All stories about "Ian Mount"

Gridskipper pal Ian Mount has an article in the weekend New York Times about Boedo, the up and coming neighborhood in Buenos Aires. He even notes Klub Killer, an establishment first mentioned in these pages by Ian's lovely better half, Cintra Scott. [NYT]

It sometimes takes the fresh eyes of first-time visitors to make locals see what's good about their dining scene. In a piece written after a recent trip to Buenos Aires, San Francisco Chronicle food writer Michael Bauer annotes some local dining habits that rightly deserve praise: the tiny table-side Service Table, so you can get some shit off your main table; big ass napkins; chilled red wine; and, yes, the personal ice bucket. And over at NPR.org, correspondent Julie McCarthy (no, not Lingerie Bowl star Jenny McCarthy) reminds us that there is more than steak down here in Buenos Aires. Dominga, for example, cuts raw fish into some nice sushi. "Sushi chef Gabriel Ilepiane is an artist whose creations brim with whimsy. On a recent visit, he presents me with a plate loaded with sushi arranged around curlicues of green wasabi and red ginger, and I think: 'If Christmas were a sushi platter, this would be it,'" McCarthy writes. "For a fraction of the price ($25), the dinner was every bit as good as anything I ate when I lived and worked in Tokyo."

Buenos Aires blogger Jeff Barry has been compiling impressions, recommendations, and history at Buenos Aires, City of Faded Elegance since his March 2005 arrival from Miami. He's now done what all prolific bloggers should do and winnowed his posts into a free 57-page e-book and guide to Buenos Aires.

The first-time visitor to Buenos Aires is faced with piles of steak, pretty people, 11 p.m. dinnertimes, dog-poop-mined sidewalks -- and a Spanish that's not the language you learned in class with the teacher who wasn't, let's be honest, exactly fluent herself. Rioplatense, as they call it, bolts Spanish words to unique verbal forms and varnishes it all with an Italian rhythm and a unique slang known as lunfardo. Luckily, former Dow Jones Buenos Aires correspondent Taos Turner has ginned up Scooping Argentina, a website of videos untangling Argentine politics, scandals, and language. In a series of short videos, Laura Rajchman -- Argentina's answer to the St. Pauli Girl -- demystifies such key Argentine concepts as afanar, zafar, and most importantly, quilombo (something between a whorehouse and a big friggin' mess). The videos are also on iTunes, under "Scooping Argentina."

Scooping Argentina Official site]

Recently, Buenos Aires municipal blog Pasa en Buenos Aires pointed to an article put out by the city's tourism board listing the BA's top 10 bars. Now, leaving aside the question of who could have paid who to get on a city-published top 10 list, it's a good roundup. These are not the top bars to get plastered at, not the best places to meet a member of the opposite (or same) sex. They are, instead, the best of the classics -- from the uberfamous but still beautiful Café Tortoni to the billiard salon Los 36 Billares to the underground cool of Bar 12 de Octubre. So what makes a Buenos Aires cafe unique?

Last year we brought you the story of Pablo Tamburini, a Buenos Aires tango dancer who offered his services as a for-pay tango partner -- as a taxi dancer -- for $10-$15/hour to women, usually foreign, in the Argentine capital. Oh, Pablo, you had a good idea but you dreamt too small! The Observer brings us the tale of the more entrepreneurial Eduardo Amarillo, another Buenos Aires tango dancer who pimps a team of 25 tango dancers for $20-$30/hour in what he claims is the first formal taxi dancer agency in Buenos Aires. TangoTaxiDancers sports a website in four languages, price list and multi-dance discounts.

Everybody wants to be David Brooks of the Bobos in Paradise era and coin some serious terminology. Released Monday, the 2007 version of the World Travel Market Global Trends Report, produced by Euromonitor International, is a festival of term-coining, from the awkward ("Diaspora Tourism," or visiting granny's eastern European homeland) to the awkwarder ("Halal Tourism," or Islamic religious tourism) to the Big Concept ("Debaucherism," or traveling to blow tons of cash, ingest pharmacologically inadvisable substances, and have sex with people whose last and first names are unknown to you (a.k.a. "Tara Reiding"). This is apparently a new trend to the folks at Euromonitor, who write a bit in the style of, shall we say, older gents who haven't had a "peak experience" at Burning Man.

