a pen to fill out a form he was equally short-winded and I concluded that it wasn’t me, it was him. My taxi driver, Juan, was the polar opposite and a hugeee sweetheart. I bumbled (so badly) through our conversation and kept having to say “lo siento” until it was repeated so I could understand. He was very very kind and we had many laughs, not just at my expense. I was a bit sorry to see him go when we arrived as Silvia’s apartment.

Silvia, my host mother, is great. Her building is beautiful and I have a great room and a bathroom all to myself. She showed me around the neighborhood, which is officially Caballito bordering on Almagro. It is very urban and busy but doesn’t really feel at all like any city that I know. My favorite part of our adventure was when she took me to the supermercado. She rarely goes but the American students, she says, always love the supermercado because they can buy peanut butter there. She thinks peanut butter is strange. She also thinks it’s strange that all Americans eat salad with every meal. I told her that I really like how Israelis eat salad for breakfast and we had a good laugh. She doesn’t cook much which is the only thing, so far, I find disappointing. Her hospitality and patience have been excellent and much appreciated, especially as I butcher her beautiful native tongue to answer her questions. And she, just like my mother, is a Jewish psychoanalyst so I am confident the apartment on Yatay will always feel perhaps too much like home.

We have an Argentine student living with us named Noelia. She is extremely skinny and has a tattoo. I initially found her extremely intimidating until I discover that she makes a face just like Danielle when she scrunches her face up in concentration. She told me that my Spanish is much better than the last student, Elena, and that she doesn’t want to practice English with me because she mispronounces things. And she set up my wireless network! Those things definitely put her in my good graces and made me stop being a tardo.

I was sorry not to explore more today but also very happy to unpack, get settled, and rest. Tomorrow begins orientation and I doubt it will slow down over the next week or so. But I have wireless and will be ever-accessible, so please tell me how you’re doing!

my generational debt? my priorities!

2009-02-16T18:59:00.008-05:00

Last week I called attention to a couple of items that had been cut from the House stimulus package by the so-called “gang” of Senate moderates. The list included $5.8 billion for health prevention activity, $1 billion Head Start/Early Start programs, and $2 billion for increasing access to broadband internet. I’m not sure if they made it back into the final stimulus package – I am pretty sure they didn’t – but either way the point I want to make it still relevant: Our generation and our children will be paying for the stimulus package and forthcoming bank bailouts, which makes it all the more important that the bill has some degree of mid-to-long term sense. I appreciate that this will be an expensive enterprise – through probably not the $2.3 trillion plus debt members of the Republican caucus keep citing – and I think that’s a great reason to load it with more than just immediate forms of relief like the AMT fix or added unemployment benefits but also to take advantage of this opportunity and take a big step toward restoring America’s long term competitiveness.

My ideological convinction that investments should also balance longer-term priorities is all the more reason that it’s driving me crazy that Republicans, starting with Michelle Malkin, have been calling the stimulus package The Generational Theft Act of 2009. Think Progress catalogues some of the claim’s recent appearances:

Malkin’s views are apparently beginning to hold sway with Republicans in Congress. On January 29, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) said of the proposed stimulus package, “This bill is a generational theft bill.” In a blog post yesterday for AmericaSpeakOn.org, a new conservative 501(c)4 group, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) used Malkin’s language as well:

The hundreds of billions of dollars Washington is borrowing to finance this pork-barrel monstrosity will come from our children and grandchildren.This is not “stimulus” – it’s generational theft.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has become a top critic of the recovery package in the Senate, also referred to it as “generational theft” on CBS’ Face The Nation.

WAIT. HOLD UP. The same Congressional Republicans complaining about a stimulus package that costs less than the Bush administration’s $2 trillion in tax cuts or the over $1 trillion spent in Iraq are just now talking about “generational theft?” These same folks who are gutting the sensible long-term priorities within the bill – that which they’ve described as “Democratic pet projects” – are complaining about the debt that they’re not inheriting? If this is my generational debt, a claim I could work with considering it's going to be my debt, that's a good reason for it not to be loaded with the same bad policies of the last eight years.

