ManicDDaily

I am sitting here at a sidewalk cafe in a shopping-residential, not particularly distinguished, section of Buenos Aires. Although not a touristy area, it is a place with a bunch of leather stores, and I’m trying to gather up the strength and resolve to go into some of them. (I hate shopping. Much caffeine and concentration is required to even get me to make the attempt.)

What’s really taking up my concentration though–aside from the need for even more caffeine–is the question of how it is possible that so many cars are passing through the intersection next to this cafe–and buses and trucks and pedestrians and bicycles, with no one bumping into each other. Each of the crossroads–Mallabia and Murillo–allows, more or less, two lanes of moving traffic; each has a pretty continual stream; there is no traffic light, or even stop sign.

Here’s how it basically works. If a car/bus/truck/ is part of a current flood of traffic dominating the intersection, they whizz by. If they are not part of the current dominating flow, they nudge nudge nudge, until they can brazen their way across. Then, when there is a break in one side of the flow, the other (brazening) side begins its flood.

I am sure that there are many accidents overall. But in the time that I’ve sat here, there has not been so much as a tap.

Which, I am forced to remember, is completely different from certain parts of my experience in last night at the wonderful La Viruta Tango (housed in an Armenia community hall), where during an informal beginner’s tango session, I could not go a whole set of steps (as in eight beats) without bumping into another set of dancers.

Maybe this is because the drivers are not looking only at their feet.

More on wonderful tango, and better milonga (a faster, simpler form of tango), later.

This entry was posted on May 20, 2011 at 4:10 pm and is filed under elephants, iPad art. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.