The story behind the mystery woman on that billboard at 10th and Reed

If you’ve shopped recently at the South Philly Acme on Passyunk Ave. near 10th and Reed Streets, you may have noticed a nondescript billboard image of a bespectacled, heavy-jowled woman overlooking the intersection.

A closer look

If you’ve been left bemused by the image, wondering what commercial product is supposed to be sold here, then the ad campaign has paid off. The woman is, in fact, a real person. Her name is Antoinette Conti, and she’s your typical South Philly neighbor. And the neighbor who captured her in this picture is the local photographer Zoe Strauss — best known, until recently, for her DIY photo exhibits underneath the concrete no man’s land of I-95.

Throughout the city, 52 other images in Strauss’ collection are similarly being displayed without comment or explanation. You may also know the images at 15th and Vine, 9th and Spring Garden, and 62nd and Market, as well as Cottman and Brous in the Northeast — candid portraits of everyday people, or unorthodox perspectives on their lives and living spaces.

All of these displays are a carefully coordinated effort to repurpose commercial spaces towards non-commercial ends. The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s retrospective, “Zoe Strauss: Ten Years,” opened on January 14 and runs through April 22. Although it’s a big leap from under the expressway to inside the halls of the establishment, it is great to see a hometown artist, a champion of the poor and working classes, getting her dues and a wider audience. Watch this space for more on the retrospective itself.

Philadelphia’s Outsider Art

The Philadelphia Mural Arts Program is so far-reaching that it has become almost synonymous with public art. In fact, there’s a little more to the story. Do enough exploring around the city, and you’ll uncover paintings and dabblings characterized by a noble simplicity and lack of upkeep. Some were likely inspired by the MAP’s ubiquity. Others may even predate the program itself.

16th & Diamond, North Philly. Was this in fact an MAP mural? The house hosting it has since been demolished.

I call these works outsider art, a term I use with some hesitation. Many of these works come from kids and youth groups, not mental patients or reclusive geniuses. It’s also possible that the MAP, being pretty community-focused itself, had a hand in a few of these projects.

Still, the contrast with the carefully crafted and colorful MAP aesthetic is hard to miss. The program has done much too much good for Philadelphia to ever be discredited, but with so many flashy, professionally designed murals dominating the cityscape, these lower-key pieces can be a pleasure to stumble upon.

Here are some of my favorite “outsider” murals that I’ve encountered in Philly over the years.

10th & Susquehanna, North Philly

Aramingo & Lehigh, Kensington/Richmond

Kensington & Tusculum

50th & Warrington, Cedar Park/West Philly

Randolph & Montgomery, West Kensington. A graffiti artist definitely did this one.

9th & Ellsworth, Hawthorne/South Philly

Bustleton Avenue near Philmont, Somerton

Thompson & Sergeant, Fishtown/Richmond

And just to compare…

The "typical" Philly Mural we're all familiar with, 2nd & Thompson, Old Kensington

Lehigh Avenue mural, Kensington/Richmond

Reinventing the Global City at the UN’s “Design” Exhibit

Colorful rays of sunshine over Heliópolis at "Design with the Other 90%: Cities," at the UN Visitors Centre. (Apologies for the low res)

In 1960, after a hundred thousand years of human activity, the world’s population stood at just over three billion. Today, that number has reached a staggering seven billion — especially astounding considering that we’ve added a billion people in the last twelve years alone.

The United Nations has declared October 31 to be the birthday of Baby 7 Billion — a wholly symbolic designation, of course, as population estimates are, at best, very educated guesses. Whoever the seven billionth human turns out to be, it’s also a good guess that he or she will grow up in an informal urban settlement — the charitable term for a slum. With half of the world’s people now living in cities, more than one billion inhabit shantytowns and squat settlements, and that number could easily double in the next twenty years. Seeking the upward mobility and opportunity that cities promise, these slum dwellers nevertheless lack immediate access to the basic amenities of a developed society: clean water, secure housing, reliable infrastructure, and quality health care and education.

A model of a redesigned village along Bangkok's Bang Bua Canal (above the water) versus the original layout (below). The homes have been realigned to allow for unimpeded access to the waterfront.

