Barzon Magazine

I love magazines.  Mainly interior design and decoration, but also fashion, culture, travel, food... and I am quite an expert when it comes to magazines both Australian and international, and now, Argentinian. The magazine scene in Argentina is quite shameful, and you really need to know your stuff to be able to choose a good one.  They have some sort of secret if you touch a magazine you WILL buy it code amongst the newspapers stands, which makes flipping through various mags impossible.  It is inevitable that you commit several purchasing errors... lured in by the seemingly edgy and well-designed cover, but sadly, inside there is rarely more than 10 minutes worth of entertainment.  Barzon is not one of these magazines.

My favourite magazine by far, Barzon is a mix of culture, style, fashion, interiors, architecture and art, and it focuses on Argentina, and stretches sometimes to other parts of Latin America.  The photography is amazing, the houses they feature are too, and you can actually spend hours leafing through the content and learning about the life of a local artist or the history of a city in the north of the country that contributes to the culture of Argentina.  If you are looking for THE best mag, Barzon is it!  The text is all in Spanish, but if you don´t speak it, you can at least enjoy the photography and great design.

 Images from Barzon, issue 14

White Houses

Following a complete lack of photo-taking, I found these pics I took a while back of different houses that happen to be white (ish).  I really like the effect that the light has in the images.  The first two are from Santa Fe, and the last three are the house of a friend who lives in Villa Urquiza in Buenos Aires, and always has huge parties.  I love the art deco facade of his place!  The wall actually looks like marcasite and sparkles!!

I love to drink coffee here

This cafe is on Avenida de Mayo, one of my favourite avenues in Buenos Aires, and near the building of Congress.  This is a really old and traditional area of the city, where there are such gems as Cafe Tortoni, lovely old buildings, odd-characters in the street, the hotel Castelar (which looks super old-world cool) and many other old bars and pizza places.  In this particular cafe I love the wall texture and colour, the painting, the big mirror near the door and the smartly dressed old waiters (always men.  Actually, these placese are usually full of old men too, not sure where the women are...)

I love to drink coffee here too

This coffee shop is on Avenida Corrientes, amoung the theatres, trash, noise and chaos of this area of the city.  The neon sign is at the back of the store, and highlights their house specialities: churros (fried spanish doghnuts) and submarinos (hot chocolates!).  Full of characters from oldies, to theatre goers and everyone in between, it´s a great place to people watch.

I love to drink coffee here

Las Violetas is probably my favourite coffee shop.  It is traditional, swanky, beautiful and one of the busiest places to be at 4pm on a saturday or sunday when there is a line up of old ladies to get in.  Several years ago it was restored to it´s original glory, and the building-fit out, lights and windows are amazing.  The indulgence of choice is a gob-smacking platter of cakes and sandwiches (which comes with champagne!) far too grande and sweet to get through but definitely worth the experience.  It´s open pretty much 24 hours, and I love stopping by late at night on my way home (circa 2am) and finding it full of people.

Cool shops #2

Shoe store Natacha is very nice indeed.  Yesterday I bought some converse-inspired leather shoes; the quality is great and the colour is quite unique.  They have a plethora of leather boots and lovely flats, as well as heels I would never wear but are equally enjoyable just to look at.  Oh la la.

Cool shops #1

I love Papalera Palermo, a huge paper shop in Palermo Soho that sell well, paper (obviously), hand-bound books with scren printed covers, quirky origami animals and objects, beautiful albums, art prints, I could go on...
It is the perfect place to pick up a quick gift for a friend, and they even have printing and origami workshops that you can take which look like a lot of fun and you can pick up some new gift-making techniques in the process! I went there today to buy a small gift for a friend who recently looked after my lovely cats for a weekend, and now I want to buy this Eva Peron limited-edition print...