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Monthly Archives: May 2015

Bad Day at La Bombonera

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Fans Climbing Over High Security Barriers

Fans Climbing Over High Security Barriers

Among the lowest of the low among the male animal is the rabid sports fan. I keep thinking of one San Francisco Giants fan, Bryan Stow, who was beaten within an inch of his life by Dodgers fans while attending a game here in Los Angeles.

No one beats soccer fans, however, for grotesque violence, of which the Brits are among the worst—to the extent of being banned from some international events. There was even a war caused by dissatisfied fans when the results of a Honduras-El Salvador match did not go according to their desires. (Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski wrote an excellent book on the subject called The Soccer War.)

As much as I like Argentina, I find the recent violence between Boca Juniors fans and Rio Plate players to be truly despicable. After a timeout in a 0-0 tie, Rio Plate players were shot in the eyes with a homemade pepper spray that disabled them. The Argentinean sports federation called the game and endangered Boca’s chances in league play. According to an article in the Toronto Sun:

The rivalry between the two Buenos Aires sides is one of the most heated in the world. It pits Boca, a traditionally working class side from the port area of the city against their more up-town rivals known as the “Millionaires.”

Boca’s Bombonera stadium was a cauldron of drums and the chants of the club’s passionate supporters, who sat just inches from the touchline separated by high wire fences. Few players relish the visit with away supporters barred from attending Argentine matches in a bid to curb violence.

I have been by La Bombonera, “The Chocolate Box,” as Estadio Alberto J. Armando is known, on my last visit to Argentina. Martine and I could have toured the museum, but we knew in advance that La Bombonera is in a tough neighborhood. There is one main tourist street than runs diagonally to the Riachuelo called El Caminito. Every step away from the Caminito raises your chances of being mugged; and the street itself has a huge police presence.

Perhaps rabid attention to sports is something to live for when you have nothing else to live for. But that doesn’t mean I would ever like to attend a major soccer football match anywhere in the world.

Hua Hum? Ho Hum!

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One of the Border Crossings from Argentina into Chile That I Was Researching

One of the Border Crossings from Argentina into Chile That I Was Researching

As of yesterday, the 20 km danger zone around the Chilean volcano Calbuco has been lifted, restoring normal traffic between San Carlos Bariloche and Puerto Varas. Although the volcano is still listed as red for a potential eruption, in terms of actual danger, it has been downgraded to orange.

In a way, I am disappointed. I had been researching the other crossings over the Andes and discovered a little-known one at Paso Hua Hum near San Martin de los Andes. By way of a lake crossing, it takes me to Puerto Fuy, from which I can go to Valparaíso by way of Temuco or Valdivia. From pictures I’ve seen, it is every bit as scenic as the famous Lakes Crossing from Bariloche; and it is well off the normal tourist circuit.

This kind of research is part of the fun connected with my vacations. There is always a “problem” to be solved. For Eastern Canada, it was how to find a place to sleep close to Québec City while avoiding the traffic problems. For Iceland, it was how to see the bird cliffs at Latrabjárg in the Westfjords. For Peru, it was how to avoid coming down with acute mountain sickness. All these problems were successfully solved, which made for no small part of the satisfaction I felt from the vacation as a whole.

Down On His Luck

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From a New Book on LA Crime Scene Photos from 1953

From a New Book on LA Crime Scene Photos from 1953

Crime writer James Ellroy has come out with a new book of crime scene photos from 1953. The book is called, simply, LAPD ’53. The victim is one Jésus Fernández Muñoz, who, according to Ellroy’s description, was “a good guy down on his luck. The coroner’s register one-sheet is perfunctory. It’s an accidental death. He was walking on or sleeping on a concrete beam below the Aliso Street bridge.” He suddenly dropped 50 feet to the hard surface of the L.A. River, which in that area is a concrete flood channel.

I always loved Ellroy’s L.A. detective novels, especially the so-called L.A. Quartet, consisting of:

  • The Black Dahlia (1987)
  • The Big Nowhere (1988)
  • L.A. Confidential (1990)
  • White Jazz (1992)

I’ve read a few others, but need to read more, as I think he is one of the best working today. And his picture of Southern California is right on the money. I understand he is working on a new series set in L.A.

 

 

 

Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina!

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Evita Perón Speaking into a Microphone

Evita Perón Speaking into a Microphone

When I first saw the above building in 2011, I thought it was decorated with Evita’s image while her widowed husband Juan was still alive. I was surprised to find that Cristina Fernández Kirchner, the current president of Argentina, put it up on the side of the Ministry of Health headquarters around the time of my visit. The building is on Avenida 9 de Julio, the giant fourteen-lane highway that runs north/south from Retiro to Constitucion Station.

As President Kirchner said when she unveiled the image: “She was the most hated but the most loved, the most offended, insulted and discounted but the most venerated – the most humiliated but today eternally victorious…. She taught us that to confront the powerful carries a high price.”