Design with the Other 90%: Cities, at the UN Visitors Centre, goes a long way towards illustrating the full scope of global urban development in the 21st century. Rather than focus only on statistics, which tends to induce a sort of guilt-trip-by-the-numbers over the challenges of eradicating poverty and curbing population growth, the exhibit presents the solutions that are actually being implemented. The communities profiled are found on the outskirts of sprawling cities in what is commonly labeled the Global South: Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, Indonesia and Oceania. While their inhabitants struggle for full incorporation into their cities proper, a network of urban visionaries is designing new ways to formalize the informal, and rekindling the conversation on what cities can be.

The celebration of design is part and parcel of Design Other 90′s raison d’etre. As its name suggests, the non-profit group concentrates on design of products, both essential and artistic, to benefit the large population that, it believes, doesn’t traditionally receive it. (The focus in this case is not on 90%, but 15% of the world’s population, which is still pretty significant.)

Urban design, it turns out, covers a lot of bases. It can be as simple as aesthetic beautification, as in the exhibit’s most arresting image, a block of the Heliópolis favela in São Paulo painted over with rays of color. It can also involve bringing a visual identity to what are often overlooked, unmapped communities, as in the case of a hill-climbing barrio in Lima that sees itself for the first time when a weather balloon captures the neighborhood from above.

While the theme of marginalization is recurrent in “Cities,” the unique difficulties posed by the geographical and sociological ensure that no two poverties around the world are identical. Dhaka’s villages endure periodic flooding, while Nairobi’s are feeling the effects of a severe drought that has pushed a population bigger than New York City to the brink of starvation. São Paulo’s favelas have electricity, even wifi, but little security; Bangkok’s relatively peaceful slums crowd canals and are in danger of collapse.

A public artist paints the faces of women onto houses in hillside slums to draw greater attention to the role of women in society.

Similarly, the innovations arise from the particular needs and resources of a given locale. Community centers and public spaces grant more power and security to women and children, whose vulnerability remains far more universal than any geographical limitation. Energy-efficient solutions, smart yet simple, also get a lot of space. Solar panels are introduced into housing in a planned settlement in Kenya. In neighboring Tanzania, where few homes have electricity, a cell phone charger powered by heat from a revolving bicycle wheel keeps people connected and mobile. And in Indonesia, EcoFaeBricks are developed as a lighter and cheaper alternative than clay bricks; their magic ingredient, it’s revealed, comes from cows. (Hint: a non-dairy ingredient.) They’re also stronger than clay and, since they’re made from replenishable waste, emit less carbon dioxide to produce.

The exhibit includes a mix of media, from small-scale models to video footage of quotidian city life, to underscore the sense of vibrancy in these communities, celebrating progress without shying away from the persisting hardships. Although there is some interactivity — you can walk across the life-size floor plan of a Bangkok hut — it’s not the exhibit’s strong point. Visitors can browse through a booklet on a iPad, but this can feel more cumbersome to use than a real paper edition. Some pieces also appeared to be out of commission during my visit, like the Ugandan “Digital Drum,” essentially a computer station constructed out of a periscope-shaped oil barrel. A non-functioning computer at an exhibit is like a book cover with all the pages inside missing.

Where “Cities” succeeds, however, is in the delivery of its message. There is no dreaming of a better world, imagining the possible; there is instead making the possible happen, putting ideas into action and yielding results. That it holds itself back from imagining even more could be perceived as a weakness by some. Yet it is hard to argue with what has been realized in these communities with smaller resource pools than developed societies, examples that should be especially informative to those of us who are not accustomed to achieving more with less.

Although it’s currently fashionable to divide society into percentages denoting the haves and have-nots, the “Other 90%” designation should not be seen as invidious. The technologies highlighted in the exhibit are not limited to wealthy nations reaching out to poor ones. They come from all over: international NGOs, municipal governments, homegrown artists and Western-educated entrepreneurs. (The EcoFaeBricks were designed by students at an Indonesian business school.) More than anything, “Cities” shows off the creativity that is transforming underdeveloped communities via solutions that are practical, resourceful, aesthetically dignifying and socially empowering. They make it easier to perceive the world in terms of a single community — the one hundred percent — instead of one stratified and reduced to statistics.

“Design with the Other 90%: Cities” runs through January 9, 2012 at the UN Visitors Centre, First Avenue and 47th Street, New York. Entry is free and open to the public. To learn more, go to visit.un.org.

