The Weekly Wad

Posing Porteño, Part IV: Sweet Re-entry

The line at Tom’s Restaurant wrapped around the outside of the place and onto the adjacent street, as usual. Also as usual, Tom’s employees snaked their way around the line offering orange slices, cheap cookies and, most importantly, coffee to the patiently waiting, possibly hung-over Brooklynites. Of the many lines I’ve waited to access the inner sanctums of countless eating establishments, I have to give Tom’s credit for giving almost as much attention to the customers without tables as they do to the ones with. This is especially important since the wait can sometimes be longer than forty-five minutes and nothing is worse than having to wait that long in an upright position for the day’s first cup of coffee.

A few friends and myself had decided to grab brunch at Tom’s and within about twenty minutes, we were sitting at a table enjoying their always-reliable attempts at standard breakfast fare. My plane had landed in JFK from Buenos Aires a couple of days prior and the idea of a traditionally American, farm-fresh breakfast was something I had to get used to again. Breakfast in Argentina is centered around a café con leche of some kind and a couple of medialunas, a sweet mini-croissant. My favorite accompaniment to morning coffee, though, was an order of tostadas with mermulada and queso blanco. Tostadas, small, toasted bread rounds, would be topped with the sweet mermulada, a fruit jam, and the spreadable white cheese, or queso blanco, which tasted like a cross between sour cream and cream cheese. The mix of sweet and sour flavors, combined with the crunch of the toasted bread was enough of a pleasure to make me curse the few days I overslept and missed out.

At Tom’s, I dined on a dish referred to as Mexican Eggs. What makes an egg Mexican was, apparently, a lot of nacho cheese and salsa. I was OK with that. I was also OK with the ever-present coffee pot making an appearance when my coffee had dipped below an unacceptable level. I never had such a concern in the southern hemisphere. Like many coffee-loving countries outside North America, Argentineans enjoy the espresso in all of its relative, low volume, forms. They enjoy the social process of gathering at a café and, post consumption, leaving the empty coffee cups on the café table. White, paper buckets of hot coffee will never be seen floating amongst pedestrians on a Buenos Aires street.

Brunch was great and the opportunity to catch up with people near and dear to me after such a long absence was greater. Tom’s incredibly affable staff serviced our every gastronomic whim. Effortlessly choreographed, they made sure to inquire every ten minutes or so if everything was to our satisfaction or if we needed anything at all. All the fuss made me recall one evening in Buenos Aires’ Barrio Norte neighborhood, at a fantastic little nook called La Parolaccia, where I dined on some of the most delicious fresh pasta these teeth of mine have ever imprinted themselves into, for a pittance.

As the night wore on and as my champagne bottle got lighter, I noticed the wait staff standing patiently just outside the kitchen as the restaurant emptied. They only came by when bringing food or if we needed something. The rest of the time they were noticeably absent. When the head count was reduced to the three Americans who had invited me to join them at their table and myself, I saw all the waiters, the hosts and the manager continuing to stand quietly as if waiting for something. I had hoped they were waiting for me to compliment them on their exquisitely homemade, fresh spinach-stuffed raviolis because, frankly, I was prepared to start doling out hugs. Turns out they were just waiting for us to leave when we were ready. Part of me wanted to see how long they would stay. The other, bigger, part of me loved the idea of not being rushed and left alone to enjoy company and conversation.

Still, I’m unsure which scenario induces more pressure: restaurant workers waiting quietly in a corner or having them encircle you while constantly asking if you need them to make change. Quickly, our American guilt got the best of us and before the clock ventured into the following day, we got up and left. I’d be lying, though, if I said I didn’t rather enjoy the lack of harassment while eating.   

Another familiar element was missing from the scene at Tom’s that Saturday morning/afternoon. Many a peripheral vision made me do a double-take in BA’s various cafes and restaurants whenever I spotted a young (and sometimes, not so young) couple making out; which was quite often. Porteños are a notoriously passionate people but in several corner booths across the city, the label is taken quite literally at all hours of the day. I’m not just talking stolen kisses either; I’m referring to mutual tonsillectomies. Perhaps Tom’s wasn’t the best venue for rapturous public displays of affection anyway, what with the strong possibility of morning breath and all.

