Drugstore Gaucho

The following is an unfinished ramble inspired by Trump, being on the periphery and the unitarian vs federalists fallout.  A great motor of Argentine history is the conflict between a (more or less) coastal, financial, cultural and political capital and the rest of the country, throughout which its main industry, agriculture, is dispersed. It is through the dominance of Buenos Aires that the rest of the country received its moniker as "the interior". Of course, as a European trader making landfall at the port, all inquiry leads further upriver, further "inside" the country. Where did this fruit come from? Where did these unfamiliar people come from? As a result of its geographic position of interlocutor in all commerce between the fields of production and the sea-bound, European purchasers, Buenos Aires achieved great prominence. It becomes a financial center, a point of high population density and subsequently a hotbed of art and culture. It is, for ...

After hearing so much about the occasionally lauded, more often derided, Argentine public health care system, I decided that it merited investigation. Or my girlfriend wanted me to get tested for HIV, gangrenous penis and other sexually transmitted boogiemen. In either case, I went to the hospital and was treated to brief (thank god) anthropological journey through medicine in another country. Being that I've still not finished/done my paperwork to be legal here in Argentina, and thereby get the health insurance my company would provide, I'm on the public plan. I'm not sure as to what the limits of the public plan is, in light of the fact that I have done zero actual research regarding the topic. So I can only offer what I might call hearsay, or what anthropology might call the data from my informal interviews. In conversation and eavesdropping with my friends and co-workers (that is to say, a statistically non-representative sample, but c'mon, how do you know w...

(This post from some time ago last year, in 2012) It's with a heavy heart that I make post number 70 on this blog and eradicate the 69 from post count that has stood so long as warden to this mostly ignored corner of the internet. I thought I would write something, it being late and I being bored, but reading previous entries has moved me to make a post in the vein of the spotty narrative that has sort of evolved out of the last couple of entries. This country, despite it's great size and previous importance to international politics, exists in a paucity of information about itself. As far as I know, my blog is the only English language source detailing the day-to-day in Buenos Aires that isn't run by an idiot tourist/exchange student breathlessly detailing their life-changing experience. Well, that's not true exactly. My gringo friend Ben has a friend Paul (our names truly are hideously monosyllabic, aren't they?) who has some kind of internet presence, but he ...

I took a trip to Brazil and this scene has been on my mind ever since then. I can't explain why. My girlfriend and I were staying with her cousins, people who definitely inhabited the upper half of that famously abrupt divide between the rich and the poor in Brazil. We had been staying in their daughters playroom--a little space about as large as a walk-in closet, but every conceivable surface covered in dolls and toys. When we laid down on the inflatable mattress that we nestled in between the overstuffed bookshelves (stuffed mostly with toys, no books) we would look up towards the ceiling the three tiers of shelving bolted to the wall, so full of dolls that they leaned precariously outward, looking down at us with their shiny fake eyes. The father of this toy-laden child told us that it was impossible to reduce the number of dolls that she had; that if one were to go missing she would know instantly. I doubted it, being that at least half of the dolls were obstructed from view ...

Another technical account of getting started up in Buenos Aires. Per my training in anthropology, I would like to whine defensively that this is based purely off of my experience living in Buenos Aires and is no way representative of what living in Buenos Aires is an standard/typical/objective sense, if such a thing could be established. A different friend informed me that he is planning to come down to live here had some questions after reading my previous posts. Therefore, I answered them and now, published them, grammatical worts and all. Thank you. That did help me gauge where I'll be stepping off, I think. My goal is to be down there in September. Would that be shooting myself in the foot from the get-go? Also, who did you fly down with? I'm planning on buying a ticket this week. What's your story with health insurance? I don't have a TEFL certification. Is this necessary going in or could I take a class while there if necessary? What would a good cushion be going ...

