Raul, who looks about sixty and always wears a black knitted ski cap, is without a doubt the smallest of the small businessmen in our neighborhood. Every day except Sunday, directly across the street from the door to our apartment building, Raul sets up his spindly metal table, lays out his wares, and sells to the cars and people passing by.
This corner is a good one for him. Duarte Quiros runs straight from the center of Córdoba, past our shopping mall, and eventually out to the air force bases on the city’s Western outskirts. The intersecting two-lane calle – Rio Negro – takes cars from the south of Córdoba towards one of the city’s main avenues (Colón), its hideous central police station, and to the grounds of one of its better football teams (Belgrano).
Although I’ve never seen him make a sale, Raul says he’s been on this corner for the last twelve years. His business doesn’t seem to have a niche: Today, for instance, the red metal table was arrayed with tubes of flame retardant for fabrics and scrubbers that could’ve been for cars or bathtubs. It was pretty sunny today – nobody expected a 26-degree day in May, let alone three such days in a row – so most of Raul’s merchandise was propped up in the shade against the wall. On either side of his chair, from the door of Rebekah’s pilates studio to the door of the art-framing store, Raul had lined the wall with the following: A number of steering wheel covers (available in red or blue), two rubberized motorcycle cable locks (both blue), four stand-up air pumps for bike tires, ten tubs of a generic-looking pain cream, one large-button calculator, at least five unique wrench sets (both crescent and socket), and one of those beaded car-seat cushions that New York cabbies used to have. There was other stuff too that I can’t remember, but between what was on the table and what was against the wall, Raul couldn’t have had more than 150 products for sale, and he probably wasn’t stocking more than ten of any particular item. One thing I did know: All of it would fit into a single black plastic garbage bag at the end of the day.
Raul used to be a carnicero, a butcher – a not-uncommon profession here in this land of beef. But when he was hit by a car twelve years ago, he had to have a metal bar inserted into his lower right leg, and this left Raul unable to stand for long stretches of time. His career bagging, cutting, weighing, and flinging different cuts of Argentina’s best-loved food was over. Raul left his refrigerated display case in the city center behind, began selling here, and has been on the corner ever since.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Leaving Córdoba (1 of 5): Man about the barrio
Today, standing on the curb of the busy two-way corridor between our apartment building and the mall across the street, I watched a new-looking taxicab zip by. I don’t know why it first caught my eye, but as it sped away I noticed it had the words “El Sueño de Luis” written on it in black plastic letters stuck onto the trunk. Clearly the car’s owner had dreamed of the car before he could buy it, I thought, and now that he had it, he was announcing his dream-come-true to the world.
Or rather, to the people he had already passed by. This was Luis’s Dream, but only the very rare passenger would ever know it. Who manages to flag down a taxi from behind? And who watches a cab drive away after getting out? A young girl, dropped off at her door after a particularly good date perhaps – she might watch the car spirit her companion away into the night – but even if she could read the words in the low light, what of it?
No, those who ride with Luis – and since the vehicle's name betrayed a pride that only an owner-operator could feel, I have to believe that Luis was the driver as well as the owner – those who ride with him likely have no idea how important the vehicle is to the man behind the wheel.
* * *
We haven’t been taking all that many taxis in Córdoba. The city center is pretty compact, and from where we live it only takes about twenty minutes to walk to just about anywhere you’d want to go. But back when we were going to Buenos Aires every other week for rabies shots, we were in cabs all the time, going to and from either the bus terminal or the airport. Once, on our way to catch an early-morning flight, we found ourselves in the back seat of a cab we’d apparently been in before. The driver remembered us; he’d taken us to the airport on another morning, picking us up at the same spot, right around the same time of day – maybe a little earlier that time, he said. (It was true. We were running late.)
That’s how small Córdoba sometimes feels. This is a city of a million and a couple hundred thousand people, and at least 10,000 taxis, and yet if you stay in your neighborhood, if you cultivate a routine, if you go back to the same kiosk for a coke in a returnable glass bottle on two successive Mondays, people will start to remember you.
