What lies Beneath (My Apartment)

A room with a ViewThe three blocks I have lived on in the past three years have never ceased to amaze me. In my first year at NYU I lived directly next to the projects and every time I walked home I was either offered drugs or called “white boyyyyy”. My second year at NYU I made the mistake of renting an apartment on St. Marks Place, the street brothel of the east village. Just by my luck I lived right above the noisiest bar on the block and each night I found myself drifting off to sleep to the lovely sounds of drunken buffoons. Naturally in the third year of my NYU experience, my time abroad in Buenos Aires I live on the hooker bar block.

Vicente Lopez between Pueyreddon y Guracahga is the realm of the high-class hooker bars. Five bars in a row, each with the symbolic emblem of 5 stars-the mark of a bar that bar something special lurking on the inside. During the day my block is as normal as they come. There’s the flower man on the corner whom only has one leg and jumps between cars attempting to sell his wears during peak traffic hours. There’s the fruit and vegetable stand, a place I go nearly every day to buy fresh produce, and where the workers are constantly watching Argentine telenovelas. There’s the ever-present “SuperKiosco”, a corner store clone that exists on almost every block in the center of Buenos Aires. But when the sun goes down, my block transforms into a different beast.

The first sign that something out of the ordinary is happening on Vicente Lopez is the guy waving down taxis on the middle of a pedestrian block. From the hours of 8PM till about 7AM, this guy stands with a huge flag in his hand beaconing cars and taxis to him as if he was working at a mainstream hotel. The second sign that Vicente Lopez is different from all other streets are the flyer boys who dance from sidewalk to sidewalk forcing you to take their advertisements. Now these advertisements aren’t your average run of the mill flyers, each one has naked woman and man, with the corresponding name of the bar in which you can find them. So every night as I casually try to make my way to my apartment I’m bombarded with flyers and other guys who are the next level workers for these prostitution rings. These guys are a little more serious and ask questions-in English- like “Would you care to see the show these evening Senor?” Now the first couple weeks I could never get to the door of my apartment without being harassed by this crew, but now they know my face and just ask, “When are you finally going to give in?”- now they ask in Spanish.

Trying to get to sleep on my block in Buenos Aires is way more intense then it ever was on St. Marks Place. I’m always hearing throngs of screams from groups of tourists below, hustling to get into the bars for lower prices, or coming out of the bars and yelling to the high heavens. Then if I’m still unable to fall asleep you get the crew of workers emerging from the bar just as the sun is rising. They tend to fraternize outside smoking cigarettes and drinking beer until god only knows what hours. Usually I can only get to sleep by turning the air conditioning on blast to subdue the noises from below. But even with the lack of sleep and the constant harassment to have sexual encounters for payment, I wouldn’t want to live on any other block. Not that I necessarily agree with whatever is happening behind close doors, in fact I’m completely against it, but what would a study abroad experience be without a little exposure to the seedy underground of a third world country. Also I think I forgot to mention that all of this late night activity occurs directly across the street from the Recoleta cemetery, one of the holiest sights in all of Buenos Aires.