In the Odd Curatorial Issues Department, the Argentine state water utility has opened a museum replete with a historical collection of vitrified clay toilets and bidets, fired iron faucets, and elaborate grates. Your obsession with toilets aside, the real reason to go is to check out the wildly ornamented building (covered with Royal Doulton ceramics) that houses the museum and water authority -- the Palacio de Aguas Corrientes. Yes, that's right: the Palace of Running Water. The museum's open Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. (guided tours, in Spanish, at 11 a.m.) and located at Riobamba 750.

AySA (Argentine Water Authority) museum [via Line of Sight]

Last Friday, the much-praised Home Hotel (named 2006's Hotel of The Year and Savior of Western Civilization or some such thing by Wallpaper) launched its party season with its weekly DJ'd drinks/expat fest night in its not-at-all-ugly pool garden. Named Mono Tennis ("Monkey Tennis" in English) after co-owner/DJ/music producer Tom Rixton's multinational party, the 8 p.m.-midnight "cocktails" runs through March (when the weather starts to suck) and features Rixton and two other DJs. And plenty of vodka. Which is nice.

Mono Tennis [WhatsUpBuenosAires]

Unlike other temperate cities that keep going year round, Buenos Aires hides its collective head in the ground during the rainy season. Porteños, after all, are famed for their sunbathing on any available plot of lawn. But with the spring, life returns -- as does music. On November 16, Cansei de Ser Sexy kicks off the season, which really leaps into high gear December 7-8 at Personal Fest, when Snoop Dog, Cypress Hill, Calle 13, Happy Mondays, Chris Cornell, The Dandy Warhols, Fischerspooner, Gotan Project, and, well, everybody else plays. And yes, there will be plenty of tanning.

Festival Season a Comin [WhatsUpBuenosAires]

There are a million meat joints in the naked city--or at least in Buenos Aires--and you could spend several lifetimes arguing, heatedly, about which is the best. But what is a given is that first-timing tourists are herded--like the cattle they're about to nosh--into Cabaña Las Lilas, ostensibly the Peter Luger of Buenos Aires but really, with its silly high prices and tourist-only clientèle, more of a Tavern on the Green. Outside of this, visitors inevitably find themselves to El Desnivel, or La Brigada, or La Cabrera, all worthy places but well set on the Gringo Trail (here's a good, fiery discussion of Buenos Aires steakhouses on eGullet). To this I respectfully add Don Julio. It is certainly not "unknown" to locals or expats, but there's a reason for this: it exhibits the qualities of the best Buenos Aires parrillas. The owner and waiters are incredibly friendly and--shocking for Buenos Aires--offer fast service; the wine list is actually large so you can drop $10 or $200, depending on your mood; the meat is great and not priced only for tourists. And did I mention the leather tablecloths?

Don Julio [Guía Oleo]

Perhaps eager to resurrect the glamour myth of Buenos Aires's Faena Hotel + Universe that was deflated by Matt Chesterton earlier this year (i.e. pool customer profile: "paunchy Miami software tycoon with matted chest hair who looked like Ron Jeremy after a long day's shoot"), the Times UK breaks out every imaginable Buenos Aires cliché to describe the Faena's spa. The locals are "beautiful and stylish", "immaculately turned out and scarily skinny," and "spend all their time dieting to fit into the ludicrously tight drain pipes." Happily, on a literary level, the Times correspondent allows some of the exotic weirdness of the Philippe Starck-designed spa to seep through.