Last Waltz for the Netherlands (i.e. an octupus-free World Cup post)

Shostakovich’s Waltz No. 2 always seemed like fittingly upbeat music for losers to wallow in, but imagine a stadium full of Holland fans riffing on it like a football chant.

So it is. Here’s one last sendoff for the close-but-no-cigar Dutch national team.

The clip is from halftime at a match at Amsterdam’s Olympic Stadium. The leader of the chant? None other than Andre Rieu, the frivolous, self-esteeming, undisputed king of classical music’s lower middlebrow and a ubiquitous presence on public television (especially, in the US, during pledge drives). The waltz, which has sort of become Rieu’s trademark, is definitely not the most obscure piece of music in the repertoire. Even so, it’s a bit astonishing to discover that soccer fans — alleged hooligans — already know it well.

Now, Rieu is Dutch, so he may well be a celebrity in his home country. Maybe the fans needed to rehearse the melody before the cameras rolled. Or maybe AFC Ajax Amsterdam’s supporters simply admire the beauty of Shostakovich.

(Here’s a clearer recording for the admirers and for the uninitiated.)

Score one goal for classical music literacy — for now.

Also, congrats to Spain on the victory.

Age is just a number…and so is the print run of your first novel.

I’ve had plenty of time now to look over The New Yorker‘s latest summer fiction issue devoted to writers under forty. Readers familiar with Granta, which produces similar editions focusing on young British and American novelists, will notice some overlap here with the 2007 edition. As then, the pool of writers in The New Yorker is global: almost half were born outside the US. Yet despite the diversity in walks of life, most of the authors have the same thing in common: an MFA from a major creative writing program. (Jonathan Safran Foer is one exception, but then, he studied with Joyce Carol Oates at Princeton.)

The author profiles are worth a read. Although talents like Foer seem to write novels without breaking a sweat, most of those here reveal the opposite impression. Philipp Meyer, who’s now 36, shows just how painstaking the road to success can be:

[T]he first year I lived with my parents, I applied to a bunch of M.F.A. programs and was rejected by all of them. Now, by this time, I’d written two novels—not things I’d dashed off and stuck in a drawer but books I’d painstakingly revised and rewritten, labored over for years….

[S]trange as it might sound, I never questioned that I was a good writer. I did, however, begin to seriously question my writing…. I didn’t know why I liked the books I liked. So I decided I would throw everything away, everything I’d heard in college and everything else. I decided I would trust only myself—what I really believed and felt to be true. Which, of course, didn’t exactly occur overnight: it probably took the better part of 2004. But it was a very conscious effort.

That was when things began to change. I think of it as year zero, though it was actually year ten…. I think you really have to stare down the demons. You really have to know what making art is worth to you.

I’m not poised to evaluate the writers myself due to my limited exposure to their work — although I will say that I’ve enjoyed much of what I’ve seen of American Rust and definitely want to read more. Yet the very act of showcasing twenty writers and deeming them “The Future” of American letters is sure to provoke love-hate reactions. As a writer not yet of a certain age, I taste grapes sour and sweet: Well, some people just get lucky, they have MFAs and better connections, imagine all the talented writers still moiling in obscurity — But oh, how inspiring to read tales of hard work! What a great incentive for me to actually try hard again! Why use travel as a cover for appearing to do something worthwhile with my life when I should be writing more? And on and on.

It’s not about envy. The central issue here is not that of basking in the glamour of youth. And no one pretends that the list is definitive, that there are no other significant writers out there who would be more widely known in different circumstances.

The matter is really something much simpler: if you don’t publish while you’re still young, you never will. If you don’t find some affirmation of your writing ability early on in the game, it means you never were a writer to begin with. You don’t have what it takes. So why keep at it?

This sentiment is not universally shared among all writers, but it is an all too common fear among those who are stuck in obscurity. In response to the New Yorker issue, Sam Tanenhaus has opined in the New York Times that great writers tend to produce their best work while they’re still young. (He’s defining “young” as under 40, in the same terms as the New Yorker.) Flaubert completed Madame Bovary before he turned 35; Kafka wrote “The Metamorphosis” at 29; Faulkner published The Sound and the Fury at 32. Other writers who peaked early in life include Ernest Hemingway, Herman Melville and Thomas Mann.