I agree with Krugman’s assessment that this talk is “deranged.” (Krugman himself is advocating for an even bigger bill and thinks the administration is merely “kicking the can down the road.”) Ron Brownstein is on MtP is also ripping into this, asking what credibility Republicans have to claim the upper hand on fiscal stewardship. Watch it here.

As usual, Michael Connery at Future Majority beat me to the punch.

The facts of the matter are simple. We're facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and the question on the minds of most economists isn't "how big will the deficits be," rather, it's "will the stimulus be big enough to plug the gaping holes in our economy." The economic recovery package isn't $800 billion in pork or wasteful spending, rather it is a stop-gap to save jobs, and a mid- to long-term investment in the future our citizens, our infrastructure, and our economy.

In its final form, the stimulus package will:

Modernize more than 75% of federal buildings and improve the energy efficiency of 2 million American homes, saving consumers and taxpayers billions on our energy bills. The plan will also double American renewable energy-generating capacity over three years.
Make the immediate investments necessary to ensure that within five years, all of America’s medical records are computerized, reducing medical errors and saving billions in health care costs.
Equip thousands of schools, community colleges, and public universities with 21st century classrooms, labs, and libraries.
Expand broadband across America, so that a small business in a rural town can connect and compete with their counterparts anywhere in the world.
Enact the largest investment in America’s crumbling roads, bridges and transit systems since the creation of the national highway system.
Invest in high risk-high reward science-based research and innovation, and bring it to market—to invent the technology the world uses, and prevent and cure deadly and costly diseases.

As Connery is noting, the stimulus package contains long-term provisions. Brownstein, again, reports in the NJ this weekend that Obama Focuses On Ends, Flexible On Means. What I am implying here is that these provisions are what a stimulus package that isn’t generational theft should look like, one that invests not only for the short-term (job creation vis a vis infrastructure projects) but in the long term (in sectors like weatherization and green building).

If anyone has called attention to this concept, it’s been Nick Kristof. In this On the Ground blog entry from two-ish weeks ago, Kristof began hammering the idea that the best part of the stimulus package were its investments in education. His column this weekend, too, address this is issue. As he notes, the bill invests $100 billion in education. When the Dept of Ed’s annual budget is merely $59 billion, this is obviously a really big deal. And to me, this suggests a stimulus package with some forward thinking.

FINAL NOTE: Yes, I am in Argentina. I arrived this morning. But after a little suitcase mishap yesterday afternoon, I didn’t get a chance to finish this yesterday so it took first prioritiy. As for Argentina: I took a two hour nap and could probably fall asleep right now.

getting ready!

2009-02-14T03:38:00.005-05:00

I spent today mostly packing. It’s bringing out a side of me that I can’t help but find entertaining. I make lists then, when they get messy, I make new ones. It’s 3 AM and instead of sleeping – the sensible thing to do – I just made a new list of things to do tomorrow. Laundry, visa money, weighing my suitcase… things that demonstrate the neuroses radiating from me. It’s a good kind of fidgety, I think. I made probably a couple of hundred flashcards while marathon watching The Wire for too many episodes, simultaneously nearly completing my goals to finish Season 2 so I can leave it for Mom and to learn as many idioms as possible that yo evito el sentido del no entender ni papa (to not understand a damn thing). In Spanish, to make a mountain into a molehill is to drown in a glass of water. I think that’s my favorite so far.

Yesterday was really pretty epic and I would be remiss not to share, even though I would rather just save face. I locked myself out of my house, climbed my roof to discover that winter screens meant I couldn’t open any windows, and read Mansfield Park while sprawled across the backseat of the Jeep in our garage until my Edmund Bertram, my mother, could rescue me. It got no less funny after that. Locking myself out of the house might even have been topped by my double-bagged groceries, the offer for which came with quite the wink. How much I felt like Fanny Price in that moment! (And how JA of me to form a sentence like that.)