Next month marks the one-year anniversary of Hollywood in Cambodia, a Buenos Aires street art gallery in the city's truly, madly, deeply popular Palermo Viejo nabe. While it may be known for tango, steak, and boob jobs, Buenos Aires is home to a booming street art scene, and at the gallery artists like Dani Dan and Pum Pum head up a strong slate. As an added bonus, the gallery with a name cribbed from a Dead Kennedys song sits upstairs from a graffitti-decorated bar whose name and typeface is cribbed from a New York tabloid (i.e. the Post).

Hollywood in Cambodia [via BA Spotting]

Even since Michael Keaton's character in the 1982 movie Night Shift came up with feeding mayonnaise to live tuna in order to cut down tuna fish prep time, I've been a sucker for semi-whacked ideas. In this mode, let us celebrate Iron Wine, a Buenos Aires boozery that's selling the "world's first canned wine" -- a malbec/cabernet blend and a chenin blanc wines in 8.5 and 12 ounce cans. The Argentine vintners are apparently only selling in Latin America, Spain, Monte Carlo (huh?), and South Africa, but they say the US will come soon, thus allowing meatheads everywhere to look like sensitive oenophiles while crushing cans against their domes.

In an event that will undoubtedly combine two perpetual crowd-pleasers -- sea sickness and left-footed dancing -- Costa Cruises will be launching a seven-day tango cruise from Civitavecchia/Rome on November 25 (prices start at $800). Besides the obligatory dance lessons with Argentine tango masters like Sebastián Arce and Mariana Montes, the tango mariners aboard the 290-meter Costa Concordia will presumably use the 4 pools, 13 bars, two-story Samsara Spa, and full-scale Formula One driving simulator replete with real G forces and vibrations. Or they might just be a bunch of naughty pensioners who get bombed and have seven-day affairs fueled by tango's tangy temptations.

The first Tango Festival on the sea [via Travel Blackboard]

There's nothing quite as simultaneously luxurious and louche as touring Buenos Aires' tranny hooker district, especially when that district is centered in the city's main park around a lovely rose garden and popular nighttime running track. Or, as Bloomberg News writes:

By day, the Rosedal, or rose garden, is a favorite destination for parents taking their children to amble around a lake, buy popcorn and rent rowboats. At dusk, transvestites wearing tank tops, knee-high boots and shorts saunter in, waving and winking at drivers in passing cars.

Some hotels are famed for their Scandinavian design or Dionysian luxury; Buenos Aires's Hotel Bauen is known for being taken over by its workers -- and for its groovy-ass late 1970s basement disco lounge. Built in 1978, the disco-era joint went under in 2001 during Argentina's economic crisis. In 2003, the workers took it over, refurbed it in full disco style, and reopened it as the perfect place for those with lefty politics and/or very wide lapels. Now, though, it's in danger of being shut again, as The Man (okay, a judge) has issued an eviction notice because the hotel has been sold to a hotel group.

Starting August 15, visitors to Buenos Aires weary of tango, steak, wine, pretty people, and political cynicism and corruption can pass an hour at the Abasto shopping center ogling 16 corpses and 200 organs "permanently preserved using liquid silicone rubber that is treated and hardened" in BODIES: The Exhibition. So far, the necrophilial exhibit has graced world cultural capitals such as New York, Lisbon, Prague, Washington DC, Las Vegas, San Diego, Durham (NC), and Branson (MO). Whether it's a good idea to skip a lomo and malbec dinner for this is up to you, but it certainly is a palate cleanser.

BODIES...The Exhibition [via BA Weekly]

After launching in Buenos Aires in 2005 and passing through Lisbon (2006), London (2006), Buenos Aires (again, in 2006) and Bogota (2007), Fuerzabruta (Brute Force) -- the new inspired acrobatic madness from the creators of De La Guarda -- finally hits New York's Daryl Roth Theatre this October. It's replete with actors getting shot, pulled, and thrown. It's a beautiful, violent, crazed spectacle -- enough to make a friend's four year old break out in tears, as we noted before -- that's definitely worth a look. As an added bonus, when you're in Buenos Aires, you can sometimes hear composer/musical director Gaby Kerpel DJing at Wednesday night's Zizek Urban Beats Club party (he spins as King Coya).