By the time I find myself in Argentina next, Kirchner will have been termed out of office. I wonder how she will be seen by future generations. Evita’s reputation is safe: she died of cancer at the age of 33 at the height of her popularity. She was just about to request sharing power with her husband when the illness struck. Cristina, on the other hand, has ruled Argentina alone, and with her late husband Nestor, since 2003.

 

Short Line

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Our Train Pulling Up to the Gate

Our Train Pulling Up to the Gate

In Ventura County’s Santa Clara River Valley, there is a railroad line that runs roughly between Piru and Santa Paula, with Fillmore as its base. Most trains run on Saturdays and some Sundays, with most trains running from Fillmore to Santa Paula, stopping for sufficient time for passengers to see the Santa Paula Agricultural Museum or the California Oil Museum. On the way back, there is a stop at the Loose Caboose, where one can buy locally grown fruit, olives, and honey as well as see cockatiels, parakeets, peacocks, koi, and goats.

We got an acceptable lunch on the Powhatan Dining Car on the train, and sat back as we rolled past hundreds of fruit orchards. (Santa Paula considers itself the citrus capital of the United States.)

The Fillmore & Western Railway is essentially a fun enterprise. If you’re expecting 100% authenticity or haute luxury, you will be disappointed. Your four-hour journey will be restful and low-key. Many of our fellow passengers seemed to be retired farmers, who had interesting things to say about the farmland through which we passed.

Fillmore and Santa Paula are only about a dozen miles apart, but Martine and I had a good time and would consider coming back.

Tarnmoor’s ABCs: Venice

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A Million Miles from St. Mark’s

A Million Miles from the Adriatic

All the blog posts in this series are based on Czeslaw Milosz’s book Milosz’s ABC’s. There, in the form of a brief and alphabetically-ordered personal encyclopedia, was the story of the life of a Nobel Prize winning poet, of the people, places, and things that meant the most to him.

My own ABCs consist of places I have loved (Iceland, Patagonia, Quebec, Scotland), things I feared (Earthquakes), writers I have admired (Chesterton, Balzac, Proust, and Borges); locales associated with my past life (Cleveland, Dartmouth College, and UCLA), people who have influenced me (John F. Kennedy), foods I love (Olives and Tea), and things I love to do (Automobiles and Books). This blog entry is my own humble attempt to imitate a writer whom I have read on and off for thirty years without having sated my curiosity. Consequently, over the weeks to come, you will see a number of postings under the heading “Tarnmoor’s ABCs” that will attempt to do for my life what Milosz accomplished for his. To see my other entries under this category, hit the tag below marked “ABCs”. I don’t guarantee that I will use up all 26 letters of the alphabet, but I’ll do my best. The fact that I made it as far as the letter “V” makes me wonder sometimes.

Los Angeles has been described as a varying number (depending on who’s doing the quoting) of suburbs in search of a city. After all, what is the real difference between Sherman Oaks and Encino, Mar Vista and Palms, or Rancho Park and West L.A.? Some of the communities in the county are distinctive because of their ethnicity, such as Monterey Park (Chinese), East L.A. (Mexican), Gardena (Japanese), Pico-Union (Central American), and Glendale (Armenian).

One neighborhood that is known more for its culture than its ethnicity is Venice. When Abbot Kinney first thought of the idea of artificial canals in a community bordering the ocean in 1905, naturally, the name “Venice” popped into his head. In the 1960s, the area was known as Los Angeles’s answer to Haight-Ashbury. Charles Manson and his gang hung around the area. Jim Morrison and the Doors advertised itself at first as a Venice band.

At the same time that the Hippies became the predominant population, some prominent artists also set up shop in the area, such as Charles and Ray Eames. Others associated with Venice included Charles Arnoldi, Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Baldessari, Larry Bell, Dennis Hopper, and Ed Ruscha. Abbot Kinney Boulevard is dotted with art galleries.

You can get your name on a grain of rice, buy any number of T-shirts with funny sayings, eat funnel cakes (whatever those are), or order sausages from Jody Maroni’s Sausage Kingdom.

I frequently walk along the Boardwalk where it begins just south of Venice Boulevard to Small World Books, one of the best remaining independent bookstores in Southern California. Frankly, I enjoy the sleaziness of the area—perhaps not enough to hang out there after the sun sets.

