Great place! Somebody should hold a beer festival there!

No! Seriously! What a great location! This year's Baires Beer Festival was held (for the second year in a row, I think,) in an open air space between some old warehouses across from the Jumbo and down a few blocks from the Polo Grounds. The old warehouses were open to the central space and contained more spaces...a big one for the entertainment headliners: Los Cafres and their opening act, Ibrahim Ferrer, Jr. direct from La Habana!

Tonight was the last night of the festival... a festival that I have somehow failed to attend for more than 3 years. I tried to find at least ONE blogger en castellano o ingles that had a post on any of the preceding 3 nights... but to no avail. No importa. Your Yanq is an adventurer at heart and off he went with his beloved for a night of good beer, song and dancing.

The weather was threatening but never made good on the menacing rain. It was all looking good. The goings got on at 18:00 but we arrived at 19:00 just in time for the strains of son to drift over the old, high brickwork of the festival grounds. This had the makings of a good time! $60 pesos poorer we were in the door with the strains of música cubana wafting over a tremendous selection of some of the best "pan líquido" that the original bread-basket of the world has to offer!

¡Compañeros extranjeros!
Do you know that YOU can VOTE in municipal elections here in Buenos Aires?

Something HAS to be done about the law concerning lugares bailables in our fair city.
Let's help vote the bastards out!

Tonight, my first visit to the festival, was absolutely pathetic.

I don't know what the first hour of the "Beer Festival" had to offer... but I imagine that it was the same as the second hour: No Beer.

That's right, no beer allowed to be sold...por ley.

That's was OK, I said to myself and everyone else...the music's good, I can wait a while.

But Noooooo. I wised up a half an hour later to the realization that there would be NO beer until 22:30..."maybe 23:00", me dijo un patovico. Three hours? Maybe 3 and 1/2 hours?

That was it. Mi porteña y yo were back to the boletería politely requesting our pesos back. We got 'em and then it was off for a pleasant "parting gift" in nearby Las Cañitas to outdoor- table- hop the pleasant evening with our unneeded raincoats... with the live music wonderfully audible the half-block away.

This situation is horrible! Tonight's encounter with the post-cromagnon law is only the latest. We spent part of an afternoon this year with the owner of the cutest little corner joint in Monserrat who still has a delicious little baby grand in his tiny place.

He can't play his piano...by law. AND his place is too small to permit a space for smoking. Pardon my lunfardo but he's fucked... and he knows it. It won't be long before he's gone and this incredible city will be a little poorer ...but not in the way that yanquis consider poorer.

(I wait with baited breath a reply from the alluring MsTangoinherEyes on the milonga scene and if she knows how those lovely places avoid the no drinks (not even gaseosas!) during live performances.)

I have a friend of about 25 that is involved in the rockandroll scene here. Tonight's debacle brought back everything he has told me about how he and his friends are slowly atrophying from a lack of venues in which to play and be heard.

This has to stop.

What do you think?

Wanna register to vote? Come with me. We can all go together...let's bring a reporter from the Clarín along!