Leaving Cordoba (4 of 5): Signs Signs Signs

Almost every day, I go to the bakery. It’s less than a block from our apartment and the elevator ride down from the sixth floor takes longer than the walk along the street. And most days, I go twice; first, at around 8:30 am – medialunas for breakfast – and then again at around four or five for a bag of criollas, the crusty square biscuits that make for a perfect merienda, the third of an Argentine’s four daily meals. The sign above the bakery has faded over the years, but the name – Panaderia Gizeh – is still legible. (The Egyptian motif is limited to the name and a framed piece of papyrus with hieroglyphics that hangs by the oven.)

For months I didn’t know the bakery even had a name; I was too busy shaking my head at the sign above the Evangelina hairdresser next door, which has a picture of Brad Pitt on it. The actor stares off into the distance, his eyes shaded by dark sunglasses, a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

It’s the kind of sign that could only exist here. Like those of most of Córdoba’s businesses, the bakery and the hairdresser signs are printed on a waterproof fabric that is then stretched over a metal frame. I have to believe these are at least somewhat expensive, for two reasons: First, Bien Casero, a shop near our apartment that sells prepared foods to go, has two signs that hang on either side of their front gate that get taken in every night at the close of business. Secondly, the signs of most other small businesses here are sponsored advertisements for the products of much larger companies.

Tiny kiosks usually announce their presence with ads for either Beldent or Topline chewing gum. (Beldent is made by Cadbury; Topline comes from Grupo Arcor, which, with 27 factories across Argentina, claims to be the biggest candy company in the world.) Small restaurants and food shops mostly get topped off with Coke or Pepsi signs. The beer companies seem to have more or less complete control over the look of the bars here, and their names appear everywhere. (The most popular are Argentina’s Quilmes and Brazil’s Brahma, both of which are owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev.) Folding chairs, umbrellas, ashtrays – every conceivable surface is plastered with the name and color of a particular brew, to the point that the names of the bars themselves seem secondary, if not completely unknown.

Which isn’t to say that the names aren’t occasionally clever. Near Córdoba’s central courthouse, for instance, right next door to the Justice Cyber internet café, is the El Veredicto kiosk. Across the street, El Codigo restaurant serves lunch to the lawyers. But more often than not, the corporations take priority, and nowhere is this clearer than at the unbroken string of seven bars along the canal in the city center. The sign of each bar advertises a different alcoholic drink (Fernet 1882, Warsteiner, Cordoba Cerveza, Jim Beam, Budweiser, Brahma, Quilmes, Heineken), and hardly anyone refers to a single watering hole by name. “Let’s meet at la cañada,” they say.

One of the seven – Morrison Bar – manages to upstage the name of its patron company (Brahma) by plastering its façade with a huge portrait of its namesake, Jim Morrison. Which brings us back to Brad Pitt, and to this country’s rampant disregard for intellectual property rights. The Coffee and Tea Cafe, an upscale café that serves Cabrales-brand coffee at its two Córdoba franchises, has not only adapted the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf logo to make it their own; they’ve also incorporated a Starbucks mermaid into the shop’s décor.

Pizza stores seem to be particularly enthusiastic “borrowers,” and Córdoba has a MoMA Pizza (as in the modern art museum in New York), a Cerebro Pizza (as in the brainier half of that animated duo, “Pinky y el Cerebro”), and Charley’s Pizza (as in Chaplin).

But when it comes to decorating the signs of otherwise unremarkable businesses, nothing can compete with the United States’ most famous animated family. The Simpsons are huge here – this despite the fact that Rebekah assures me that much is lost in the translation – and images of Homero and the clan are used to sell everything from cell phone plans to locksmith services.

Hamburguesas Krosty in Nueva Córdoba is a genius bit of marketing, although I wouldn’t eat there if you paid me – making the shop even more like its animated counterpart than its owners might have intended.

It’s important to know, though, that these are the exceptions to the Argentine urban landscape’s general repetitiveness. On every block of every neighborhood in every city, the businesses start to look almost identical, and the things they sell are even more similar still. I state this with confidence, because I spent part of last month writing a guidebook chapter about the province of Córdoba, and finding restaurants that didn’t look or taste like all the others was not that easy.

For better and for worse, every barrio has just about everything it needs within a few blocks – a bakery, a fruit & vegetable shop, a butcher, a kiosk, a newsstand, maybe a restaurant or two – with the result being that people stay in their neighborhoods, just like I’ve been staying in mine. Nobody travels across town to get a pizza from the place with the pretty sign, or the clever name. There’s little reason to: the Pizza Napolitana (tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese, roasted red peppers, green olives) is just the same.

It’s the people who own, work at, and support these businesses who make each one unique, and this is probably the aim behind what would appear to be a very unusual guerrilla ad campaign. Large, handwritten signs have been popping up around Córdoba recently, and they look like messages from one person to another.

“Fernando: I am waiting for you at McDonald’s so that we can make a toast with Coke.”

This is how the world’s most popular restaurant is promoting itself here in Córdoba? Another:

“Ana: I’m sorry for standing you up when we were supposed to meet at McDonald’s. I hope you forgive me.”

Very uncool, dude. But now that you mention it, I could go for a Big Mac…