Shemp in Buenos Aires

[Shemp]

I hijacked another thread (viewtopic.php?f=1&t=51893) where I discussed my initial impressions of Buenos Aires. Here is a followup.

Apartments from Booking.com are working very well. Current place is $203/week and beautiful historic build in city center. I would not at all be ashamed to invite a quality woman here (other than that I keep the temperature in the 50's or 60's, but there is a heater which I don't use). Previous place was also $203 and a nasty dump. Before that was $240 and fancy new construction with mirrors and marble everywhere, like a modern hotel, so fine for guests but didn't feel like a home. Before that was an historic building that I really liked and will soon return to at a rate of about $200/week. Heating is bad, so always nice and cold the way I like things, but otherwise wouldn't hesitate to invite a quality woman there since bed is warm.

City installed a bunch of outdoor pullup bars recently and managed to screw things up, as is typical when people who dont do pullups themselves design and install pullup equipment. But there are ways to get around the problems they created.

It is possible to get normal prices for food, once I figured out how the supermarkets are arranged. Everything is somewhat incompetent here compared to Spanish supermarkets.

So far I've danced with 104 women (besides my practice partner). I'm not trying to meet anyone for a romantic affair because I'm no longer interested in anything except long term relationships, and I don't want to be tied to Buenos Aires because it's so much trouble to get here. Level of tango dance skills is vastly better here than in Europe, as is to be expected.

There are lots of younger men who are hired by 90+ year old Japanese women to dance with them. @88jose88 might want to consider a job like this. Taxi dancers do not have sex with the woman who hire them (and anyway his current 7 inches and supposedly still growing is way too much for these tiny Japanese women). Taxi dancers just dance and sit at the table and try to be pleasant for a few hours. There are jobs like this on cruise ships based in USA. 88jose88's short height would be an advantage with these Japanese women, or other short women. But that Mohawk haircut is not going to fly. His next transformation needs to be to "sultry latin lover" archetype. Grow his hair back and get it slicked down, then put on a nice suit and shiny shoes and give himself a sexy sounding name like Armando. And read some trashy women's romance novels to understand how these sort of women think. These 90yo Japanese women are horrible dancers, so taxi dancers don't have to be very good themselves. All the employees at the tango venues treat these old Japanese women like royalty, so they must be throwing big money around.

[yick]

Good report right there @Shemp I can't imagine the choice of produce being all that wide compared to the states or Europe either.

@88jose88 is too thick and stupid to learn the dance moves to Tango and even if he stuck at it for a year, the Japanese women would know he was a basic beginner and would move on to someone else slightly better but I am glad you are having a good time down there. It is a pain to get to though and the money situation is just a headfuck anytime I have been there. The best was when the peso was equal to the dollar but those days have long gone.

[Voyager1]

Holy shit do you still need your cane?

[Shemp]

Good report right there @Shemp I can't imagine the choice of produce being all that wide compared to the states or Europe either.

Quality of produce (fresh fruits and vegetables) is excellent, because Argentina itself can grow lots of stuff and Brazil and Chile grow more. But these supermarkets are just a mess in various ways. Very poor selection of unsweetened yogurt or kefir. Everything is sugar added. They have cheese, but I don't want extra calories when I'm not hiking, so I gave up dairy entirely for now. Ready-to eat section has fresh grilled beef, so that replaces dairy. Poor selection of canned sardines but they have canned mackerel, so I eat that instead. No dark chocolate (85% cacao) so I gave that up as well until I return to Europe. Chocolate here is 55% cacao max. Fresh bread is sometimes undercooked, sometimes overcooked. Incompetent compared to Spain, where they never miscook bread in big supermarkets.

money situation is just a headfuck anytime I have been there. The best was when the peso was equal to the dollar but those days have long gone.

Money situation has finally improved. Inflation is down to like 15%/year. ATMs still charge absurd fees, like $10 to withdraw $100. I used my USA Visa Credit card to recharge my mobile plan via website and got a good rate, but I don't want to use the physical card at stores because of risk of fraud. It is possible to use Google or Apple Pay to avoid fraud but my smartphone doesn't support NFC and I don't want to replace the phone for another year or two because I still use a Russian dictionary app that has disappeared from the app store so impossible to reload on a new phone. Because I anticipated currency problems, I brought lots of crisp (latest blue shade version) US $100 bills which is much more than I need. I highly recommend bringing some US$100 or €50 bills as emergency cash, at least until Argentina has proven itself to have fixed its money issues by several years of stability.

There are obviously some many wealthy people here because I pass all sorts of stores advertising custom made men's dress shirts for US$120, suits for US$2000, etc. My impression is that Argentina is being taken over by oligarchs since Milei came into office and income/wealth disparities are soaring. There is immense wealth of natural resources here, and a small number of oligarchs is capturing it all. Ordinary people are seeing or will soon see a drop in their standard of living. But maybe this drop is offset by greater currency stability combined with cheap Chinese manufactured goods.

@88jose88's problem with being a gigolo or non-sexual escort is his personality. Women are not going to pay to have some narcissistic fool chattering about how he is becoming more handsome every day because of "subliminal programming" (possibly 88jose88 originally wrote "delusional programming" but spell checker changed it). They want the man to focus on them, the woman, not himself. Also, women usually expect men they hire to talk like gentlemen, not ghetto hoodlums: "Niggas with clits be hating on niggas with big dicks".