I think I will be able to achieve my goal of only one suitcase !!!/knock wood/fingers crossed. Si occure, será macanudo.

t-1.75 (after sleep)

VERSE BROKE UP

2009-02-09T00:19:00.012-05:00

Verse broke up. This band has been boring for at least two lps and two eps now. I originally said only one LP but I gave From Anger to Rage another listen to honor their end and decided to make it two. As someone aptly put it on the b9, "that one song they had was pretty sweet." Usually I really hate when hardcore kids complain about seeing bands too many times -- hardworking bands deserve respect -- but Verse was a tired band on so many levels. And since they manage to get onto every halfway decent east coast show, I couldn't just politely avoid them. I'll leave out some of my hard feelings about dudes in that band and just say I hope their future projects are as solid as Rebuild was.

The one thing I am legitimately bummed about is that Verse breaking up means the count of active hardcore bands I even just occasionally listen to drops to about three, give or take. The two that aren't Have Heart are west coast bands that almost never tour. Second, this means I'm really old. Verse are considered ancient for their six years of activity. I think that makes me ancient too.

To honor their and my oldness, I will recap my favorite Verse shows in order:

3. MONSTER SUMMER TOUR KICKOFF at the AS220 (7/12/07). Both of the summer's biggest tours happened to be in Providence for their first night -- Have Heart, Verse, DTN, Ceremony, Sinking Ships, Allegiance, Soul Control, and I Rise for a non-fest at Providence's tiny AS220. My favorite set at this show was hands down the Have Heart set because the police came, threatening to cut the mics because the show ran way late. Eventually they did but the kids just belted WATCH ME RISE and it didn't matter at all. Also, it was a perfect summer night. Often shows like that feel really long but this was just a lot of fun. Notable also because it was the first time I saw HxH headline over Verse aka the first time I realized how huge those dudes had gotten. I've been dying to find clips from this show, if anyone can help me out.

2. EDGE DAY 07 at Welfare. (10/21/2007). Again, lots of fun for reasons besides Verse (exhibit A: Sweet Pete doing Take the Risk with The Effort!!) but I have to say that their set was really fun to watch. (Sorry, I know better video exists but I didn't really look.) I was wiped at that point, especially because there had just been a string of mediocre bands, and I was camping out in the air conditioned spot by the sound tech where it's super quiet. Pat and I were singing the words just loudly enough for one another to hear, especially because our voices were echoing off of the sound booth. At such a huge, long show it was amazing to have a quiet moment with a band as quiet, relatively speaking, as Verse. Most of all, Sean Murphy's speeches were spot-on that night. I hadn't heard him speak that personally since he addressed his addiction in some much older WFTF sets I'd seen on video. (And a lot of his pretty trite commentary on politics, which generally makes me cringe.)

1. BEST DAY at the Wallingford Hungarian Club (1/5/04). The line-up still blows my mind: TFS in their pre-first breakup NC days, Our Turn, Verse, Have Heart, Look Alive / Learn shared set, and SOH. First time I saw Verse. The show was mostly youth crew bands. Although I was pretty into Turning Point and stay gold at the time, Verse's melodic style was still groundbreaking/awesome to me. The demo and Rebuild stand out to me as their best (aka before it was tired) work and, as this was one of their first shows at all, it's clear that they had no other option but those excellent jams. Another highlight: I brought notecards to the show from which to study.

Honorable mention: Verse at Fairfield U with TFS, Have Heart, Signs of Hope, and Fired Up (6/28/04). Mark and I ate ice cream in the hallway. One of my favorite shows ever. (I make embarassing appearances in the TFS and Have Heart videos from Scott at Bystander on youtube but nothing from Verse's set....)

