Some first urban impressions

In the interest of exploiting the dangerous few advantages I bring to my observations of Buenos Aires -- some knowledge of cities combined with a total ignorance of Buenos Aires, which combined could lead to a "fresh" perspective (students: don't use this argument in class) -- I am going to put down some quick observations, and risk being embarrassed by my naive understanding of the city I am becoming a part of.

First, a few myths to dispel (all of this applies to the wealthier parts of town, I'll admit at the start):

--it is easy to use credit cards in most restaurants and stores, without any exorbitant additional charge. We had read otherwise.

--fruits and vegetables are readily available, in the

smallest corner store to the largest "Jumbo" mercado.

--it isn't hard being a vegetarian. Though flesh beckons, there are plenty of vegetarian options everywhere.

--you can take out more than enough in pesos from the plentiful atms.

Okay enough of the embarrassing revelations about our lack of knowledge of these basics, but, truly, we read all of this above before arriving here.

Some more relevant urban observations:

--In the wealthier areas, every building has a 24-hour security guard (ours included). The huge towers a hundred yards down the street from us are surrounded by 14-foot gates and cameras and a guardhouse. Cars all park in the underground parking garage. This is a robust trend in Buenos Aires life -- I look forward to learning more from Nora Libertun de Duren, NYC parks official and former MIT planning student who wrote her dissertation on the gated communities of Buenos Aires. She is here in Buenos Aires on maternity leave.

--Portenós love their animals. There are literally dozens of pet shops and veterinarians in Palermo and we regularly see dogwalkers out with a handful (I would say more than a handful) of dogs.

--My first "memorial" -- the Ford Falcon, the dreaded car of the secret police, which roamed the streets and picked up thousands of mostly young people and sent them to prison or, more likely, to their deaths in the Río de la Plata. The cars are relatively uncommon, but I have seen several. Apparently, the sight of them still provokes fear in Portenós who lived through that time. They are like moving memorials, or memory sites.

--Time warp -- I am wary to write what I am about to write, as it will appear to display the typical North American superiority or, conversel,y a condescending admiration for the "underdeveloped" world). But I have had this feeling in other less developed (read: less wealthy) cities: aspects of Buenos Aires feel a bit like cities of my youth, or, more likely, U.S. cities of the 1950s and 1960s. Por ejemplo: old, non lcd advertisements; tiny stores that only make xerox copies, or only sell CD's, or churros; telephone booths; elevators with grand wooden doors and gates that must be closed to ride up; cheese stores with those little flags poking out offering the name and cost of the cheese (ala Anatole, the mouse who rates the cheeses in Paris); and bookstores. Yes, bookstores with real books, where people browse and then purchase books that they then read. (Apologies for the rising nostalgia levels). And then there is the public hospital system, open to all -- much ink has been spilled on the notion of "universal health care" as if it were some new invention, when in fact it is reality in much of the world.

I am sure this last series of observations deserve further development. But it has struck me that as I walk around Buenos Aires I am walking around within a photograph I have seen of cities from another time.