That doesn’t mean they don’t get better with age, though: Tanenhaus cites as examples Virginia Woolf (“entered her prime in her 40s”), Henry James (60s) and Philip Roth (ditto). He could have also included Sherwood Anderson (43 when he began writing the Winesburg stories), Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita at 55, Pale Fire at 62), Wallace Stevens (winner of two National Book Awards in his 70s)…hell, why stop there? And why presume that writers like Flaubert, Hemingway, and Faulkner had no more masterpieces to give the world after their alleged peaks? Are Sentimental Education and Absalom, Absalom! suddenly insignificant bulks of pulp? In other words, it’s perfect fodder for a cocktail gathering of English majors.

But while Tanenhaus’s assessments are debatable, he does have a serious point:

It may well be that the writers singled out by The New Yorker have already written lasting works. But it is a mistake to assume that because they are young [...] they must be poised midway up Parnassus, with higher achievements to come. The trouble, perhaps, is that this definition of “young writer,” which owes less to literary considerations than to the intersecting categories of sociology and marketing, muddies our understanding of how truly original, enduring fiction comes to be written. Worse, it threatens to infantilize our writers, reducing them to the condition of permanent apprentices who grind steadily toward “maturity” as they prepare to write their “breakthrough” books.

No one should pretend that the list is the beginning and the end of everything innovative and exciting going on in the world of fiction today. And the use of age to gauge a writer’s potential is, at best, a limited tool. Still, however many years young you happen to be, it never hurts to think upon your imminent mortality as a motivation to keep writing.

Greatest. Ad. Ever.

Don’t know what else to say. How about “wow”?

Help me out, Seth Stevenson:

Helmed by Academy Award-nominated director Alejandro González Iñárritu, the spot is a frenzy of quick-cut, hyperspeed storytelling. Like Iñárritu’s movies (Babel, 21 Grams, Amores Perros), the ad jumps lithely among multiple plotlines. But while Iñárritu’s feature films often substitute temporal disorientation for a well-devised narrative, and soapy melodrama for gravitas, here the bouncy mood and compacted running time are a perfect match for the director’s over-the-top impulses.

As a fan of his films, I was wondering what González Iñárritu had been up to. I am pretty sure no one else could have directed this commercial but him. This is a three-minute epic: when I hear “eternity in the palm of your hand,” I’ll think of this. Or maybe “anatomic precision” is better.

The ad doesn’t make me want to buy Nike products, but it does put me in the mood for the Cup. (By watching a few games, though, I may be subliminally endorsing Nike as a result anyway.) As an American abroad removed from the usual apathy of my fellow citizens, I think I’m discovering more about what people mean by “citizen of the world.” I’m not haughty enough to label myself as such, but this ad instills something in me. It’s not a love for the technical aspects of the game itself; it’s more of a desire to feel like a part of something that most of the world is also partaking in — a desire not to feel left out.

This ad may not bowl over American audiences, even with the clear cultural references. Still, is it possible that a widespread lack of interest in soccer says less about our sporting tastes and more about the vaunted place that we assume for granted among the global community?

Whatever the answer, you need to lack a pulse not to be excited by this mini-film. Let the ball roll.

Angels, Beats, and a Party for the World: May in Review

When I arrived in Argentina at the end of February, I knew that the summer weather was nearing its end and the colder months lay ahead of me. I knew it, but at the same time, I distrusted it. The northern hemisphere mindset is hard to shake if you’ve known summers in July all of your life.

Sure enough, by May the temperatures had dropped, the days shortened, the soft and lazy rains set in. Even though it’s not nearly as cold as it was in Philly around my departure, you get used to griping wherever you are.

Yet, far from being one continuous panorama of gloom, Buenos Aires was livelier than ever during the month of May. A lot of that newfound energy came from the anticipation of the biggest event of all, the bicentennial. Here are the highlights from that lead-up:

Circus Acts. Yes, snow is a rarity in this city. Three years ago, a chilly stretch brought a dusting to the streets, but it was a once-in-a-century occurrence. On the evening of May 8, as Buenos Aires wrapped up its week-long International Circus Festival, it was a different sort of white stuff that had people frolicking like children again: Plaza San Martin, a tango hat’s toss from the train station in the city’s Retiro neighborhood, was reinvented as “Place des Anges.”

