El Tigre y Sus Manchas feat. German Varela

This is a great video Sondra shot of my roommate Tigre's band, El Tigre y Sus Manchas (The Tiger and His Spots) featuring our other roommate German Varela of the pretty well known rock band, Silicon Fly. German absolutely rips it up! This is performed at L'O Bar in San Telmo, Buenos Aires.

HYPE!

This is a promotional video for a party I work at. All the still images were taken by me...it's pretty cool!

http://blip.tv/file/2175126/

OH SNAP! Barrios: Puerto Madero

Located between San Telmo/La Boca and the Rio de La Plata, Puerto Madero is easily one of Buenos Aires' most aesthetically pleasing and unique neighborhoods. Whether you want to go shopping, hit the clubs, eat the most amazing churrasquitos or choripan, ride bikes in an ecological reserve or even go to Hooters, Puerto Madero is the place to be.
Here is a collection of some of my favorite shots of the old wherehouse district:

OH SNAP! Jardin Japones

Located in the middle of Palermo, near the Bosques de Palermo, lies the Jardin Japones. Donated to the city by the country of Japan many years back, the park is a beautiful, tranquil place to spend an hour. There's a big pond with lots and lots of massive koi, a Japanese restaurant, and a greenhouse where you can buy plants and Bonzai trees. It costs $5 to get in, but it's worth it. It's located at Av. Figueroa Alcorta and Av. Casares, not terribly far from the D line subte.

The Last Seven and a Half Months in Photographs

This is a compilation of my favorite shots since I've been down South America way...

http://www.pbase.com/afirestein/saafaves

Young Squondra Comes to Town: Iguazu

In the 7 months I've been in Argentina, I've had plenty of visitors come through. The month of May marked for the first time, however, that someone of the family came down. Sondra arrived at about 6:30 am on the 10th of May, as opposed to the 4 am time that was originally thought. It was fine though since I work in the nightlife industry (sounds weird when I put it that way) and I was up anyways. I got to the airport at about 3:45 and was actually able to sleep on a bench until her delayed flight landed. Next stop was the hostel, the Milhouse, which is located on a street unpronounceable by anyone who is just visiting. The street is Hipolito Yrigoyen, pronounced EE-PO-LEE-TOE EERIE-GO-SHEN. Anyways, this just meant that anytime Sondra needed to get back to the hostel, I had to go to the cabbie and tell him. The first few days in BA were spent pubcrawling, eating, and basically lounging around watching TV since the weather was pretty crappy. This was all good though as we decided to bus up north about 2000+ kilometers to Las Cataratas de Iguazu, or in English, Iguazu Falls with my good friend Freddy.

Getting to and from Puerto Iguazu (the actual town) is fairly easy, as is most travel in Argentina. The only issue is that distances are so deceptively big here, that most bus trips to anywhere of interest are between 15-20 hours from Buenos Aires. We hopped on a 6 pm bus on Friday the 15th and got in at about 11 am on the 16th. It's always good to take buses that take as long as this as an overnight option. That way, you aren't losing time and you don't have to pay for a hostel. Sondra managed to sleep like 15 hours or something ridiculous. The buses are THAT comfortable. So we arrived, checked into our hostel, and planned our first day. Unfortunately because we arrived a couple hours before check in time, we missed out on being able to go to the falls that day. So instead we ended up walking across the street to an animal rehabilitation center that ended up being really interesting. It is mostly full of birds, but there are monkeys, coatis, and other strange animals that have been injured in some way. It ended up being that most of them were taken illegaly from the Brazilian rainforest to be sold around the world and were injured in the transit process. Some had been rescued from as far as Madrid. After doing the tour of the center we headed back to the hostel for a big asado and Brazilian dance show (which would later prove to be HILARIOUS).