Speaking of last shows, TFS last set rip is here. Many of my favorite faces present and an awesome shout out to Ferres before my favorite new TFS song, What We Know. Watching it made my day! Heads up: Rather than a continuous set, the folder contains MPGs of individual songs.

a week in review of sorts

2009-02-08T23:53:00.008-05:00

I hope to make this, a weekly round-up of my favorite news and commentary, a regular feature to keep myself writing and thinking about politics at home while I'm away. If you're keeping score, anticipate Friday appearances.

McLatchy has a list of what the Senate cut from the stimulus package. I will be revisiting this but just as a preview: $5.8 billion Health Prevention Activity, $1 billion Head Start/Early Start, and $2 billion broadband.
Two great articles on SCOTUS this week, one piggybacking the other. First, Adam Litpak of The Times ponders “To Nudge, Shift or Shove the Supreme Court Left” which is summed up beautifully in Litpak’s closer: Mr. Obama’s first Supreme Court nomination will no doubt be an accomplished lawyer whose views are generally to the left of the ideological center. What remains to be seen is what sort of liberal — and what sort of liberalism — he intends to endorse. Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick followed that article with a reasoned consideration (and rejection) of the progressive plea for a liberal lion on the Court. And by liberal lion, I would probably be better served to say a “liberal loudest animal you can think of.” (Cue justice brennannnnnn / dear justice letter now.) I am spotlighting these both because I particularly enjoyed reading them but also because Justice Ginsburg, the Court’s most liberal member, just underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer. It seems President Obama might have a Court nominee sooner than expected, cf Reuters.
LOTS OF DRAMA in the upper echelons of the military/diplomatic world. First, Thomas Ricks scoops that it was Gen. Ray Odierna who pushed first for the troop surge. Second, Gen. Anthony Zinni flips a (very very public) shit because he was offered the post of Ambassador to Iraq, then lost it to Chris Hill without being told. Personally, I’m immensely pleased. Hill is a level-headed, results-oriented professional who I am thrilled to have in the service of our country. Most of all, I loved the long-form profile of Dick Holbrooke in the Week in Review. The best line: Many people have personal trainers; Mr. Holbrooke has a personal archivist. Awesome. All three are highly suggested reads.
David Plouffe, beer pong champion? The Esquire's profile reveals few campaign secrets or insights on the surface but is still a mighty entertaining read.
OKAY Jonah Goldberg is a hack. I know. But I couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment behind his scathing indictment of Geithner and Daschle in the LA Times. Like the characters he mocks, I do believe that paying taxes is a patriotic duty and appreciate his righteous indignation. Speaking of hacks, Thomas Friedman on nation-building in Gaza stresses a point that I think is positively crucial: state capacity and effective institutions in the territories is essential for peace in the Middle East. (Or, for that matter, anywhere.)
Finally, how did I miss that Kanye West, Lil Wayne, (9-mo. pregnant) M.I.A. and Jay-Z performed together tonight? Is this on youtube yet?

T-7 days for BSAS!

Blumenthal to challenge Lieberman?

2009-02-04T01:50:00.005-05:00

Blumenthal has been kicking around CT for ages. Party leaders have beseeched him to run for governor too many times and he's always declined. He officially took himself out of the 2010 governor's race this week. (Dan Malloy, whose primary nod I supported in 2006, jumped in today. My love, however, is reserved for affable Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz.)

In 2006, activists begged Blumenthal to run against Lieberman but he refused. Now his true ambition is coming out, courtesy of The Hill: Big surprise, he wants to run for the Senate. Serving as Senator, he said, “would be an honor, and it's always been a career goal." I don't have hard feelings about his decision not to run in '06 but I do think a stronger candidate than Lamont -- excepting the money factor and if perhaps if Lamont hadn't taken a poorly timed vacation -- really could have beaten Lieberman in that race. Blumenthal will be an extremely formidable challenger against an already weak Lieberman. The wildcard is that I'm not solid that Lieberman will run again in 2012, especially with numbers as bad as his are now. And I also wonder if Chris Murphy will roll over and let Blumenthal, the state's most popular Democrat, take the primary. Murphy may be young but I think a lot of folks have eyes on him for a reason, not the least of which was his surprise (and considerable!) defeat of Nancy Johnson in '06. If not Murphy in 2012, expect him to be the favorite on Dodd's eventually open Senate seat. As I said, he's young.