Courtesy of La Nacion

The French troupe Les Studios de Cirque de Marseille turned the plaza into an acrobatic stage…although, in fact, the “stage” extended over a hundred feet above, as wires suspended across surrounding buildings served as the performers’ way of entrance. This was the stage for the angels, albeit angels of an otherworldly, new-wave aesthetic. The spectacle, accompanied by music with Near Eastern influences and waling vocals, reinforced that feeling. The angel/acrobats came and went here and there up above, scampering across ropes like crank-consuming possums or dangling, spinning and swirling from their harnesses as they gently came to earth.

Courtesy of La Nacion

And they brought with them a heavenly gift: feathers. Lots of them.

Courtesy of La Nacion

It’s impossible to exaggerate their number. They fell sprinkled from pillow fights, they fell in large chunks as if they were pillows, and in the coup de grace, they were shot through giant tubes into the air. They wove themselves into the hair and coats of all who were present. The whole event lasted around half an hour, but people stayed long after. And seeing the crowds reduced to childish glee, throwing the landed piles of feathers that were everywhere and dancing in the plaza afterward, made at least this northerner smile.

The Best Beatle Band in the World. Yeah, it’s true: a Beatles band in South America.

If you thought the soundtrack to Argentina was exclusively a playlist of tango and Spanish-language rock, you were sadly mistaken. All it took for me was a visit to the Gran Rex, a true giant of a performance venue on Avenida Corrientes in the theater district, to witness The Beats, “La mejor banda Beatle del mundo,” to agree that they well were the best on any continent.

More than a lingering curiosity, imitation rock-and-roll ensembles (also called “mock stars”) are a defining cultural staple of our times. The first generation to witness the phenomenon of mass-produced popular music, passed their envy down to their children, and so we have to sort of make believe what it was like when all was golden on the charts. Beatlemania is the pinnacle of this movement. The Beatles tribute bands are many, but the idea of musicians impersonating the fab four for a living is in a whole other realm. As it turns out, that realm does not exclusively belong to the English-speaking world.

The actors don’t quite have the resemblance to the real guys. Paul doesn’t have the eternal baby face down, but you can still pick him out easily, and Ringo appears less giddily agitated than nonplussed, besides the fact that he’s too scrawny, which is saying something. John and George seem resigned to the fact that they require a bit of imagination at face value, although during the show, John in his later years post-Revolver becomes more believable with glasses and a longer mane.

All that said, if you can withhold counting their looks against them, their sound is pretty commendable:

Once you realize that they’re not pretending to be the real thing — offering, instead, a historical reenactment for generations and nationalities who never got to witness Beatlemania first-hand — the show can be quite enjoyable.

“Irrepetible,” their most recent show, featured a multitude of sets and costumes representative of nearly the entire Beatles run. Interestingly, they began the concert with a medley of standards from the Let it Be era and then jumped around the time line, even strolling in white suits for “Your Mother Should Know.” They finally capped it off with a page from the clean-cut “British invasion” onset: “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” then “Twist ‘n Shout” for the encore.

Individual talents were also (mostly) stressed. John offered a pair of anachronisms, “Imagine” and “Give Peace a Chance,” the latter from his bed (minus Yoko) while a video montage of current global conflicts cemented his all-too-obvious status as a prophet (to some souls, he is still bigger than Jesus). Paul soloed on “Yesterday” and “Fool on the Hill,” betraying his Argentine accent a little in his enunciation of the, behind the teeth rather than on them. (To his credit, he does play left-handed.) And George, who really sounded like freaking George, brandished a sitar for “Love You To” and tore it up.

Alas, no “Octopus’s Garden” from Ringo. Not a word. It’s like the guy was just happy to be there.

The Beats will never out-Liverpool the Liverpudlians, but their act is impressive. About time more fans of the original group took notice.

However, it was a few steps away from the Gran Rex that the most touted performance venue in the city would soon be celebrated.

The Teatro Colon. Opera houses are a big adjectival deal. They have always been containment areas for the well-heeled to witness the most grandiose statements of human emotion that artistic performance can achieve. Even as they’ve grown more egalitarian, they remain the surest test of a cultivated citizenry, ensuring the highest denominator for all levels of entertainment below. The Teatro Colon is not just the most storied such theater on the continent; it’s on the shortlist of best in the world. For a city whose heritage is indebted to Europe, the Teatro is a link to that Old World tradition–an emblem of cultural continuity and exchange in a country that is barely celebrating 200 years as an independent state.

