A View From the Street

Our apartment is about one building from the corner of Armenia and Paraguay.  Catty corner is a Disco grocery store.  The Disco is ubiquitous in Buenos Aires, and while being the same, they are also as different as the neighborhoods they serve.   

 Our Disco is home to some people who live on the street.  And it’s like they live there.  The corner of the building is the bedroom and storage area (see above picture) and the side of the building is a living room, with a sofa, make shift chairs and regular visitors (see picture below). 

  It is basically the same two men with occasional visitors.  For a few nights we had a blonde transvestite who caused a big scene while shopping in the Disco.  She is gone and another visitor has moved in.  I’m curious about the  politics on who gets the double mattress, because it seems as if the “homeowners” allow the visitors the best bed.  Unless of course,   the visitors pay for this privilege. The picture above of the "bedroom" has only a single mattress - I don't know why - the mattresses come and go.

This pile of trash has been here since we before we arrived.  It seems this particular pile is filed under "not my job" because the Disco cleans the rest of the street in front of the store and the building next to the Disco cleans their portion of the street, but this section at the end of the Disco is ignored.

This picture depicts a part of our walk to school.  This graffiti is representative of most of our 1 kilometer walk.    Much of the architecture here is beautiful, but sadly it is almost entirely defaced.  I have this romantic notion that revolves around these street windows.  I picture in my head that in the past these windows were open to the street and people spoke through them to the neighbors walking by.  Today, all over the city, they barred and shuttered.