Fuerzabruta [Official site]

-- Ian Mount

We've traveled enough to know that some attractions, no matter how well-loved, suck. Pisa, for example. The Leaning Tower is just a poorly built little stub. And the rest of the town is a mess of traffic and tchotchke shacks. And yet we went, which makes me angry whenever I think about those hours that I'll never have again. Thankfully we have folks like Ben Groundwater at the Sydney Morning Herald's travel blog. He's been to the dullest, most mind-numbingly trite places, and he's here to warn you off.

Because Buenos Aires is now center of All Things Barbie, the Hilton Buenos Aires is now offering Barbie and Hot Wheels themed rooms through the end of August. The Barbie room, first trotted out in 2004, features Barbie linens, pillows, vanity, dolls, movies, games, toiletries, and accessories (not surprisingly, in floor-to-ceiling pink), while the Hot Wheels room has twin beds -- one designed as an auto repair shop, and the other like a race car, with a siren lamp and neon lights. And, as HotelChatter notes, "Little guests even arrive at the [Barbie] room baller-style in a Barbie car and can opt to spend some time in the spa getting a Princess Makeover."

Classic Buenos Aires buildings and bars get knocked down and replaced by McTower apartment blocks with alarming regularity, but there's been a bit of a wave of classic cafes returning for a second life. The 123-year-old Las Violetas closed in 1998 but was somehow saved from the wrecking ball and reopened in 2001; the 47-year-old Bar Británico died and was resurrected during the last year; and now Café de los Angelitos, which was torn down in 2000 -- 110 years after opening -- has been reconstructed in full 1920s/30s finery and will reopen today. It was here that the Godfather of Tango, Carlos Gardel, signed his record contract with Odeón in 1917 (the place was known as his second home), and for years it was home to fat-cat politicians and the tango musician set. While these places might be remodeled, swankified, and feature non-period-correct modern bathrooms (no complaints here), they keep some of the soul alive.

Café de los Angelitos [Official site]

Every year the Argentine Ophthalmalogic Foundation [FOA] finds a rundown palace of a building in Buenos Aires and rehabs it into Casa FOA, a two month home decoration fair. For this year's fair (Sept. 6 - Nov. 11), FOA picked the San Martin train station in Palermo. Besides being a damn cool design fair (Buenos Aires was named the first UNESCO City of Design in 2005 fer chrissakes), it also has rehabbed a lot of amazing buildings over the years, including the 95-year-old Palacio Lezama cookie factory last year, Barracas Central (now a swank condo tower) and the Casa del Patio de la Reconquista (a monastery). Now if I could only get them to pick my damn house...

Casa FOA [Official site]
Este año, Casa FOA se hará en una de las zonas más cotizadas de Palermo [Clarín]

There's nothing quite like rolling about buck nekkid on the soft-yet-wirey coat of a cowhide rug, breathing in a subtle waft of beef as you contemplate the death of the half-ton beast that formerly owned the coat beneath you. Well, that may be a bit much, but cowhide rugs are the perfect floor covering for the urban hunter-gatherer -- and quite the quintessential souvenir of Cowlandia (a.k.a. Buenos Aires). To that end, hidden in the inner depths of yesterday's New York Times travel section, yours truly had a piece on where to buy them quasi-wholesale without getting jacked in the usual tourist zones.

Buenos Aires: Cowhide Rugs [NYT]

[Photo: Albibaba.com]

Tired of slinging Buenos Aires clichés about steak, wine, and tango, we'll take a moment to sing the praises of a few lesser-known (but more important) cultural mores: kissing and Fernet Branca with Coca-Cola. First, as BBC foreign correspondent Daniel Schweimler notes, in a land where everyone except a socio-economic slice of men over age 50 and those on the far right of the political spectrum kiss once on the right cheek on greeting and parting, even 9-month-old children know to turn to receive their "beso." It's a regular thing to see two burly guys with mullets kiss before diving into an argument over soccer; to not kiss is odd, cold, and mildly insulting (not to mention boring). As Schweimler says, there are only a few simple rules: "have your lips at the ready, beware of diminutive elderly dentists and, gentlemen, please shave first." Trust us, stubble on stubble is a painful thing.

