Post by Grubb. That’s what I hear from the guy wearing a baseball cap standing next to me on the street corner of a busy Buenos Aires thoroughfare while Ella and I wait for the bus carting us to the soccer match Monday night. Brooke, one of the women about to attend the game with…
Author: Grubb
Street tangos
Post by Grubb When we joined the throng wandering the streets of San Telmo on Easter, it was hard not to catch a glimpse of tango dancing couples entwining themselves with their studied movements. In the doorways of cafés, on the tree shaded flagstones in the corner of a park, the pavement of a driveway,…
Before there was graffiti
Post by Grubb. There were cannon balls studding the tower of the San Pedro cathedral from an Argentine assault against an English regiment holed up inside.
Activist graffiti
Post by Grubb. We’ve been expecting to run into numerous political demonstrations since Javier Milei, a Milton Friedman free market zealot elected in December, personifies the enemy in a heavily unionized country. So far we’ve only come across a small gathering of placard carriers blocking a street today, but when we were touring the San…
Colorful Conventillos
Post by Grubb. Immigrants getting off the boat in La Boca more than a century ago jammed themselves into the cheapest digs they could find. They were offered small rooms that in some cases were former convent cells. They painted their places with whatever paint was on sale, so there was no uniform color scheme…
Reflections of a former port
Post by Grubb. A little more than a century ago La Boca was the port that saw hundreds of thousands of immigrants arrive. Second only to New York at that time for grand relocation, it differed in that there was no Ellis Island to filter the newcomers. Walking around the streets it certainly seems the…
The wide glide
Post by Grubb Yesterday I learned quickly that if I was to make it through the Boca Junior crowds without losing sight of our tour guide I would be wise to follow the big guy. He was like a locomotive nosing its cattle catcher through the herd; people spilled off on either side to avoid…
Working class Pietá
Post by Grubb. While we were trekking towards the La Boca Junior futbol stadium I had to pause and admire some socialist street art. Okay, it’s not van der Weyden’s “Descent from the Cross”, but the emotion is still there, and it’s not a parody so much as a heartfelt expropriation. There’s a lot of…
Cemetery of the select
Post by Grubb Long blocks of outdoor cafes across from high fortress-like walls, crowds of people lining up at the entrance, street vendors yelling out in Spanish, I could be in Seville outside the Royal Alcázar, but here in Buenos Aires we’re joining a small group walking tour ready to explore the Recoleta Cemetery. No…
Swift holiday entrance
Post by Grubb. After flying ten hours nodding off between binging episodes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “The Curse” this Norte Americano zombie was happily surprised at how efficient passport control was at Buenos Aires Ezeiza airport. Busy with Easter Weekend travelers, the terminal had an easy flow that put entrepôts like Heathrow to shame….
Walking the Newport walk
Post by Grubb. Monday, with one last look at the sea, we did the Newport Cliff Walk. This asphalt path along the coast was made for tourists. Pursuing their promenade, their heads can swivel between cliff top ocean views and voyeuristic peeks at the backyards of the rich or, even better, the campus grounds of…
Not a mental institution
Post by Grubb. The drive we took on Sunday from Sunderland, Vermont to Providence, Rhode Island got us into Providence late in the afternoon. This gave us enough time to twist our way through the cramped downtown streets and visit the museum at the Rhode Island School of Design before it closed at five. RISD…
MOCA in the mountains
Post by Grubb. Why the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art is located in North Adams, Massachusetts only Ella can tell you because, well, I was going to say I don’t have a clue, but I think abandoned factory space might be one of the reasons. The town is in the Berkshires and has a lot…
The folksy farmer and the queen of the dark
Post by Grubb I don’t know if Robert Frost and Shirley Jackson ever sat down together and knocked back a few glasses of cider, but the places they resided into do their writing weren’t far from each other in the Bennington area of Vermont. So on our way to Providence on Sunday we stopped to…
We couldn’t help it, Mr. Frost
Post by Grubb. It’s Saturday. We’ll be in Rhode Island tomorrow. So after our visit to the American Museum of Fly Fishing and the Orvis fly fishing flagship store, we paid our respects to the rural American poet Robert Frost who, back in the day, had a cabin in the Green Mountains. So one last…