Buenos Aires: The PARIS of Latin America!

[SaltShaker]

BA was described this way in the late 1880s, after the boom of building in the French Beaux Arts style - it was one of those "one off" comments that some newspaperman made at the time and has since been repeated ad nauseum, probably mostly fueled by folks looking to convince someone to move or visit here. As others have said, it was never intended to be a direct comparison.

As to prices - it depends on whether you're living here with a source of funds/income in dollars/euros or some other currency - the example of 12 pesos for medialunas and coffee for two - yeah, if you think of it as $3 and change it's cheap - if, however, you're living here based on a peso income, try to think of it like you were living in NY and got charged $12 for the same - and, keeping in mind that only a few years ago, that same breakfast was 6 pesos....

 

[Celia]

I think the point is that it's meant to be the Paris of Latin America, not of Europe. That's where you 10 to 3 comes in...

 

[bigbadwolf]

Im sure that in England that you have simple places that would charge much less than 30 pounds for two for a great indian curry.

tangobob is right. Maybe in the north, in some godforsaken place like Huddersfield or Teesside, you can get it for less, but the price he's quoting holds for the Southeast. Even a meal at McJunk must be seven or eight quid easy.

I'd be interested to know where the Indian restaurant/s in BsAs buy their spices from. If it is authentic Indian food, that is. There are some Chinese shops in Belgrano so I can understand where a Chinese restauranteur might buy his ingredients but for an Indian restaurant ...?

 

[RWS]

I think the point is that it's meant to be the Paris of Latin America, not of Europe. ...

Excellent point. If there's to be a "Paris" -- a cultural center -- at all in Latin America, what other city could it be? Certainly not Mexico city, Santiago de Chile, São Paulo, or Rio! What, in a single other city south of the Rio Grande, competes with numerous bookstores and publishers, the Teatro Colón, the milongas, or even La Rural? No one, I think, maintains in this thread that higher and higher prices, broken veredas, or ubiquitous canine dung are desireable; but there is no other city with serious pretense to approximating for South America what Paris has for five centuries represented for the West in general: a cultural capital and center of intellectual and artistic ferment and development.