Thomas Locke Hobbs
| Currently: Buenos Aires |
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| My friend German at American Bar on the corner of Uruguay and Tucuman. We're both all wet because it's raining zoretes de punta outside. In fact, the little storm dropped three inches in a couple of hours. This was the scene at Santa Fe & Juan B. Justo. |
Gualeguaychu - Carnaval of the Praire
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| Less than a day after arriving my friend German invites me on this group excursion to see the Carnaval in Gualeguaychu [wally why CHOO]. A small city 3 hours upriver from Buenos Aires, Gualeguaychu hosts Argentina's biggest Carnaval celebration. While that's a bit like saying they have the biggest 4th of July Parade in Canada, I've never done Carnaval in Brazil and our seats were great.
The official, Catholic Carnaval was over a month ago but enterprising town leaders have made the so-called Carnaval del Pais last all summer long with parades in the Corsodromo [aka Sambadromo] every Saturday night in January and February. Gualeguaychu sits on the Uruguay river, on the border, and attracts a provincial, summer crowd of young people that gives it a bit of a spring break feeling. The parade takes place in the town's old rail yard and is surrounded by grain elevators. It was a muggy, summer night and I felt I could've been in Kansas or Texas. |
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| You can see it's a big event with 30,000+ people and great costumes. |
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| The big controversy of the last several years has been the construction of a paper mill on the other side of the river in the Uruguayan town of Fray Bentos. This has been an ongoing spat between Argentina and Uruguay and the Gualeguaychu is filled, still, with anti-Papelera propaganda despite the eventual construction of the plant. |
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| I was just tagging along with my friend German as there was an extra-space in the mini-bus. Here i'm sitting with Omi, one of the organizers, while wearing Gustavo's glitter hat. |
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| And here's Gustavo. We were a very animated groupd. |
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| Couch surfing, as I've been doing for two weeks now, has required me to borrow bandwidth from various unprotected wifi networks. The names people choose for their networks are whim plus culture and I regret now not having taken a similar photo in Los Angeles and New York. At any rate, I thank you Fabian and your G5 iMac for not putting up any password. |
Vinos Argentinos en New York
| I landed last night in Buenos Aires after a mere 30 hour visit to New York. On Wednesday my friend Steve generously let me use his place to host a party for some friends. I told people to bring bottles of wine from Argentina. |
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| Michael, Jeff and me, old friends from college |
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| Jacob, Emilie & Jesse |
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| Emilie |
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| Steve, our host |
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| Navarro Correas from Warehouse Wines |
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| Cool Dan smoking out the window |
The 110-105 Interchange
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| I made a point of taking the Metro Green line to get a better look at the 110-105 interchange, the most awesomely cool & spectacular freeway interchange anywhere [see more on Wikipedia and more views on flickr]. There's a metro stop in the middle of the interchange with sweeping flyovers both above and below. It's noisy but exciting to be in the middle of so much traffic. |
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| Pan Pacific Park on a foggy day.
On wednesday I was dog-sitting for my brother and took him for a walk in Pan Pacific Park which, for those of you familiar with LA, is right next to the Grove and CBS Studios. I like foggy days in Los Angeles. It's never bitter and windy like San Francisco. It's calm, slightly cool and everything is lit with this amazing, difuse light. |
Do I save the bunny?
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As a four year-old I had a stuffed Bugs Bunny doll identical to this one. I was inseparable from it and I took it with me everywhere, including a plane trip to visit my grandparents in South Bend, Indiana. During the two week visit my grandfather repeatedly, jokingly threatened to steal Bugs away from me. My grandmother, as a joke, bought him an identical one and presented it to him at the end of the trip.
Long after i'd chewed and thrashed my original Bugs to pieces his doppleganger remained in Indiana in pristine condition. With my grandmother now in decluttering mode, Bugs has returned to my life--an odd inheritance. Of course I am the king of decluttering so I ask you, do I save the bunny? |
Silly T-shirts
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| Some Yahoo! Schwag: this was the promo t-shirt for MapMixer, a very cool service that let's you super-impose one map on top of another. I'm impressed the Project Manager got away with such a racy design.
Yeah, and I shaved my beard :) |
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| Here's a true vintage T from the 70s or 80s I found buried deep in a closet in my Mom's house. I gave it to my friend David. He's from nearby Selma and thus one of the few people in on the joke. |
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| Castro St. looking north from Cesar Chavez, right in front of the apartment where I've been staying. Not a bad view, altho lotsa wires. |
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 | Hi. I'm a 32 year-old American currently living in Buenos Aires. Before that I lived in California, Sao Paulo and New York and if you browse through the archives below you can see photos of all those places. I also have an old geocities page with some outdated information but also more photos of Buenos Aires, friends and my 9/11 pictures. |