Is Argentina a really crap place to live?

oh, wait a minute.

Arrogant Worms to thread...

ii) I gather Argentina is a great place to VISIT. Their collapsing currency and more or less first world level of facilities provide a great opportunity to live like a King for a few weeks.

iii) I'm not sure how Argentina and Brazil see each other. I think Argentina is reasonably kickarse such that the relationship might be more that between Britain and France rather than Portugal and Spain.

I think I'm going there in late June. Anyone have anything to add to this thread? Geoff, are you still around? So, any cool record stores, restaurants, museums, bookstores, gay haunts, etc.?

Firstly "I reckon it's a very conservative place, traditionally repressed without much exuberance or flamboyance, with a strong macho culture and a lot of talk of football but little of politics," sums up Argentina to a point, as it also sums up the UK, Australia, but surprisingly not Ireland.

As for if it's a shit place to live, depends... do you have an income? The welfare system is shite, bordering on non existent. The current economic situation is even shiter then when I was there first in 93 - primarily becuase while in 93 the peso was pegged to the dollar, there was still investment and publicly owned utilities. Now that Menem sold them off so he could smuggle arms to Serbia or somesuch, there's no investment, no foreginers making great musicals aout former leader's wives, and even Brad Pitt hasn't holidayed there since 96. Of course, there's a problem which no one talks about which is the lack, for all I could see, of an income tax system, or more to the point a regulatory tax system that involved redistribution of wealth - but the US and UK's involvement in Argentina over the last 150 years has shown we don't like that type of redistribution.
As for culture, it's entertaining, in that it's this melting pot of arabic, jewish, italian, spanish and god knows what else all tossed intogether - some of the best meals of my life were up in the north west with arabic empenadas. Buenos Aires (un)fortunately has it all - libraries, art galleries, great shopping in terms of weird things like rock shirts and bootleg cds (there's a little arcade off... fuck, not florida, lavalle I think. And there's the three story high book shop further down florida, plus all the ffascinating little joints up and down corrientes.
It's the one time home of Borges, Gardel, and Piazzolla, and Maradonna, and it's a country that draws breath and life from its icons, which reminds me, the north and north west (tucaman, salta, catamarca, sgo del estero) have trippy as fuck religious festivals for images of christ they've found in trees.
Geographically, every province asserts itself - best chocolate, trout and dear I ever had was in Bariloche (nazi's moved there for exactly that reason) and Missiones gave me hte chance to try mate frio, which warped me.. oh hang on, I was coming down off coke that day.
Arthur - I hope yr not vegetarian. THough there were some hari krshna places in 96 in Buenos Aires, outside of that the only salad you'll get are tomato and lettuce drowned in oil and salt. It does have its appeals mind you. See if you can find a tenedor libre asado joint in Bs As - all you can eat meat meat meat.
When I was last there they were showing Almodovar's latest alogside trainspotting alongside some local evita flick next to the blockbuster of the week. I saw Lou Reed, and I also saw a 50000 crowd mosh to Illya Kuriaki and the Valderramas for free.
I think to get the most, you have to be prepared to immerse yourself in the good and the bad, and to not equate a western understanding ontop of the situation in Arg - it's much more convoluted and profound and perplexing and reactionary.
The gay scene has improved slightly since I was there (mind you I was in a rship with a woman, so there's my disclaimer). There's one big street in Bs As, starts with A, up the top of the central area, I'm sure a google search or a look in a Lonesome Planet guide would reveal more. Obviously like any place, the more interior you go, the more homophobic it gets, and the signs and understandings are different - when I was 17 I had a fine time in catholic machismo centro.
Hope that helps... I mean, it all depends on how you compare it and to what, and yr udnerstandings of the real materialist effects of the WMF (not the WFF) - it's a broken ass economy for so many reasons and a lot of people are suffering in ways that even in the days of hyperinfaltion they n ever knew.

fuck argentina tbh

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/world/americas/argentine-calls-detail-efforts-to-shield-iran.html

Yeah, stinks to high heaven.

I have a very elaborate theory about small countries next to big countries being shit. The best country in the world is of course Spain, and as I live in Portugal, which is a godawful place to live, it set me thinking. And um, Brasil's really big, and great fun, so.. Basically I think that Argentina is the Portugal of South America.

― Gatinha (rwillmsen), Saturday, 15 March 2003 00:25 (11 years ago)

this and the rest of the early part of this thread are classics of olde ilx and its quaintly absurd logical fumbling

one imagines there are worse places to live than argentina, for all its faults

my brother just moved to Argentina. I'll ask him

seems like an especially shitty place to be for jewish prosecutors

prosecutors and examining magistrates generally have a charmed life in latin countries so long as they don't investigate the government and powerful pople

the idea of Argentina as a "small country" is somewhat amusing

Buenos Aires struck me as an extremely nice place to live.

the idea of Argentina as a "small country" is somewhat amusing

― Aimless

Large area, smallish population. Certainly next to Brazil.

Ah it's 40 mil, I thought it was less than half that for some reason. Yeah, fairly big.