sit back, relax, and enjoy the riot

If I had to characterize my time abroad, I would say that I am in a constant pursuit to really connect with Buenos Aires. At times I think that the best way to feel entrenched in porteno life is to go about with the trivialities of my everyday routine, but other times I feel the urge to milk the city of its cultural and local experiences to avoid feeling like I’ve simply transplanted my life in New York to a South American setting.

In a weekend where I was feeling particularly inclined towards intensifying my familiarity with the city—visiting several museums, exhausting my Porteno contacts, going to local parties and boliches until six in the morning every night—several friends and I took the advice of a very cute administrator at NYU, and went to a unusually interesting show.

album art

On this night, my three friends and I all got into separate cabs, assuming that the concert was a 10 minute ride—6 peso fare away—as usual. As time passed and we all grew more and more anxious, alone in the back seats of our respective cabs, beginning to assume the worst from our sheisty taxistas, we began texting each other to make sure that we weren’t be “taken for a ride.” I asked my cab driver which neighborhood we were in. He looked at me confusedly in the rearview mirror, “Belgrano por su puesto.” He retorted. “Ah yes! Belgrano.” I said. He could tell I’d never been to this seemingly obvious part of town—which I had thought was a suburb of Buenos Aires, and he responded that Buenos Aires doesn’t only exist in Puerto Madero and Palermo (the most posh, and probably least cool areas)…ouch!

I decided to take what the taxi driver said as less of an insult and more as a bit of wisdom. How had I not been to Belgrano yet after three months in the city? I got out of the cab in front of a huge theatre, El Centro Cultural 25 de Mayo, and was relived to see my friend waiting out in front. I could sense the relief in his eyes as well since he was obviously the first of us to arrive. The crowd loitering outside was a serious aberration from the typical Argentine scene—indie kids, hipsters, maybe a punk or two. It was all very exciting.

We walked into the theatre half way through the first band’s set, and there we saw the strangest thing. “Go Neko” the indie band on stage was rocking out, while the hundreds of people who had come to see them play we sitting, orderly and well mannered in the theatre chairs—calmly bobbing their heads and drumming their hands to the music. The disparity between the performance on stage, and the venue was so bizarre. If you were to only look at the stage you would expect a mosh pit in the audience, and if you were to only look out at the audience you would expect to see a full orchestra on stage.

We followed suit, however, found ourselves some seats and sat back to relax and enjoy the show. One of us even left at some point to go get soda and candy from the Kiosko—a reflex perhaps of being in a theatre. Eventually the band we had come to see, "El Mato a Un Policia Motorizado," came on. The previously orderly crowd began to get a little rowdier—apparently this group from the city of La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina has quite a following. But for the most part, everyone returned to their chairs, bobbing, drumming, singing along.

el mato a un policia motorizado

At one point a song came on that aroused great enthusiasm in the crowd. One chico jumped on stage and began galloping back and forth, kicking his legs and reaching out into the crowd, beckoning others to come and join him. At first only one other boy got on with him, and the two continued to jump around in their indie ways. But then the madness spread and everyone began pouring onto the stage, at which point an epic mosh pit ensued for the duration of the song—despite the desperate protestations of a few small women who worked for the theatre.

It was as though the music defied the venue, and after that people wouldn’t be confined to their chairs. Instead they crowded to the aisles and danced up against the stage, or hung off the balcony shaking their heads to beat. It was definitely a show worthy of stepping outside Palermo.