The asado was good, not great. Either way it was a fun night. We met some really nice Canadian girls and a really obnoxious guy from New Jersey (who we later found out used to be a pimp, or at least claimed to have been one). Now onto the Brazilian dance show. The town of Puerto Iguazu is on the "Triple Border" between Brazil and Paraguay. The show was put on by dancers from Foz do Iguacu (the Brazilian side) who came over to Argentina to do this weekly show at the hostel. The guy was dressed in perhaps the most sparkly shirt I've ever seen and the "women" might not have been women after all. Good thing they get all the guests liquored up on caipirinhas before the show, otherwise no one would stick around for the embarassment that would ensue. This "show" is more of a ploy to get drunk tourists to get up and look stupid. Fun right? It's the kind of thing where they pick you out of the crowd to samba with the dancers. Fortunately
almost everyone had to go
through it so it's not so bad. I came in second in the guy's samba competition (woohoo!) which was fortunate because the winner got a very weird, nasty lapdance from the "women". After the show, everyone ended up outside at the hostel's poolside bar. Yes, there was a big pool, complete with volleyball net. One of the most unhostelly hostels I've ever been to. The dance party was pretty uneventful but a funny thing did happen. There is an outdoor individual bathroom by the pool. At about 3 am, I ended up going in to go to the bathroom. Unfortunately I didn't realize that on the other side of the door, the handle was missing. So after about 20 minutes (no lie) of trying to figure out how to either get someone's attention or get out of the bathroom, I used my drunken strength to wedge it open. It would have looked pretty funny because there was a tiny, little window facing the bar outside and every time the music would stop I would flail my arm out of the window and scream for someone to open the door. I really thought it was going to be my bedroom for a moment.

Image: Sondra sitting at the triple border. Left is Argentina, middle is Paraguay and the right is Brazil.

Sunday was the day of the falls. All I can say is WOW! You see pictures, you hear stories, but until you see them with your own eyes, you can't full understand just how amazing they really are. We also didn't realize it was such a big park. You really need at least one full day to explore the whole thing. Some of the main highlights:

1. Butterflies.
Never in my whole life have I seen so many butterflies and so many different kinds. Amazing!



2. Boatride.
One of the main attractions of the waterfalls are the speedboats you can take UNDERNEATH the massive falls. Terrifying but so thrilling.

3. Garganta de Diablo (Devil's Throat). The biggest fall in the park. The viewing platform overlooking it is amazing. Apparently a lot of people commit sucide there...

4. Giant bug. Not so much a highlight, but a funny story. The way you get around the park is with this little tram thing. As we were walking to go to the Devil's Throat, Sondra noticed this gnarly ass monster of a bug on this woman's neck. She obviously had no idea it was there. I felt the obligation to let her know, being the concerned citizen. Her friend upon seeing it reacted instantly and flicked it off her neck, RIGHT AT ME! Some grateful people they were...

After the day at the falls, Freddy treated us to an amazing meal in town. Being that we were still in Argentina (if not barely) we had to get some bife de lomo. We did also get some amazing river fish, the name of which is escaping me. The three countries are separated by rivers so there is a lot of good river fish. We were pooped after the full day in the sun at the falls and a big meal that I think we ended up passing out at about 9 pm.

The next day we contemplated going to Ciudad del Este in Paraguay for well, no real reason. Apparently it's a seedy, Tijuana-like border town, known most for having a physical black market where you can buy anything from guns to cheap electronics. Unfortunately, to get there, you have to pass through Brazil, for which we didn't have Visas. We ended up just taking a walk around the dinky little town and catching an earlier bus back to BA. This busride had some moments on it that made me feel quite anxious. Because of the unmonitored border between Brazil and Paraguay, there is a lot of drug trafficking. A lot of which ends up in BA. This meant that there are frequent police checkpoints. Within an hour we had been stopped 3 times. Each time, a new policeman would come on board to check our passports. The first two guys were very nice and quick. The 3rd guy however had a real chip on his shoulder. He must have looked over my stamps about 3 or 4 times. This would have been fine, but I was illegal at the time, having overstayed my 3 month visa by about 3 months! I was sweating a little bit. Apparently he didn't notice. Fhew! In any case we made it back in one piece, even though the return bus took about 20 hours...

OH SNAP! Protests

This is a segment I've recently started on the Buenos Aires Pubcrawl blog (pubcrawlba.blogspot.com), so I thought I'd do it in my own as well. Every week (or more than one time a week) I will be showcasing photos I've taken that correlate to a specific theme, idea, or neighborhood. Enjoy!

Anyone who's spent any time in this city has certainly witnessed at least one protest. This week's edition of OH SNAP! is a compilation of some of my favorite shots taken of various protests and demonstrations in Buenos Aires.

Mustafa Yoda - El Nino

The hip hop scene is pretty small but Mustufa Yoda, one of Argentina´s most recognized rappers, is pretty good. Here´s a cool video of his song "El Nino" with english subtitles.

Federico Aubele - Postales

Another video I wanted to post on here is a song called Postales by a Porteno (Buenos Aires) group called Federico Aubele. Very, very chill. A lot of the video was filmed around where I live. Enjoy!

La Vida es una Tombola

One of Manu Chao´s many homages to Diego "Dios" Maradona, a man literally more important to the people of this country than Jesus Christ.