I can't imagine doing that taxi dancer job myself. It's just amazing how bad these old Japanese women dance. One of them just totters along while her taxi dancer holds her hands so she doesn't fall over. She had a birthday party last week and gave a speech where she talked about dancing here in Buenos Aires for 30 years, how it's her second home and she considers herself Argentine now, how in Japan people honor teachers and so she wants to honor hers and so her various teachers went over and got a photograph with her, champagne for everyone, etc, etc. Like I said, she must be throwing lots of money around for everyone to treat her like royalty. Her companion is younger, so able to jump around the dance floor like a child while her taxi dancer makes sure she doesn't collide with the real dancers. The taxi dancers are mabye 5'7" but tower over the Japanese women, who are maybe 4'7". These Japanese and their taxi dancers use widely separated embrace, versus the very intimate torso to torso embrace real tango dancers use.

[yick]

Good report right there @Shemp I can't imagine the choice of produce being all that wide compared to the states or Europe either.

Quality of produce (fresh fruits and vegetables) is excellent, because Argentina itself can grow lots of stuff and Brazil and Chile grow more. But these supermarkets are just a mess in various ways. Very poor selection of unsweetened yogurt or kefir. Everything is sugar added. They have cheese, but I don't want extra calories when I'm not hiking, so I gave up dairy entirely for now. Ready-to eat section has fresh grilled beef, so that replaces dairy. Poor selection of canned sardines but they have canned mackerel, so I eat that instead. No dark chocolate (85% cacao) so I gave that up as well until I return to Europe. Chocolate here is 55% cacao max. Fresh bread is sometimes undercooked, sometimes overcooked. Incompetent compared to Spain, where they never miscook bread in big supermarkets.

money situation is just a headfuck anytime I have been there. The best was when the peso was equal to the dollar but those days have long gone.

Money situation has finally improved. Inflation is down to like 15%/year. ATMs still charge absurd fees, like $10 to withdraw $100. I used my USA Visa Credit card to recharge my mobile plan via website and got a good rate, but I don't want to use the physical card at stores because of risk of fraud. It is possible to use Google or Apple Pay to avoid fraud but my smartphone doesn't support NFC and I don't want to replace the phone for another year or two because I still use a Russian dictionary app that has disappeared from the app store so impossible to reload on a new phone. Because I anticipated currency problems, I brought lots of crisp (latest blue shade version) US $100 bills which is much more than I need. I highly recommend bringing some US$100 or €50 bills as emergency cash, at least until Argentina has proven itself to have fixed its money issues by several years of stability.

There are obviously some many wealthy people here because I pass all sorts of stores advertising custom made men's dress shirts for US$120, suits for US$2000, etc. My impression is that Argentina is being taken over by oligarchs since Milei came into office and income/wealth disparities are soaring. There is immense wealth of natural resources here, and a small number of oligarchs is capturing it all. Ordinary people are seeing or will soon see a drop in their standard of living. But maybe this drop is offset by greater currency stability combined with cheap Chinese manufactured goods.

@88jose88's problem with being a gigolo or non-sexual escort is his personality. Women are not going to pay to have some narcissistic fool chattering about how he is becoming more handsome every day because of "subliminal programming" (possibly 88jose88 originally wrote "delusional programming" but spell checker changed it). They want the man to focus on them, the woman, not himself. Also, women usually expect men they hire to talk like gentlemen, not ghetto hoodlums: "Niggas with clits be hating on niggas with big dicks".

I can't imagine doing that taxi dancer job myself. It's just amazing how bad these old Japanese women dance. One of them just totters along while her taxi dancer holds her hands so she doesn't fall over. She had a birthday party last week and gave a speech where she talked about dancing here in Buenos Aires for 30 years, how it's her second home and she considers herself Argentine now, how in Japan people honor teachers and so she wants to honor hers and so her various teachers went over and got a photograph with her, champagne for everyone, etc, etc. Like I said, she must be throwing lots of money around for everyone to treat her like royalty. Her companion is younger, so able to jump around the dance floor like a child while her taxi dancer makes sure she doesn't collide with the real dancers. The taxi dancers are mabye 5'7" but tower over the Japanese women, who are maybe 4'7". These Japanese and their taxi dancers use widely separated embrace, versus the very intimate torso to torso embrace real tango dancers use.

Yep, Spain (and France as well) has excellent daily fresh bread as does Peru which I am really looking forward to. The worst place for that is the UK where it's abysmal when you go into the supermarket and buy baguettes they're rock hard! Chile was like Peru with fresh bread where it was of good quality and they had decent cheeses, soft pates and butter! Peruvian butter is excellent whereas Peruvian cheese (queso Andino) is good, like edam, what I liked in Argentine supermarkets was the range of cured meats and mortadella - being an Italian population I imagine would be popular but what I also liked were the old worlde cafes that you can get cafe con leche and media lunas for a few pesos and sit around all day if you so choose, hopefully, they're still around.

I suppose these Japanese women are living out their last dreams and fantasies before they cark it, if she is tango dancing in her 80's or 90's then good on her! She can't take that cash with her when her time comes so why not treat the taxi dancers!

[yick]

@Shemp What do you think of the people? The ambience? What do you go between the times you are at the Milonga? Have you been around Buenos Aires? People say it is like a 'European' city like Barcelona but for me it is very much a big Latin American metropolis. What do you think of the local women? Have you made any local friends yet? Anyway, any personal insights would be welcome.