When it originally opened in 1908, the Colon proudly stood as an emblem of the immense wealth of the country. It then withstood every tumult and collapse of the long century, and finally emerged into the next one in serious debt and need of repair. There was no option but to close the opera house in 2006 for long-needed renovations. After several delays, the theater foundation and the city government at last arranged to christen its reopening on May 24, 2010–the eve of Argentina’s bicentennial.

The Colon overlooks the wide expanse of Avenida 9 de Julio, just a few blocks north of the obelisk in the heart of the city center. The bicentenario, it was clear from the throngs of the masses packing that boulevard, would be a gargantuan celebration unlike any other. (At least, unlike any not football-related.) I arrived at the center before 7pm to find crowds nearly impenetrable on the way to the Colon. When the ceremony started, a half-hour late (as lateness is fashionable in this part of the world), the weary crowds were desperate for a good show. They got it.

The theater’s facade became a screen onto which a montage of images were projected, narrating the history and legacy of the opera house. The images, however, were painstakingly designed to fit into the nuances of every window and column on the facade. (The Argentines call this un mapping, which is in the spirit of their tradition of taking gerunds from English and misunderstanding them slightly in the original. For the record, the Italians and French do this too.) And as the montage covered the great moments from the opera, the symphony orchestra, ballet, and performances of folkloric and popular music, all under the Colon’s roof, it was the task of the audio to accompany the visual and allow glorious music to pour all over 9 de Julio. Well, too bad the audio kept malfunctioning — even ruining the climax of “Nessun dorma,” which elicited a lot of groans and whistles of disapproval.

In spite of the imperfections, the “mapping” of the theater was a feast for the eyes and carried the night:

So while the theater didn’t literally open up for the ceremony, the new season has since gotten underway. A city that has withstood so many tribulations has reason to be proud again.

[Next: More on the Bicentenario. Stay tuned.]

Conceptions of Buenos Aires: Everything is dirt cheap

(This is the first in an occasional series of looks at common perceptions, true or false, that people may have about life in Buenos Aires.)

Since the economic crisis of 2001 resulted in the crippling of the national currency, travel experts have touted Argentina as one of the most affordable destinations in the world…for those with dollars, euros or pounds sterling in their pockets, that is. But are things really as cheap as they say they are?

Yes, the hard currency has held strongly against the Argentine peso, which currently floats at around $3.90 to the dollar. What this exchange rate doesn’t reveal is the meteoric rise in inflation over the past two years. As prices of basic necessities go up — a kilogram of beef, the staple product here, can cost more than 30 pesos at the supermarket — Argentine salaries have struggled to keep pace. Economic instability means that people have to devise creative ways to make ends meet: eating out less often; living in close-knit units; taking advantage of some loophole in the law or just the relaxed nature of government corruption; having palancas, or connections, to land a steady job — or just giving and taking a little generosity among neighbors and families in the face of uncertainty.

Of course, if you’re an expat, you’re circumstances are probably different. You probably won’t need to worry about scrimping costs, at first. The exchange rate is, overall, still pretty favorable, but don’t expect crazy bargains. Instead of paying 40 pesos for groceries that would cost $40 in the States, you’ll more likely pay close to 100 pesos for $40 worth of groceries. Expect to pay even more if you are wedded to buying condiments and snacks imported from home. A pint of beer goes for anywhere from 8 to 14 pesos in a fancy bar, and a ticket at the movies will fall in the 20-25 peso range. If you’re shopping for new books, clothing or electronics, you will probably pay even more than you would at home. One thing that does fit the dirt-cheap category is public transportation: thanks to government subsidies, a one-way ticket on the Subte (or subway) is just AR$1.10, and the usual bus fare is AR$1.25. The services, though often sardine-packed, are efficient and reliable. But time will tell where these fares end up.