This is a Facebook message I wrote to a friend who was thinking about moving to Buenos Aires himself. It's funny how I respond much better to prompts than to total freedom. I blame education. Sam old buddy, howdeedoo, Funny you should ask a question that is so eminently on my mind. Regarding your questions, BA is exactly how I remember it. Kind of a pain of the ass, kind of great. The moneda situation has been rememdied, the people are still short tempered, it's still over crowded and a pain to get around anywhere. The primary difference would be my economic standing now that I'm here under my own power and, more importantly, earning in pesos. But even from a dollar perspective, the city is a little rough. Inflation has struck the city pretty hard in our absence, and food prices have also risen pretty extremely. Whereas before, on the dollar, I always said that Buenos Aires was not cheap exactly, but a surprisingly good deal considering what you were getting, now it has mov...

Hey. Been awhile, Drugstore-fans, hasn't it? Right now, I'm sitting at the table in the kitchen of the same house that I was staying in when we last met. It was somewhat freezing when I woke up this morning in the concrete box of mine on the roof, so I went to where I am now to seal up the kitchen and use the oven, thereby creating my own personal summer. I'm making banana bread, that wonderful method by which my mother prevented the waste of bananas. Of course, here, they don't recognize this as bread, so much as they recognize is as "budin," which I take to be somehow related to pudding. The nice thing about that is that it does give lie to the idea that banana bread might somehow be healthy, being that it is not, containing more sugar than all of the export of the Dominican Republic. I have successfully completed what I imagined to be the 0th and 1st stages of my plan here in Buenos Aires. In stage 0, I came to Buenos Aires, resumed with most of my old cont...

There's so much to say. Where have I been, what have I been doing? I know you'd like to know, or you wouldn't be reading. . How I wish I could Twitter every little inane thought that comes into my head and every strange happening that happens to me. For instance, the other day, I read about the saying here, its free to dream or dreaming is free, or whatever. And then I halfway managed to execute the phrase with one of my housemates and he taught me to use it more better. Then yesterday, I bought a scratchpad to write on and I remarked to myself that to dream is free, but to write it down costs 5 and 1/2 pesos. The last month or so has been so totally dedicated to finding a job and getting an apartment/place to stay. I like to think that I did good job exerting myself towards the goals, a commendable effort when its so difficult to chart progress. I often thought or writing a blog post solely about doing these things in Buenos Aires. I guess you're looking at the paragra...

"To a foreigner, a Yankee is an American. To an American, a Yankee is a Northerner. To a Northerner, a Yankee is a New Englander. To a New Englander, a Yankee is a Vermonter. To a Vermonter, a Yankee is someone who still has an outhouse." Everyone in a spanish speaking country has a nickname. Un apodo. So it seems, anyway. Mine is yankee. Except written yanki and pronounced shan-kee, due to the eccentricities of pronunciation here around the Rio Plata. Many people believe that this word is "despectiva" which I take to mean disrespectful. I tell them that it´s not and that the only time I´ve ever heard the word was mainly in the song Yankee Doodle, which does not cause me a feeling of disrespectedness, to say the least. Then I realized I´ve never really been to the South and I found this quote, which I assume to be something in general usage.  As a guy from the midwest, I said to myself self, huh, well I guess the word can refer to me. Now I realize that ...

Hello and welcome back. This blog is ready to begin in seriousness, once again, as I am back in America of South in the country of Argentina. This means a return to form in many ways, there will be a grand detailing of my adventures and misadventures, boring report of my success, hilarious recounting of my failure. There will be many awkward sentences that are born of a Spanish thought straying into my author´s consciousness and gumming up the flow as I awkwardly latinize words into existence that ought not to exist or throw phrasal verbs into the path of oncoming formal sentence structures, terminating in a little self-reference that hopes to excuse what is otherwise an unforgivable run-on? But what is different? Will it be different? Or will it be just more of the same DrugstoreGaucho, that dark-hatted figure, silhouetted in the doorway of adventure? The same guy that threw himself to the rapacious lions (first writing, loins) of the gay argentine dance club? That stalwart fellow tha...