I deeply miss Buenos Aires and all of its pleasures and contradictions. Argentina is most definitely a place I need to revisit as soon as possible. But travel always eventually fosters a yearning for home and all of its elements, both edible and otherwise, that make it thus. Whether it was the slightly humid spring air in Prospect Heights or the company of good friends, I realized I didn’t miss my tostadas that much. Besides, when a Tom’s waiter in white offered me a piece of chorizo with a lemon squeeze as I waited in line, I suddenly felt right at home again.

Posing Porteño, Part III: La Vida Bolsa

During my stay here in Buenos Aires, like most foreign visitors, I've merrily traipsed the thin veneer of economic stability the city — and the country at large — seems to be experiencing in recent moments. Wary of the 1999-2001 financial crisis which brought Argentina to its knees, I often wonder if the equivalent of $4 for an amazing bottle of wine is just too good to be true. Can three-fourths of a charred cow carcass really cost less than a car wash and a Big Gulp? Argentina is one of the few places left in the world these days, where the American dollar still has considerable clout and God knows I've been riding that cow into the ground.

But again, the veneer is paper thin. As I languish in outdoor cafes, my cortado freshly frothing, an alfajor melting nearby; constant reminders that the veneer is not only flimsy but translucent, abound. Every day, for example, Buenos Aires' unofficial, city-wide recycling initiative goes into full swing. From my curbside perch, I witness thousands of denizens descend on the piles of garbage bags sitting on the sidewalk's edge to carefully open them up for a peek at their putrid contents. Amidst a mid-day lunch in the chic Palermo Hollywood neighborhood, cartoneros, as these freelance sanitation experts are referred to, pull large, rickety carts fronted by donkeys. These carts pull past luxury cars and menus detailing three-course ejecutivo lunches in fancy script. You see them in the less well-off neighborhoods, too, but the contrast between suit and tie and soot and twist-tie is the most acute.

Recyclable materials such as cardboard, plastic and glass bottles and paper are meticulously picked out of every bag. Whole families get into the act. Ma and pa pad the cart with the day's finds while big sis and little brother help burrow through each bag; all sans gloves.  After a long day of hunting for hidden treasures, the soiled and tired family sells whatever they haul in to recycling plants for next to nothing. Meanwhile, the donkey-pulled cart, a fuzzy reminder of an old world economy, struggles up the street past the many shiny benchmarks of the new one.    

For many of the cartoneros, freelance recycling is the only work available to them. The Argentinian financial crisis was peaking just six years ago. The mayhem drastically devalued the Argentinean peso, thus decimating the savings of most of the country's large, and fairly affluent, middle class. The crisis more or less did the same thing to the job market; leaving thousands of Argentines unemployed.

Every time I pass by a group of cartoneros, I admittedly can't help but watch; from a respectful distance of course. Not that it's fascinating to see people desperately eking out a living, it's just fascinating to know that a city like Buenos Aires depends solely on the cartoneros for their recycling efforts. While recycling is, of course, low on the country's priority list (and understandably so) without the cartoneros and the few supermarkets who take only two or three types of glass bottles, there would be no recycling in the city at all. At least, that was initially an assumption of mine.

While nursing a J&B on the rocks at a San Telmo watering hole one night, I had wandered aloud to Lucas, a local, whether or not porteños recycle at all (or at least want to) or if they deposit their recyclables in the trash, purposefully for the benefit of the cartoneros. Sort of like charity through refuse.

''They don't care,'' Lucas said with a knowing smirk and the wave of his hand.

I guess I was right. Fortunately, though, the government doesn't turn a completely deaf ear to the cartoneros' plight.

''Do you know about the train?''

''The train?''

''Yes, the old white, freight train that very early in the morning takes them from outside the city to the station with all of their carts and everything."

"The government gives them a train?"

"Yes, and it is free for them," Lucas said in a tone that seemed to indicate that they were receiving an adequate consolation prize.

Makes sense, I suppose, since the cartoneros most likely could scarcely afford the cost of public transportation. The obvious question continued to poke around in my brain, though, and finally, after ordering another J&B, it just came out: Wouldn't  the cartoneros be better served with money, jobs or even free food instead of a rickety old train?   

"Hmm," he said as he sipped from a glass containing some deep, red Malbec, "maybe."