For long-term visitors, there are at least two common frustrations: renting an apartment and withdrawing money. It is well known that expats have great difficulty finding apartments with standard two-year leases and will often have to pay much more than the natives for a temporary rental. Still, compared to London or Manhattan, the prices in Buenos Aires’ upscale neighborhoods are a steal. For comparison’s sake, the cost of my living situation here — a large furnished bedroom in a three-bedroom apartment in trendy Palermo — is very close to that of mine in Philadelphia, a larger two-bedroom apartment but in a down-to-earth, working-class neighborhood.Starters should check out craigslist and Clarin, as well as Solo Dueños and Comparto Depto. Knowing Spanish, or someone who speaks it, goes a long way to assure that you’re paying a fair price. If you’re flexible, you can settle for cheaper and steadier living quarters a few months after your first temporary rental.

Then there are the ATMs. Most of them limit your withdrawals to 300 pesos at a time and charge you a fifteen-peso fee on top. But not all. The bank I frequent the most is Santander Rio, which allows up to AR$1,000 withdrawals at a time. Higher amounts make the fee somewhat more bearable — although chances are that your bank is charging you $5 (almost 20 pesos) or more along with it. So definitely contact your bank and find out what the deal is; there may be ways around it. At the worst, the fees will likely be an annoyance but little more. When it comes to affordable living, Buenos Aires may not be the haven it was once thought to be, but you can live comfortably and get around town on less if you play it right.

From Glimmer Train, With Honor

Short story writers have to learn to live through disappointments if they want to stay in the game. It has never been easy for me to accept an impersonal rejection slip from a literary publication, even though the super high volume of submissions that magazines receive makes that reality understandable. So whatever accolades I can get, I’ll take them.

Without further ado, the news: this week, the editors of Glimmer Train Stories, one of the most respected magazines in the US devoted entirely to short fiction, formally recognized my work. My story has been listed for Honorable Mention in the January 2010 competition for the magazine’s Very Short Fiction Award. I didn’t crack the Top 25, but I came very close — according to the editors, my story placed in the top five percent out of more than a thousand contest entries.

You should by all means check out the contest winners here. They are certainly more than deserving of the honors. (NB For the moment, you need to log into your account to see the list.)

Here’s the Honorable Mention:

2010-January-VSF-HONORABLE-MENTION-list

This close. I swear.

I am now more confident, though, that this story will find a home sooner than later, and I’ll provide an update when that happens. It is quite a thrill to be recognized in this manner. To all fellow writers out there, keep the faith.

Culturas, Steve McCurry

The photography of Steve McCurry is the meeting place of journalism and art. It is not just the skill of rendering a piece of the visual world into a colorful, captivating image; it is the hunger for seeing the world, for revealing something about it to a wider audience, something edifying and deep. If you’ve read National Geographic over the last thirty years, even taken a glance at some of the images now and then, chances are you’ve encountered his work. And chances are, whether for a passing moment or far longer, you’ve been struck.

The work of McCurry — as it happens, a Philadelphia native — is the subject of “Culturas”, an exhibit taking place at the wonderful Centro Cultural Borges. It is the first showing devoted to his work to open in Argentina. McCurry’s most renowned photograph will probably always be that of the displaced Afghan girl, taken in the mid-80s during the tumultuous Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Doubtless, the girl’s green, scintillating eyes define the photo, offering scores of unspoken words that delineate the plight of a refugee. And yet, by some trick or generous skill on McCurry’s part, the moment preserved in the photo is both dramatic and natural, beautified but unforced.

That quality carries across much of the work exhibited in “Culturas”. Across the vast scopes of the world that we safely deem “non-Western” — and as a consequence, have often passively deemed Cultural Others — McCurry carries his camera. His photos give light to cultures affected by the usual suspects of global inequality: war, poverty, disease, pollution. Yet while they can overwhelm with their bleakness, they don’t exploit the feeling of their subjects in an attempt to jar the viewer. They are more of a testament to people’s resilience in the face of hardship. The moments of rest, worship, and jubilation among people are documented just as well.

The conscientious mind perusing the stills in the gallery will exit with a sense of amazement at McCurry’s technical brilliance, while feeling a little less centric about his or her place in the world. No one can ever capture the whole world as it really is, of course. Unlike photographs, cultures are fluid and living. But a dignified, artistic rendering of the world as it is will still go a long way. As another superpower has its boots in Afghanistan in the present, it’s clear that some realities are not so quick to change.

["Culturas" runs through March 31 at the Centro Cultural Borges, on the top floor of Galerías Pacífico, at Viamonte and San Martín. $10 general admission, $8 for students and seniors. For more images, see Steve McCurry's homepage here.]