The White Rabbit

After the newspaper kiosk closes and the sun goes down, this little guy comes out to play on the corner of Dorrego and Amenabar in Palermo.

Casa in Palermo

Some super cute street art to make this otherwise slightly scary-looking building a bit sweeter...

The Entrance, Niceto Vega

Women´s Help Line

After an exhausting stint of Christmas shopping around the Plaza Serrano market in Palermo, I found this advertisement for a women´s help line run by the government. Brilliant.

Street Corner - Palermo

 

Today I had brunch at Oui Oui in Palermo Hollywood, delicious! Scrambled eggs, pancetta, green salad, chunky cut potatoes and limonada, mmmmm.  Just a block away on the corner of Arenal and Amenabar I had previously spotted this little long-nosed creature and loved his style. Great colours too!

Asian Boy

 

This little guy lives on a building in Palermo Soho.

Bikes and Birds

There is a small bicycle revolution happening in BA. The government are building bike lanes all over the city and providing many stations where you can use them for free and then drop them off at another location.  And aside from that, more and more people are buying and riding their own bikes as a clean, healthy and more enjoyable alternative to the chaos of public transport.

However, I think you need to be almost bat-sh%$ crazy to take to these congested streets on a bike, where the bus drivers basically use you as target practice and wouldn´t give way to you if their lives depended on it. And aside from this, nobody wears a helmut! But anyway, nice bike art... and some birds too.

Sexy Serpent

This lady and her snake keep me company while I wait for the bus after work in Palermo...

Cowboys

Technicolour cowboys in Palermo...

Roho

Last night I went to the uber-cool, rock and roll hairdresser Roho in Palermo.  The fitout is impressive, and features a lot of fluro/neon colour.  It´s kind of 70´s in spirit and also feels like you are at a bar.  They have a dj booth so I guess sometimes it really almost is a bar, although for it to be a bar they would have to offer you a drink (I will get to that later).  All of the hairdressers are guys, not quite sure why as I think girls cut really well too... and they have a huge circular couch to hang out on while you are waiting for your turn.  Luckily the couch is comfy because I was waiting a while.

The thing that I just cannot come to terms with in Argentina, is that "cool" places and things that are expensive are ruined by bad service.  It costs 90AR pesos for a cut, no wash or blow dry, which is pretty pricey, but I have no problem paying this when the experience is enjoyable.  I had an appointment at 6.30, so when it was 7.05pm I asked the receptionist if it would be much longer, and she said "yeah, about 20 minutes because we had a lot of people come in without appointments".  And so why did I make the appointment if the people without them were able to be served anyway?  So almost an hour after my scheduled appointment I got started, and my hairdresser excused himself twice to attend to other matters, for between 5 and 10 minutes each time.  I actually really like the cut, it´s just what I was after, but something that should have been a nice experience left me with a cara de culo (let´s call it, an "angry face").

Here is a tip for hairdressing salons in Buenos Aires: If you want to charge a lot and be cool, be nice to your customers.  Offer them something to drink (why is this not standard?), apologise if there is a delay, and don´t leave your customer alone during the haircut, boludo!

 

These first four photos are from the Palermo salon, the shots below are from the Caballito one , which I may try next time to see if they are a little more with my ideals of making the customer enjoy their experience.  Here´s hoping.

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...

Sabado lluvioso

Saturday it rained all day, which meant that the streets were practically empty (a rare treat!).  I went shopping, eating and coffee-drinking in Palermo Soho and took some snaps as I went.