 

 

 

 

“Barely Freed from the Nettles”

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Pablo Neruda’s Home, “La Sebastiana,” in Valparaíso

Pablo Neruda’s Home, “La Sebastiana,” in Valparaíso

Since I intend to visit Chile this November after crossing the Andes by way of San Carlos Bariloche, I plan to read as much of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s work as I can. I thought I would start by selecting the following from his collection, Canto General:

The Poet

I used to wander through life amid
an ill-starred love: I used to keep
a little page of quartz
to rivet my eyes to life.
I bought kindness, I was in the market
of greed, I inhaled envy’s
most sordid waters, the inhuman
hostility of masks and beings,
I lived a sea-swamp world
in which the flower, the lily, suddenly
consumed me in their foamy tremor,
and wherever I stepped my soul slid
toward the teeth ofthe abyss.
That’s how my poetry was born, barely
freed from the nettles, clutched
above solitude like a punishment,
or its most secret flower sequestered
in the garden of immodesty until it was buried.
And so isolated like the dark water
that inhabits its deep corridors,
I fled from hand to hand, to each
being’s alienation, to daily hatred.
I knew that was how they lived, hiding
half of their beings, like fish
from the strangest sea, and in the murky
immensities, I encountered death.
Death opening doors and roads.
Death gliding along the walls.

Neruda died suspiciously soon after Salvador Allende, the socialist President of Chile, was found dead by “suicide.”

I hope to visit Neruda’s two houses in the Valparaíso area, La Sebastiana (shown above) and Isla Negra.

Stopovers

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If I Can’t Fly Nonstop, I Can at Least Look Around

If I Can’t Fly Nonstop, I Can at Least Look Around

Above is a view of São Paolo’s new air terminal. There is no way I can fly nonstop from Los Angeles to Buenos Aires, so I picked a bargain flight with TAM Airlines, which recently merge with my favorite South American carrier: LAN. My flight lets me wander around the new International Terminal for three and a half hours before boarding another flight to Buenos Aires’s Ministro Pistarini airport, better known by its neighborhood: Ezeiza.

From Santiago, I have an even more interesting route back. I will take Colombia’s national carrier Avianca to Bogota, where I will spend three hours. Then I hop on a TACA flight (owned by Avianca) to San Salvador in El Salvador, where I quickly change planes to a LACSA (owned by Avianca) flight to Los Angeles.

Why don’t I fly on a U.S. carrier, you might ask? The answer is simple: I don’t like being treated like garbage, eating swill, and paying richly for the privilege.

Look at that airport above. Then compare it to the aging slum that is Los Angeles International. It’s almost as if we just didn’t care any more.

Volcano? What Volcano?

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I’m Tired of Being Pushed Around by Natural Disasters

I’m Tired of Being Pushed Around by Natural Disasters

In 2011, it was Puyehue-Cordon Caulle that forced me to change my itinerary. This time, it’s Calbuco (see above). I guess I could just pussyfoot around until it’s time to go and switch my plans once again. This time around, I decided to bet that, by mid-November, Calbuco will be all played out. (Of course, Sernageomin still rates it as red for imminent eruption or eruption in progress.)

Consequently, today I decided to fly into Buenos Aires and, in true “open jaws” style, return via Santiago, Chile. That means I will take the lakes crossing trip from San Carlos Bariloche to Puerto Varas. If Calbuco still insists on spewing crap along my path, I will just go around it. There are other border crossings that are perhaps less convenient, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Why am I going home by way of Chile? First of all, I’ve always wanted to visit Valparaíso. My reason for it goes back more than half a century. While a student at Dartmouth College, I saw an almost impossibly poetic documentary by Joris Ivens called … à Valparaíso (1963). If you have a half hour to spare, and don’t mind the French narration, you can see it here on YouTube.

I plan on spending several days in Valparaíso, visiting the homes of poet Pablo Neruda, climbing the endless stairs, taking the funiculars that ascend the forty-two hills of the city. Some people prefer the beach. I’ll take poetry and beauty any time!

Cristina’s Bulldog

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You Know When You’ve Been Dissed by Aníbal!

You Know When You’ve Been Dissed by Aníbal!

Aníbal Domingo Fernández fills a useful slot in the Argentinian Government. Officially, he is Chief of the Cabinet of Ministers of Argentina. Unofficially, whenever the government of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (no relation) comes under attack, Aníbal is there gesticulating and coining subtly deprecatory phrases that makes the opposition wonder whether and how much they were just dissed.

Could you imagine someone on Obama’s staff who is there to counterattack whenever Ted Cruz or Rush Limbaugh or Louis Gohmert lets loose one of their smellies, and not only counterattack but make the perpetrator uncomfortably check to see whether his zipper is in the approved upright position.

When there was a scandal regarding infant malnutrition in the city of Tucumán, he is known to have said the problem was caused by “a sick society and a ruling class that are sons of bitches, all of them.” Imagine what Aníbal would say about Fox News when he called Buenos Aires TV host Mirtha Legrand “uneducated, rude, ignorant” and claimed that she “says stupid things.”

In January 2019, he called economist Martin Redrado a “fool” and “freak” who “thinks he is the center of the world and fails to show respect for Argentinians.”

Yes, I think Obama should hire him.