Like I've said before, I've been at home lately--for more time than I have been since high school. I still consider myself an adventurer (and the real adventure will resume at the end of the month, Argentina bound) but I think I've been adventuring in new territory still, territory unused to the inquisitive stomp of my jackboots (purely figurative, I still wear flip flops everywhere). That territory is American society. Honestly, I would be skeptical of anyone that claims to be "adventuring" in their own society, but frankly my own interactions with nearly everyone and everything I come into contact to have such a sense of novelty and unfamiliarity it makes me recall vividly the experience of being in another country. On top of that, I am most definitely isolated from the bulk of society by my current living situation. I live by myself and can claim no strong connections to any of the social fixtures of society. I go to a jam session once a week where the other pa...

This post won't be about travel, I think, which would make it somewhat of a diversion from my standard. But the real goal of all the traveling that I d0, aside from eat and peruse the local fauna, is provoke thought. My thoughts have been provoked a lot here in Kansas City. Over the last four years, I have picked up and set down many, many times. Finish high school, move all my things to Wisconsin get upset about leaving home, spend 8 weeks there, come down for Thanksgiving, two more in Wisco , then Christmas, three weeks at home, then 10, 1 week in Kansas City, 10 at school. Come back for the summer, get upset about leaving school. Go back to school, skip Thanksgiving, spend time at school, come home for winter break, wonder where all the people have gone, go back to school, get confused about where home is, go back to school go to California for spring break. 10 weeks at school, one week in Kansas City. 6 months in Argentina , 4 with one host family, 2 with another. Get upset ...

So, I failed to report on the last leg of my journey. So I shall make a brief description of the events that transpired. This description will be aided by photos, as I took them and took the time to plug in my camera. And Yulie complained that my few posts are far too long. Therefore, I will provide a narrative of my trip using the grammatical/pictorial style of a little Japanese women whose first language isn't exactly English. I went to Rhode Island and I was excited cause they have lots of And I wanted to eat some: As well as All Thanks to: And, also, I didn't: Cause when you're raised in Kansas when you think of: You think of: Which makes you wanna:

So, I've been in Jersey for some time now. I'm doing the leg of my trip where I go visit my mom's arm of the country and I go back and forth between her residence in Clinton, NJ, her place of work in Allentown, PA and whatever adventure may be had in those parts. I'll talk a little more about Allentown once I have some real adventure there. If you can't wait, check out another post on this blog, here: This weekend, I was afforded the opportunity to go New York and make the acquaintance of the Gabriel Alegria Afro-Peruvian Jazz Sextet via seeing them play in their club on Friday and then, on Saturday morning, go with them on a trip to the Litchfield jazz festival in Connecticut. This, seems like a pretty slick plan, and credit where its due, thanks mom, for putting that one together. Howwwwwever, there was a little glitch. You see, I was supposed to go hear them play in NYC Friday at 8 in Tutuma, their club, and then Saturday at 7:30 AM, at that club, I would join t...

We're not in Minneapolis anymore Toto. But before I go into my latest travels, I should probably finish that chapter of the saga. I happily spent the rest of my day in the Burton residence, where a number of cool things happened. I went to the zoo! The Minneapolis zoo with MB my home G. MB loves zoo's! That was his terminology "I love zoo's". This struck me as funny and maybe it would too if you know Michael. Imagine a person you know with the dryest, most non-sequitorial humor you can imagine. His mother asks him "Why are you going to the zoo?" and he responds in abounding sincerity "I love zoo's". He loves zoo's. There you have it. A simple man. As it turns out, I think zoo's are pretty cool too, but unfortunately the salient aspect of the zoo is not so much the animals that make the bulk of the advertised zoo experience, but the screaming children that have been fooled into thinking that a trip to the zoo is an acceptable substit...