David Brooks does it again

2009-02-03T21:24:00.007-05:00

David Brooks frequently strikes gold in his columns, especially when he's mocking the set of people with whom I tend to identify. The pleasure I receive when reading his Lunch Period Poli Sci op-ed is endless, even though I've read it probably too many times. I was going to drop a blockquote in but it's just too good to hash like that.

Today's column, Ward Three Morality, just added to my love. For those who can appreciate what this means, Ward Three encompasses Tenleytown, Klingle, Cathedral Heights, Chevy Chase, Cleveland Park, Forest Hills, Foxhall, Friendship Heights, Glover Park, and Woodley Park. AKA these are the folks who patronize 2Amys and Politics and Prose, who embody the future I probably want one day. Knowing many of those folks, and self-mockingly considering myself an amateur of their ranks, I couldn't help but crack up at this hilariously on target dig:

The good news for rich people is that people in this neighborhood are very nice and cerebral. On any given Saturday, half the people in Ward Three are arranging panel discussions for the other half to participate in. They live in modest homes with recently renovated kitchens and Nordic Track machines crammed into the kids’ play areas downstairs (for some reason, people in Ward Three are only interested in toning the muscles in the lower halves of their bodies).

I know that Brooks is being cheeky here but he is also imparting some serious shots at both sides. I'm not going to lie, it pleases me that these Ward Three folks are calling the shots now. Maybe I shouldn't feel so happy about that. Brooks is really right when he says Under their rule, the federal government is permitted to throw hundreds of billions of dollars around on a misguided bank bailout, but if a banker like John Thain spends $1,500 on a wastepaper basket then all hell breaks loose. (I am again reminded of Nietzsche. These drab upper middle class folks embody the bourgeois values Nietzsche loves to hate.) Like Brooks, I suspect this will be a prominent theme in economic crisis America and a continued criticism from the old right to the left.

I similarly delight in his long-form Atlantic piece about high-acheivers in my generation, The Organization Kid. I think some of his insights are a bit off, and some clearly embody what I mock about Princeton and Penn, but much of the article is eerily true. I was thinking about it just yesterday when I was reading an American Scholar op-ed called The Disadvantages of Having an Elite Education. The beginning of the Scholar article, which is quite long, was both rather engrossing and also uncomfortably accurate.

It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League degrees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. “Ivy retardation,” a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house.

I experienced something very similar, to my complete dismay, when I was hanging out with a friend of a friend at a hardcore show. While I have some disagreements with both Brooks and Deresiewicz -- for instance, I know many people my age who are not econ majors heading for careers in investment banking -- there is much credence to their perspectives.

skype

2009-02-01T19:05:00.004-05:00

MAJOR LATE PASS requested. I finally got Skype so please Skype me while I am Argentina so I don't start thinking y'all forgot about me.

To find me on Skype you can search my name or my email shana (dot) hurley (at) gmail.com

And if you don't have Skype yet, download it so we can talk! Buenos Aires is +3 hours from New York time.

Publish Post

calvin johnson's dancing is priceless

2009-01-31T15:42:00.001-05:00

Max and I watched the K Records documentary, The Shield Around the K, while I was visiting. (Okay, it would be much more accurate to say that I fell asleep while Max watched it. But I instant-queued it on Netflix while I was working on some stuff at home this week and now I've seen it.) What struck me most about it was how Calvin Johnson dances like he's autistic. Observe and enjoy.

