First I want to let you know this is not a rant on how horrible BsAs is, or that I don’t think it’s a great city to visit or live; I just wanted to fill you in on some of the annoyances and oddities and some of the great ideas that I have noticed here, good and bad.
Since I want to end on a good note, I’ll start with the majorly annoying and get to the totally awesome, ideas I think should be implemented in the US large cities.
First, the pollution is horrible, from transportation fumes, to smokers, to noise pollution. This place has the worst air I have ever breathed. Every time a bus, car, motorbike goes by you can just see a cloud of exhaust. I’m serious; it’s especially bad around 5-7pm when people get off work. Every inhale has some sort of smoke flavor; I’ve never tasted so much air in my life. I can’t wait for my trip to Mendoza with Nick, just to get some fresh country air. Then there is the smoking, people at the bars smoke like chimneys here, I am pretty sure you can’t smoke in a restaurant but after hours when the place turns into a proper bar or dance club, the cigarettes start popping up….gross. And the noise pollution, well, let’s say my ears hurt, from the impatient cars honking just as the second the light turns yellow before green they are honking to go (a little on the signals here they go green-yellow-red and boy you better stop on the yellow, because that’s the signal for all the people to walk, then they turn red-yellow-green and this yellow the cars start honking and going through the light), the motorbikes honk at the pedestrians to move-use it as a means to cat call to girls, the bus breaks are squeaky, apartments are noisy and the airplanes taking off and landing are so loud that sometimes when I’m sleeping I think one might land on the apartment! Whew…..I might need to be put on a deserted beach after this just to have some quiet but then I think the sound of waves crashing might destroy that.
Second, the dog poop is awful. If you are going to have a dog and walk it pick up their S*it, please. The sidewalks are dangerous enough here with all the cracks, potholes, missing tiles and electricity hole covers; I don’t need to also dodge all the poop too. It’s not just a problem with the dog walkers “Paseaperos”, as there are hundreds and some have like 15 dogs at one time, which I understand might be hard to stop and pick up poop if you have that many dogs, but even the people who actually walk their own dog, just can’t seem to stop and pick up the poo. Even Lonely Planet talks about the amount and types of dog poo on the streets.* Lonely Planet Buenos Aires city guide page 96
Third, an interesting thing here is that there aren’t giant stores and malls like you have in the states. The “malls” are full of tiny shops, some so small they just have a giant window you look into and pick what you want. I have noticed a few chains but, nothing that stands out like in America and I defiantly haven’t seen a target, kohl’s or thank god a Wal-Mart type store here at all. In fact most of the stores look independently owned, and they tend to sell one thing, yes I said one thing, so weird when you come from the land of super and mega stores that sell everything short of children and labor. If you want pajamas they have a small corner store for that, if you want a doorknob, there’s a store for that, there’s a store for pastries, one for bread, one for chocolate….. (am I sounding like the annoying Apple app commercial?), there’s a store for socks and tights and a separate store for shoes and one for beef and one for chicken, one for accessories and one for clothes, you get my point. And unless the store is on one of the main shopping streets you need to ring a bell so they can buzz you in, it’s amazing.
Fourth, and yes I am getting more positive, they have the most interesting way of delivering groceries here. If you buy over $200 pesos (don’t quote me, I haven’t done it), they deliver your groceries to your home for free, and put them away for you! It’s a wonderful system since there is no parking at most of the stores and it’s impossible to carry it all back to your house if you buy a cart-full. They just pack all your groceries in medium sized white crates, stack them, attach your address and have a store employee deliver them to your house a bit later. The only thing I don’t understand is how some of the food doesn’t go bad just sitting there, I mean I’ve seen them put the cold stuff in insulated bins, but the other night the store was packed and they had rows of stacks piled to the ceiling of groceries that needed to be delivered, who knows how long some of it sat there? The system must work though because you see it all day long. I do think it might be difficult to implement in SF with the hills though, they just push the crates on file dollies and I could see many runaway crates in SF, good thing the streets here are flat. It’s honestly an awesome invention.
These are some observations for now….more adventures to come I promise.
*Some of the images were borrowed from the web