MUTO Street Art in Buenos Aires

Unbelievable street art here in the city. It´s stop motion photography of a piece of art that took months to create. Watch the changes in the sky...amazing!

Residents of Casa Pasco

Ruth and Lauren, both from Leicester, England






Gus from Buenos Aires








Mette and Anika from Denmark and Germany, respectively






German from Montevideo, Uruguay








Petros from London







Tigre from Buenos Aires




Olivier from Lille, France

I'm not a businessman, I'm a business...man

I haven't been updating this blog as regularly as before because I have been UNBELIEVABLY busy with two entrepeneurial ventures: Bucketfeet and Ojo Photos. For those of you that don't know, for the past couple years I've had a small-scale custom shoe design business (www.bucketfeet.com), and it has taken off a bit down here in Argentina.


My other, newer venture, is nightlife photography. Since working with the Buenos Aires Pubcrawl, I have been the unofficial, official photographer. The work I've done with them has encouraged me to go out on my own and start a company that essentially documents the ridiculous nightlife of Buenos Aires. My good friend Julian Walter, who in his own right is an amazing photographer, came down here to help me set it up, mostly with getting the website up. The two of us have very different styles of taking pictures so we compliment each other very well, both can learn a lot from one another. In any case it is very, very exciting and I will only be getting busier, but it's a GREAT kind of busy. The website is: www.ojophotos.com. Check it out, there will be new updates regularly!

Aside from these new developments, life is generally the same here. I'm hoping to get out of the city for a couple days next week, maybe hit up the beach in Mar del Plata, or go to Uruguay for a day or so. This massive concrete jungle can suck you in.

Manu Chao live in Bs As

The second I found out about Manu Chao was coming to Buenos Aires, I rushed down to the local locura to get my ticket. At 70 pesos (3.6 to the dollar) I could not pass it up and after his playing for nearly 3 and a half straight hours, made it a huge bargain. It was good I got them when I did because they ended up selling out really, really quickly and a lot of my friends were pretty bummed they couldn't go. In all honesty it wasn't really anyone's fault it wasn't advertised very well. I heard about it word of mouth, otherwise I wouldn't have known about it till it was too late. I saw Manu Chao at the Outsidelands Festival in SF in August and while it was great, I have to say the atmosphere was a bit different here. Everyone knew all the words to every song, there was a lot of OLE OLE OLE OLE, MAAAANU...MAAANU! Here is a 10 minute video compilation of the footage I got with my digital camera.

Re-Cap of the last month...

I think this is the longest period of time I've gone without updating my blog and for all those diehard fans I apologize (that one's for you Jonah...). In early January I realized that in the three months I had been here, I took at least one trip every month. Because of this, I also realized that I didn't have any clear idea of how much money I was actually spending so I decided to stick around here to try to gauge it (I still don't have a clear idea, my bookkeeping skills haven't improved). In any case, I have stuck around Buenos Aires and for that, multi-weekly blogposts would be kind of dull.

Life here is excellent. My house is now rolling seven-deep with the addition of three new roomies: Petros, Ruth, and Lauren, all twenty-four years old, and all British. We have a good time going back and forth with roast-like jabs about why the other person's country is worse. They have ridiculous expressions and words that I have a very hard time understanding, and to them the way I speak is equally confusing. We definitely have some good laughs. Having them in the house too is a great gauge for my spanish, which by the way is doing excellent, because they don't speak ninguna carajo (literally translated as: not a single fuck) of it and I am now the sole link between my spanish speaking roommates and them.

For those of you that don't know, I am one of thousands of fully employed illegal aliens/expats living in this city. I work with various other wanderers on the Buenos Aires Pub Crawl, doing promotion, and most recently all of the photography for the website and various fliers (all of the pics can be seen at: http://www.pbase.com/afirestein/buenos_aires_pubcrawl). It is an awesome job, every night is a different adventure, and a lot of the people you meet are incredible. It is however, still a job, and can get VERY exhausting. I wouldn't put up with it though if I didn't really love it and didn't think what we are doing is a great thing. When a city is this big, and with so many nightlife opportunities, you don't want your night to be a bust. For all those travelers coming through and spending a night or two, we are the perfect solution, and people love it. Sidenote: so far the craziest countries represented based on my experiences on the PubCrawl go in this order: 1. Brazilians, 2. Aussies, 3. Brits.

I'm going to leave you all with that for the time being, hopefully I'll get around to getting a much more detailed post, but to be honest it is just too damn hot to do anything.