Perhaps it was the time of year -the Christmas week always being an odd time to visit places- but I found Buenos Aires a strangely unenjoyable place.
Architecturally, it's a grid plan, and the grid is pursued with a heartlessness- extending relentlessly for miles- in a way that I've only seen before in mid-western US cities: the effect on the walker is quite alarmingly tedious. The city turns away from the seafront, moreover, and is fairly flat so one feels bored, as if stuck in the middle of the sort of huge, worthy, but dull nineteenth century "classic" novel used to torture sixth form pupils in the better schools everywhere.
There is a good lot of grand but somehow joyless 19th century and equally doctrinaire modernist architecture. I felt at times, indeed, that the place was a composite of the dullest parts of Barcelona, New York or Paris. As so often is the case with 19th century building, the individual details (carvings, scrolls, ironwork, sculptures) detail are better than the sum of the parts- hence, Buenos Aires' cemetery cities are more delightful than the streets surrounding them (Recoleta comparing well to the best of the London seven, but less happily to leafier , more generously spaced Pere Lachaise, Paris). *
I visited a modern art museum, and although there was a permanent collection of Latin American pre-war modernism- Botero, Kahlo, Cavalcanti- the main draw of the place, supposedly, was a show of late Warhol, and this seems to confirm the lack of individuality of Buenos Aires - for it is as if every city must have a large white museum of modern art and in it a Warhol collection, an obligatory genuflection to that least lovable US artist.
Also bizarre, to me, were glimpses of Argentineans dressing with hilarious accuracy in English styles (or more precisely, given that they were generally Ralph Lauren clothes, American interpretations of them). And it was not just the clothing, but the way women had a horsey masculinity, and the men a cultivated insouciance (with jackets deliberately crumpled, I’m sure) that was so amazingly English: indeed so uncannily did their faces resemble faces I'd seen in Kensington or Fulham that I had to go up close to listen to confirm that they were indeed Argentineans- they even had the same craggy, excentric faces of the British patrician classes. I saw such types crossing on the ferry and in Palermo, very self-satisfied and grumpy looking.
In other aspects, the place has a gloomy air- the closed shops (including Harrods!), the old, battered cars, and grilled meat meat meat- that least imaginative of diets- everywhere (it convincing me of the value of vegetarianism for at least it inspires the imagination, and reinforces the truism that good cuisine comes not from an abundance of available good natural produce, but the opposite- its scarcity- so that cooks are forced to think imaginatively about how to make the few available things as tasty as possible).
The decline was particularly apparent around La Boca, where women walk up and down the filthy streets with their unwashed brats past smashed cars and bunches of shirtless men playing loud ugly music; youths shout at strangers and flinging fireworks at the hapless tourists who are effectively confined to a few metres of "tango heritage" restaurants. There is some wonderful graffiti among all this, however.
I regret to be so negative about Buenos Aires- I know that Portenos have not had an easy last half-century- and I'd emphasize how pleasant they were to deal with.
*The comparasion of cemeteries deserves a blog to itself- if readers know of one, please let me know.
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