The train seemed like a semblance of a bone the government threw at the hundreds, maybe thousands, of families engaged in active trash-picking. In other words, what the government offers the cartoneros is a subsidy, albeit a broken down one with rusted wheels and no seats. You could say it's akin to governments improving infrastructure to better facilitate interstate commerce. Much like the old adage about the superiority of teaching a man to fish versus just giving him fish, it seems as if the the rickety old train is essential to the cartoneros getting their work done and Buenos Aires getting its recycling done. Still, it is not a good sign of an economy if most of the people who spend their days picking through trash used to be the ones happily creating the trash in the first place.

While the capital still has a large homeless segment of the population and unemployment is still mighty high, the proliferation of the cartoneros seems to be the most visible reminder of the crisis and maybe a harbinger of a crisis to come. Yet they still have a thankless, but important job to do which might explain their necessarily invisible presence among the general populace.

Before permanently closing up shop on my apartment rental, I took notice of the various plastic and glass bottles occupying the minimal counter space in the kitchen. Snappy blue, personal recycling bins just don't exist in Buenos Aires. The supermarket wouldn't take them and if I tried to ask Luisa, my landlord, for suggestions I would have been utterly confused and exhausted. Feeling somewhat guilty, I slid them all into a garbage-filled plastic bag and put them in a room outside in the hallway where they awaited there turn at the curb.

Recycling, by definition, isn't supposed to be easy. It's much easier to throw all your garbage into one bag and not waste another second thinking about your waste. That job belongs to the cartoneros. I took some comfort in the fact that at least they were getting paid for their services, even if it was a meager sum, and I admired that they weren't after monetary handouts. Still, I made sure to place all the bottles and paper near the top so they wouldn't have to look so hard. It was the least I could do. The bag life looked difficult enough as it is.

Posing Porteño, Part II: Good Health, The Porteño Way

Walking at a steady clip down Juncal street on a humid Saturday morning, I was reminded of two of Buenos Aires' constants: exceedingly attractive women and dog shit. The former fills every sidewalk in every direction. So does the latter. Not that I'm comparing canine excrement with beautiful women; it's just that one is painful to come in direct contact with and the other has no regard for my shoes or my wardrobe.

I was on my way to sign up for a temporary membership at a local gym. Since BA was going to be my home for the next five weeks and it's ubiquitous steak and pasta would inevitably find a home on my plate as well, my body needed a fighting chance. So with athletic zeal, I continued to wander through the Recoleta neighborhood in the direction of my chosen gym, trying to dodge the small brown piles in front of me which, in some spots, was a workout in itself.

Megatlon is by far the Rolex of BA's gyms. With several locations scattered around the city, Megatlon's branches most closely resemble American-style clubs more so than any of the other places I checked out. For the price of maybe a week or two at Bally's, I got unlimited usage for a month at Megatlon's Barrio Norte branch. Five floors house a bevy of exercise machines, bikes, treadmills, a spinning room, a hair salon and a pool. It was the pool which initially attracted me to this particular locale as I had finally - and only recently - gained the ability to lap old women swimming in the lanes next to me.

At the gym's main counter and after employing oh so many words, I was able to finagle a membership from the slightly exasperated attendant. My swimming trunks in a bag with me, I was prepared to begin using my newly acquired membership immediately and, with an authoritative wave from the attendant, I dove headfirst into the locker rooms on the 4th floor.

At first sight of the locker-filled room, I was a little underwhelmed. Scuzzy may be too strong a word but so is antiseptic. It was, however, a men's locker room and I suppose rust-free lockers and a less dirty floor was just too much to ask for. I got changed and took my bag of clothes to a couple of guys standing behind the wooden counter at the bag check. I was clearly ready to swim although the young guy and his older counterpart manning that counter quickly countered my eagerness. Together, the two had a conversation as to what I should be doing in light of my aquatic intentions. They then relayed them to me. The particular chapter in high school Spanish class dealing with how to join a gym and conduct gym activities must have been ripped out of my textbook so, as usual, I stood there. In a foreign land and unequipped with a foreign tongue, I've often found, you can only resemble a politely smiling statue for only so long. Eventually, something has to transpire and what did was the duo continuing to talk to each other while pointing all over the locker room.

I was able to decipher a little. Looking down at my bare feet, they said I needed flip-flops. I didn´t have any so they sold me a flimsy pair of Megatlon standard issues. Next, they said I needed to wear a skullcap. I obviously didn't have one of those, so they rented me one. Ditto for a towel. All the rest was static. When they stopped talking, I turned and walked in the direction they pointed to last, hesitating every bit of the way.