* * *
I was thinking about all this while waiting for the light to change, outside the Nuevocentro Shopping mall, holding two large plastic bags of our clean laundry. It’s pretty convenient to live right by a mall. We see movies at the cinema, we print out our documents at its two locutorios, and when we’re feeling too lazy to cook, we sometimes go out for dinner in the food court. There’s a Disco supermarket there, so we end up shopping a lot in the mall, too.
Over the last months, though, I’ve been trying to avoid it. The mall is impossible to ignore: it has a three-sided Coke-and-McDonalds advertisement that is just about the tallest structure in the neighborhood. But I’ve been trying to run almost all of my errands at the local shops in our neighborhood, and the owners have begun to get very friendly, very talkative. It’s partly because I show up every day, partly because these businesses don’t see all that many foreigners, and partly because I finally have mastered enough castellano to actually be able to engage people here in some conversation. Whatever the reason, it’s been fun to get to know a little bit about a few of the neighborhood's fixtures, and it makes me sad to be leaving it so soon.
* * *
I hope that I get to meet Luis the taxi driver before we leave Córdoba, but I wouldn’t bet on it. So instead, over the next couple of weeks – our last weeks in Argentina for the foreseeable future – I’ll try to tell you a bit about the different places and people that I see around here in Barrio Alberdi.
Or rather, to the people he had already passed by. This was Luis’s Dream, but only the very rare passenger would ever know it. Who manages to flag down a taxi from behind? And who watches a cab drive away after getting out? A young girl, dropped off at her door after a particularly good date perhaps – she might watch the car spirit her companion away into the night – but even if she could read the words in the low light, what of it?
No, those who ride with Luis – and since the vehicle's name betrayed a pride that only an owner-operator could feel, I have to believe that Luis was the driver as well as the owner – those who ride with him likely have no idea how important the vehicle is to the man behind the wheel.
* * *
We haven’t been taking all that many taxis in Córdoba. The city center is pretty compact, and from where we live it only takes about twenty minutes to walk to just about anywhere you’d want to go. But back when we were going to Buenos Aires every other week for rabies shots, we were in cabs all the time, going to and from either the bus terminal or the airport. Once, on our way to catch an early-morning flight, we found ourselves in the back seat of a cab we’d apparently been in before. The driver remembered us; he’d taken us to the airport on another morning, picking us up at the same spot, right around the same time of day – maybe a little earlier that time, he said. (It was true. We were running late.)
That’s how small Córdoba sometimes feels. This is a city of a million and a couple hundred thousand people, and at least 10,000 taxis, and yet if you stay in your neighborhood, if you cultivate a routine, if you go back to the same kiosk for a coke in a returnable glass bottle on two successive Mondays, people will start to remember you.
* * *
I was thinking about all this while waiting for the light to change, outside the Nuevocentro Shopping mall, holding two large plastic bags of our clean laundry. It’s pretty convenient to live right by a mall. We see movies at the cinema, we print out our documents at its two locutorios, and when we’re feeling too lazy to cook, we sometimes go out for dinner in the food court. There’s a Disco supermarket there, so we end up shopping a lot in the mall, too.
Over the last months, though, I’ve been trying to avoid it. The mall is impossible to ignore: it has a three-sided Coke-and-McDonalds advertisement that is just about the tallest structure in the neighborhood. But I’ve been trying to run almost all of my errands at the local shops in our neighborhood, and the owners have begun to get very friendly, very talkative. It’s partly because I show up every day, partly because these businesses don’t see all that many foreigners, and partly because I finally have mastered enough castellano to actually be able to engage people here in some conversation. Whatever the reason, it’s been fun to get to know a little bit about a few of the neighborhood's fixtures, and it makes me sad to be leaving it so soon.
* * *
I hope that I get to meet Luis the taxi driver before we leave Córdoba, but I wouldn’t bet on it. So instead, over the next couple of weeks – our last weeks in Argentina for the foreseeable future – I’ll try to tell you a bit about the different places and people that I see around here in Barrio Alberdi.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
Bariloche & Mendoza
For those of you keeping track, we went to Bariloche and Mendoza for a bit recently. These are two of Argentina's biggest tourist destinations, and we certainly found out why. Check out some of the pictures to see for yourself. (Apologies for the silly captions. It started to feel very "children's book-esque," and I just decided to go with it.)
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