SMA: Where the Wild Things Are

We went clubbing last night.  Sort of.  We started off wandering around the heart of darkness enjoying an arty, open house evening (free drinks and snacks). We went to 10 different galleries, half on Mesones and the balance mostly on cross streets, with the first, fourth and tenth being our favorites. 

The first had a nicely eclectic collection – prints, paintings, casual clothing.  They had a lot of the abstract art that I like and Darcie was taken with the t-shirts with abstract line drawings of animals and things.  Nice fruit punch with a bottle of vodka standing by for self medication. Snacks were pretty decent too: meaty things, guacamole, cheesy bits…

The fourth place was a bastion of Mexican art – some really impressive Dia de Los Muertos sculptures – I would love some but they are just too fragile seeming (and expensive) to feel comfortable shipping although I expect it is done successfully often enough.  There was this huge painting that strongly reminded me of being on the ocean in a small boat at night in the fog.  I remarked this to Darcie and was overheard by one the people we met at the last art show we went to at the Instituto (see previous post) who turned out to be a seasonal salmon fisherman in Bristol Bay, Alaska.  He had been in the process of essentially remarking the same to his wife!

A particular highlight of the night for Darcie was the application of fuzzy-love.  While walking out of the fourth. gallery, she ran into one of the town dogs “Cheeky” who she’s met with her owner at least 5 times during our stay.  Cheeky is a beagle mix who is particularly sweet and friendly and always willing to accept pets.  At about the sixth gallery we met a grayhound named Tinturo who was wearing a coat with “FBI” embroidered on it.  He was also partcularly friendly and sat by Darcie’s side for the entire time we visited.  He even gave her a kiss on the nose.  The day was full of fuzz-love since we’d also run into a german shepherd mix at a bike shop in the morning.  This dog immediately came up to us and begged for loving.  Whenever we stopped petting her, she’d paw us for more.  Overall, a very good day for Darcie.

The last place was fun just for the random and eclectic art.  They also had three burqas, part of their current exhibit, for patrons to try on.  Darcie, Yaya and Mary popped them on:

After the burqafest we headed over to a rooftop restaurant/bar just off the Jardin that had great views, good DJ-spun tunes and good food (We shared a grilled steak sandwich with fries ooh lala).  There are a raft of these downtown rooftop places that are in a lot of ways off the radar.  What I mean by this is that if you didn’t know they were there you would probably miss them since there is always seemingly a restaurant immediately inside the front door at ground level.

After a couple of hours of chatting with Yaya and her friends we wandered down the street to a local institution: Mama Mia’s where the live band was thumping out Mexican rock and roll covers.  The crowd was really into it, singing along most of the time with gusto if not harmony.  We hung out until the band finished their set then wandered off to a bar around the corner which turned out to be pretty quiet.  It was like going to hang out in someone's living room.

We finally wound up at the local Irish Pub, The Limerick!  Owned by two Argentinean's, they have a lively crowd and last night a seemingly well-known DJ who was supposed to have come on at 9pm but didn’t actually hit the decks until 1am!  I expect part of this was the management foolishness of slapping a 250 peso cover charge which left the place fairly empty until midnight or so (roughly when we arrived).  By the time we arrived the cover charge was being waved (possibly selectively – it helped to have a cute front woman – Yaya leading our troupe of 6 we think). 

When the guest DJ took the stage, the crowd got pretty animated, Climbing up onto the bar to dance and swinging the hanging \ceiling lights so hard they were smashing into the bottles on the shelf behind the bar.  This is seemingly a common-place occurrence since there was absolutely no excitement from management and staff.  There were some extra bits added to the special DJ in the form of lasers, some indoor firework sparklers, and finally some glow sticks being thrown out into the audience (perhaps paid for by some people’s 250 peso cover charge).

 

We got home at 2:30am, showered off the cigarette smoke and collapsed into bed!