Buenos Aires is all about sexy, with that tango business and all. But one thing you don't see a lot of is strip joints. Whether that's from a lack of business savvy or a lack of interest will soon be tested, as Rick's Cabaret -- "the publicly traded chain of upscale adult nightclubs" -- will be opening a Buenos Aires branch later this year. But not just any branch:

It is anticipated that the first internationally licensed Rick's Cabaret will open in Buenos Aires during the company's fourth quarter of 2007 in a 20,000-square-foot former tango dance palace and supperclub on the posh Avenue Cordoba in the heart of the Argentine capital's financial district.

Rick's Cabaret International, Inc. Launches Licensing Program In Latin America For Its Upscale Gentlemen's Clubs [Rick's Cabaret]

-- Ian Mount

[Photo: cheef.com]

For a city with such decidedly overwhelming nightlife, Buenos Aires is surprisingly short of a well-designed nightlife listings/agenda magazine. While the city could still use a weekly Time Out (hint, hint), Wicked!? Buenos Aires, a new bilingual arts and underground culture rag produced by crew of locals and expats, makes a big step in that direction. (Full disclosure: The publisher is a friend, and I contributed a piece for the launch.) The first issue of the tabloid-sized pink book, distributed in hipster stores in Palermo and the like, contains a Q&A with multimedia crazyman Fernando Peña, a quick interview between yours truly and fotog Sebastián Friedman, and that nightlife agenda, from What's Up Buenos Aires.

Wicked!? Buenos Aires [Official site]

-- Ian Mount

In an April 29 article fabulously titled "Pagan hasta US$ 1.000 por semana por alquilar en Capital" ("They Pay Up To $1,000 Per Week to Rent in Buenos Aires" -- you can almost hear the shock), Argentina's largest newspaper Clarín points out one of the unpleasant truths of the recent tourist boom. Namely: Attracted by the possibility of quick money, many Buenos Aires apartment owners are switching their rental units to the tourist trade (thus screwing local renters) and raising the tourist prices high enough that they're no longer the bargain that lured people in the first place. As you can see in the grid at right (assuming the numbers are true), locals pay 30-50% of the foreigner price -- hence the attraction for renting to gringos, frogs and limeys. Still, while not the bargain they were (one gringa quoted says that rents in Miami are lower), dozens of places like ByTArgentina and WhatsUpBuenosAires offer weekly apartments for a good deal less than a comparable hotel sets you back.

Pagan hasta US$ 1.000 por semana por alquilar en Capital [Clarín]

-- Ian Mount

As Buenos Aires has recovered from the gut/sucker/rabbit punch of its 2001/2002 economic meltdown and peso devaluation -- and tourists have discovered it as the best place to feel rich without actually being so -- the city has been figuring out how to package itself as a tourist destination. In one of his always fabu posts, Line of Sight blogger Robert Wright tracks how the city's municipal tourist maps have changed and grown as the city sells more and more neighborhoods to the outside world:

Seems like the Subsecretaría de Turismo is waking up & beginning to realize that there is whole lot more to the city than the supposed trendiness of Palermo or the antique fair in San Telmo.

self image [Line of Sight]
Buenos Aires Tourism [Official site]

-- Ian Mount

All trendspotting is local, as they say (or, well, as they don't say). So let us praise Buenos Aires Spotting, a bilingual site that tracks everything from Motorla's cobranding with Argentine fashionista Jessica Trosman to the growth of Buenos Aires's SUBA street fashion to the ... invasion of tangolates, the tae-bo style bastard child of tango and pilates ginned up by Buenos Aires pilates queen Tamara Di Tella. Next? Namblada, the combination of lambada (the forbidden dance) and NAMBLA (the forbidden love)? One shivers in front of the possibilities.

Buenos Aires Spotting [Official site]

-- Ian Mount