City Tour

One day we took a city tour for an afternoon. First stop was the Plaza de Mayo, rundown, defaced, and to my eyes at least, bereft of much to inspire national pride. It´s one thing to have causes; it´s hard to see how spray painted slogans on national monuments -- the Cabildo, the National Cathedral, and the National Bank, fine old, if not well-maintained buildings all -- advance those causes. (To be fair, a few days later we wound up again in the Plaza and the Cathedral at least had been cleaned up.) On the other hand, the Casa Rosada is surrounded by barricades and scaffolding, getting a facelift and a careful, total new paint job that Dana Dee says she read is driven by historical documents on the exact color. To judge by what has been painted so fair, it should perhaps be re named Casa Salmon. We moved on to La Bombonera, stadium of Boca Juniors, capacity 58000 and so nicknamed because to some, seen from above, it looks like an open box of chocolates. Inside the Boca museum store, among other useful items, one can purchase a computer keyboard in Boca colors of blue and gold, as well as a model Bombonera music box that presumably plays the Boca anthem. There is also a lifesize monument to Maradona, the young, athletic Maradona, not the fat, drug-addled Maradona. He is in gold fiberglass, standing with his hand over his heart as the Himno Nacional is presumably being played. Call it Monument to a Cheat since the "Hand of God" goal that gave Argentina its Copa Mundial in 1986 has long since been revealed to be the "Hand of Maradona." In the US we pursue an African-American who may be a cheat and who doesn´t treat the press nicely by empaneling a grand jury and when it expires without enough evidence to indict, empaneling another grand jury. In Argentina a sporting cheat is a national hero.

One of BA´s great charms, like New York´s, is that it is a splendid city to get lost in and, among all the crowds, to hide out it. The beauty of both places is that you don´t need an absence of people or a swath of empty planet to do either. All you need is a few square feet and the indifference of the surrounding energy.