Beat Happening -- Crashing Through:

(sorry the volume is so low, that's how it was uploaded)

The Halo Benders -- Don't Touch My Bikini

I think my other favorite part of the Shield Around the K was when they all were marvelling about how Ian MacKaye did doors for the first International Pop Underground festival. This is a tie between my weird fascination with him and the fact that he is just absolutely that legit. Yes, I even enjoyed that more than the montage of people guessing how K Records got its name. Any thoughts on when Dischord will do one? I was surprised when they didn't make any sort of doc for the 20th anniversary box set.

RUNDOWN: shana's guide to summer in dc

2009-01-28T13:29:00.000-05:00

I typed this up for a friend who was doing a semester in DC and have sent it around to a few fols. It's a good wrap-up of why I loved my summer in DC with Andrea so damn much.

1. Go to Amsterdam Falafel in Adam's Morgan (metro to Woodley Park/Adam's Morgan/National Zoo or walk from Dupont). Really cheap + toppings bar + SUPER DELICIOUS = worth it!! A-M has lots of somewhat gross nightlife (think: young professionals wishing they were still in college) but also the only really good record stores (Smash for punk/hardcore, Crooked Beat for Dischord early presses) and some bars that don't suck.

2. U St, the historically black neighborhood in DC, is awesome.... Ben's Chilli Bowl at 11th and U (right near the 10th St. exit for the U St. metro) is the only restaurant that serves indigenously DC food: the chilli half-smoke, a chilli hot dog. It is highly representative that the first time I went to BCB Marion Barry was also there. For real. U st. is also home to DC's Ethiopian community. Dukem is the touristy Ethiopian place -- I enjoyed Meskerem in Adam's Morgan more, I think. You MUST eat Ethiopian in DC; the diaspora population in DC is the largest group of Ethiopians outside of their native state. IN addition, U St. is home to Busboys and Poets, which hosts book readings, slam poetry, jazz bands, and serves great dessert.

3. Go to Mt Pleasant. Excellent cheap Hispanic foodz. In particular, Pupuseria San Miguel was a favorite of ours. (FYI pupusas are Salvadorean corn cakes with cheese, beans, and pork that are deep-fried quickly so the cheese is maaaad gooey. Very tasty.) Mt Pleasant is not as far along the gentrification process as U St but they just built a Target in neighboring Columbia Heights so it's progressing quite rapidly. Mt. Pleasant is my preferred locale if I ever move back to DC.

4. I strongly believe that ice cream is the only reason to go to Georgetown. Thomas Sweet aka TSWEETZ, Dolcezza (Argentine gelato) (both cira Wisconsin and P), and Max's (northern Georgetown, Wisconsin near Calvert) are three of the best ice cream places in DC and they're all so close to one another.

5. I know it's expensive but the Newseum is well worth its price. My parents and I spent 4 hours there and barely got through 3 floors. They have a huge and amazing exhibit on the photographs to win Pulitzer Prizes including interviews with the photographers and captions explaining their stories. The top floor, the history of news, was fascinating and contains original copies of Thomas Paine newsletters, the Dewey Defeats Truman Chicago Daily News, etc.

6. Go to Eastern Market to eat food (softshell crab sandwich with Old Bay Spice highly rec), walk around the barracks, then head to RFK for a DC United game and love your life. If you are brave and like jumping on your chairs -- recuerde que los que no saltan son hijos de puta! -- sit in the Barra Brava pit above the 130's section. Most fun you'll have all summer, I promise. I don't really care about soccer but I went to three (four?) games and loved every second of them.

7. Every Monday and Thursday (I think) there are free concerts from some of DC's best local bands at Ft Reno Park in Tenleytown. Meet some friends after work at Whole Foods near the metro stop, make a picnic dinner, then enjoy the sweet jamz, puppies, and babies that abound amongst the hipsters. Cheap and fun!