After circling the locker room at least twice, an English voice cried out through the wilderness.

¨Do you need some help?¨

When Juan, a young and affable Argentinian, explained what the counter top duo had meant, I was puzzled. How could taking a dip be so complicated?

Apparently, I was to take an initial shower, which I did, even though my paper flip-flops were practically wilting in the heat. After toweling off, I was to have a physical examination by the resident nurse. Behind the door of a small, closet-sized room diagonal from the bag-check counter, stood a bald, brooding man in scrubs, hunched over a desk. He was clearly unhappy to be there and who could blame him? His job was to, basically, examine the members of the male members of the gym who dared step foot in the pool.

To say the least, it was an intimidating environment for a diagnostics check. I swore if he was going to make me turn and cough I would turn and run. Oddly, though, it became a self-inspection with an audience. The ¨nurse¨ stayed behind the desk and grunted commands in Spanish as I spread my fingers, toes and other unprintable areas apart for his approval. I suppose he approved because he gave me a card, good for 15 days after which I would need to endure yet another medical peep show.

Finally, after about half-an-hour of the preceding nonsense, I was poolside. The pool wasn't going to win Olympic committee approval but it was big enough to be divided into at least four lanes. The lifeguard took the card the nurse gave me and then explained how the pool was divided. There were three speeds; a slow lane, a medium speed lane and two rapido lanes. Signs were actually posted on the deck indicating which lane was which.

I was feeling confident that day, but not cocky so I opted for the medium speed. I walked to the ladder and tossed the tiny towel the gym had rented me down on a chair along the way. The temperature of the water felt a couple of steps up from bathwater which made sense as there seemed to be about fifty skullcaps floating around in the pool at once. I had apparently picked a popular time. The majority of the swimmers were clustered along the ends of each lane just hanging out and socializing with each other. These Buenos Aires cafes-in-miniature, left little room for the three or four bodies doing the actual swimming. Still, I climbed down the ladder and made my way to the medium speed lane and waited to work myself into the rhythm. Once a slot opened up, I carefully eyed the geriatric competition to my left and then began my rendition of the breast stroke.

When I had reached the other side of the lane for the first time, the lifeguard came up to the edge of the pool and told me that I could not wear my glasses in the water as I normally do. He said I needed to wear goggles and that they could rent them to me. I looked at him for a second with disbelief, wondering if I would be charged a rental fee for the water, too. Sensing I wasn't going to win that argument I turned around and proceeded to swim back. As I was making my way, via the side stroke, the person behind me kept running into my feet, which of course made me try to swim faster, but not too fast or I would run into the person in front of me.

Needless to say, human bumper cars got annoying quick and put a serious cramp in my technique. After about ten minutes, or what I thought was ten minutes considering the wall clock was all of sudden blurry, I headed for the metal ladder and climbed out. I grabbed my hand towel, and tried to dry myself off as best I could. Carefully, I made my way back to the locker room, internally vowing to just stick to the elliptical machine.

The following visit, I did just that. I stayed on dry land amidst the second floor's exercise machine jungle. I did thirty minutes on the elliptical and pumped some proverbial iron on those very machines while trying to stay focused. The Rick Astley videos projected on the gym wall aside, the aforementioned Argentine women make working out somewhat difficult as they like to wear even less than they do outside. I'm sure I'm not the first guy who has lost count of their repetitions. What's more, younger or older, a crushing majority of the women working out alongside me looked as if they had absolutely no reason to be at a gym in the first place. Except maybe to mock those of us who do.

Health-wise, porteños really are a two-faced bunch. They engage in the health-conscious shtick while inside the gym but once outside they are their usual avidly smoking, red-meat eating, cheese-inhaling, red wine-quaffing selves. And yet, I rarely see evidence on the treadmill or the exercise bike of such an allgedly reckless lifestyle. There's the old portion control argument and I'm sure there's something to be said about genetics. Or maybe it's the long hours spent at places like Megatlon, which are open 24-hours a day. Swimming certainly can't have much to do with it.

Perhaps what works for them is a combination of what Americans may consider unhealthy eating and a healthy addiction to working out. So, I attend the gym, the parilla (or steakhouse) and the pizza places, regularly. Maybe these porteños are on to something. Or maybe it's all just dog shit.