These days I’m busy editing a book on architectural photography. To get away from the computer for a while I often take a manuscript to a cafe. Today it was El Hipopótamo.
As I sat there, during a break from reading and editing, I turned the camera towards the window and Bar Británico across Defensa street.
Here’s a photo that I’ve been intending to put up for a long time. Actually, I see that I took this photo last April! I’m really behind on my blogging.
Obviously, the store specializes in selling pens.
If you like stores with painted shutters, you need to get out and about early in the day. Or, head down to La Boca for things you see only on a Sunday.
Maybe it’s just me, but I find something quite beautiful about the cracked, old sidewalk tiles.
Seen on Billinghurst.
While on last week’s walk down Billinghurst I came across this bookstore located on the ground floor of an older building.
Somehow, it seemed ironic that just across the street another old house had been demolished.
Yesterday while walking down Tacuari just after a brief rain shower, I saw this photograph lying on the sidewalk.
My first assumption was that someone had lost a photo. No name on the back, just the numbers “150%”. But there were also a number of paper scraps strewn along that block of Tacuari. Oddly parked along the curb were close to a dozen cars with emblems of the truck drivers union of Tierra del Fuego.
The architects of Buenos Aires have left some of the most vivid impressions on the surface of this city. Stunning facades and architectural details are among the primary characteristics that create the beauty of Buenos Aires. The parks and plazas planned by landscape architects form yet another component of the city’s grace.
A brief architectural guide (pdf) provided by the city government of Buenos Aires offers this description:
Over the homogeneous grid of blocks and lots of Buenos Aires, the most varied and exotic architectures have been placed as layers, alternating the buildings of the original inhabitants and the signs of the different immigrant waves. Something of colonial architecture, the most varied historicisms, modernisms, architecture from the modern movement (specially a must-see collection of rationalists buildings), and good contemporary architecture alternates generating the most curious contrasts.
And for years Robert has been delighting us with descriptive, photo-filled posts about the architects of Buenos Aires, such as his latest on Pirovano. But Robert is packing his bags and moving off. At least we can look forward to learning about the architecture of Sydney and Lisbon!
Meanwhile, for fans of Buenos Aires architecture, Alejandro Machado has been creating a series of tributes to the architects of Buenos Aires (these sites are very image heavy and may be slow to load but are well worth the wait, just don’t try to open the pages all at once):
A walk down Billinghurst enables you to see the diversity of neighborhoods in Buenos Aires. The northern terminus of Billinghurst at Av del Libertador in Palermo are three grand mansions that are now the Spanish embassy and the ambassador residences of Saudi Arabia and Italy.
Billinghurst crosses into the edge of Recoleta and is lined with mostly unremarkable, contemporary apartment buildings whose only outstanding attribute is their location on the edge of Recoleta and Palermo.
At Av Cordoba the street changes significantly, becoming wider, and the quality of buildings is decidedly not as pretentious. You have entered Almagro. There’s a particularly intriguing structure at the juncture of San Luis, Billinghurst, and Tucuman. Looks like the architect had fun with this one.
Traveling further into Almagro and you’ll just a few blocks behind Abasto and in an old Jewish neighborhood. On one corner is a kosher butcher.
Does anyone know what the word Ufarasta means? I’m assuming it’s Hebrew.
Back to the walk: cross the train tracks, then cross Av Rivadavia where Billinghurst changes names to Virrey Liniers. This large house at the corner of Venezuela (Virrey Liniers 541) is undergoing a careful renovation. It’s quite a massive place. The renovation work continued along the side of the house, too.
I’m a little worried about this place (below) at Mexico 3401, a large corner lot all boarded up….looks like a spot ready for demolition.
Remember the embassy and ambassador residences at the other end of the street, some 37 blocks to the north? Here’s the contrast at the edge of Boedo.
This house isn’t empty. People live there and a family of four, plus dog, live under the highway overpass just beyond this house.
But this isn’t reflective of Boedo, which is a pleasant area, but I’m sure there are not any ambassador residences in Boedo.
I don’t know if anyone offers a literary walking tour of Buenos Aires, but if you read Spanish then you can grab a copy of Al pie de la letra: guía literaria de Buenos Aires by Alvaro Abós and create your own walking tour.
I bought this book a few years ago and have enjoyed it, dipping back into it time and time again. The book also has a wonderful design with many little line drawings.
Yesterday when I was browsing the bookstores on Corrientes, I noticed that Librería Libertador has copies of this book for just 10 pesos.
I was quite surprised to see this book there. This type of book should continue to sell and I noticed by checking online that it’s still sold for 32 pesos elsewhere, so I’m not sure how it got into the discount bookstores unless this is an old edition. My edition is from 2005 but the material in this type of book doesn’t really get dated. Anyway, if you’re in town, like Argentine literature, & don’t already have a copy, then you might want to swing by Corrientes. While you’re there you will undoubtedly find other bargains. I left Librería Libertador with 7 books and 54 fewer pesos.
I’ve been working recently with part-time Buenos Aires resident Peter Robertson to help get Issue 2 of the International Literary Quarterly ready. There is some really wonderful writing in this issue, so if you’re into literature then you must check it out.
While I’m on the topic of international literature and journals, I want to point out an e-journal that I had an instrumental role in launching in 2003 when I ran the digital library initiatives at the University of Miami – Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal.
Searching for that perfect book in English during your stay in Buenos Aires? The good folks over at Argentina’s Travel brings you “Buenos Aires’ Brilliant Bookstores: Finding BA’s Best English-language Book Selections.”
As a literary type I spend way too much on books. Even when I was a librarian and had access to a library of millions of books, I still spent about us$50 a week on my own books and magazines. (My book budget is now a lot lower, down to around 50 pesos a month).
The guide to English-language bookstores, written by Natalie Gourvitch, starts off with my favorite: Walrus Books, which has the best selection of English-language literary fiction in Buenos Aires.
My criteria of quality for evaluating articles about bookstores in Buenos Aires includes examining what is said about El Ateneo Grand Splendid. Yep, it’s a beautiful place but it’s actual inventory isn’t great. Natalie writes, “While El Ateneo, as is true for chain
stores like Cuspide and Distal, is great for finding popular romance/thriller novels with a spattering of Shakespeare thrown in for good measure, it lacks a large selection of classics and quality modern fiction titles.” I assume that she’s talking about the English-language books but I never been very pleased with El Ateneo’s selection of Spanish-language titles, either. I go there all the time to browse around but rarely do I buy anything there.
I’m reminded of my quest last year: Searching for Galeano in the bookstores of Buenos Aires, a odd tale in which it was actually easier to find books in English translations than in the original Spanish.