In Praise of Shirley

If you are a dedicated reader with a good memory, you may recall that I like to name my cars (when I own a car.) I wrote about this just as we were leaving the United States, just over two years ago. But if you are even more dedicated and interested in the minutiae of what is Erich, then you will recall that in addition to naming my cars, I always name my shoes. I mentioned that in this post from Sarajevo, Bosnia.

The Plaza de Congreso, the parliamentary palace.

There is a key difference though. My cars each get their own individual name. My shoes are always Horace (on the right foot) and Shirley (on the left). i don't know when I first named a pair of shoes, but it must be at least thirty years. While on the topic of shoes, I also mentioned in a much more recent post that the shoes I bought in Malaysia were getting pretty out of shape. I have very flat feet, I love walking, and I am rough on shoes. I had been wearing those Malaysian purchased shoes for a year. That's like an eternity to me. And I knew I was pushing my luck.

Hard to see, but this building has a feature that imitates a windmill

Yet, I continued to adventure. And some of those adventures involved long walks. So let me relate my recent explorations and I will comment on shoes as I go.

Between the mustache and the bowtie, this face is amazing

I took a walk to Plaza Mariano Moreno. This is park just across from the Plaza del Congreso, the building where the Argentinian Parliament meets. It was around a one hour walk there and another hour back.

How many copies of Rodin's The Thinker (El Pensador) are there in the world?

The Parliament building is gorgeous. Plus I had some dark clouds forming, making the entire scene imposing, almost threatening. (Only the sky, not the people.) I enjoyed the architecture around the plaza in the dramatic setting.

I think the skies make this picture so much more dramatic

On my way home, I saw a juggler. He had a ladder with only two feet. When the stoplight would turn red, he would take his ladder to the front of the line of cars, climb it and juggle while balancing the ladder. Then he would climb down and walk to a few cars in hopes of some pesos.

I bet he doesn't like the motorcycles inching closer. But he has a hard hat.

The next day, Sunday, Alrica and I went to lunch. We walked, but not too far from home. I have mentioned that we live right beside a big park. On the way home, there was an event going on in the park. So we stopped to watch.

There's a crowd between me and the dancers

There were various dance groups taking turns performing. Most of the dancers were women, primarily older women. But there were a few exceptions. Music was broadcast and the groups would perform. At the end of their songs, each group would crowd up together for a photo in which they held up a banner with the name of one of the city parks or plazas on it. I don't know the significance of having such a banner.

Perhaps a better view?

I have a shoe related story here. We were watching the dance performances underneath the branches of a tree. Take a look at this vicious tree. Yikes!

Buenos Aires, where the trees want your blood!

As I was walking, I stepped on something and felt it sinking into Shirley (my left shoe.) It was a fallen twig with wicked thorns from that tree. Thanks to Shirley, nothing reached my skin. I did have to grip the twig carefully to pull it out without cutting up my hand. Imagine if Shirley hadn't been there to protect me. I might be taking a long convalescence with no more walking adventures.

That's a thorny problem

On Wednesday I went out for another long walk. I walked to the Parque de lost Patricios. The Patricios is the name of Argentina's Infantry Regiment One. It is the oldest regiment in the nation, the core of what would be its armed services. The Patricios serve with distinction and honor. They represent Argentina's honor and willingness to fight for liberty. To serve in the Patricios is considered very special. The park has a monument to celebrate the Patricios.

In honor of the Patricios

It also has something I've seen in several parks in Buenos Aires: a very large, very old tree surrounded by a fence. I'm not sure if the fence is meant to protect the tree from the people or to protect the people from the tree. But it is a huge tree with an impressive wingspan. (I know it's not wings, but is branchspan a word?)

Doesn't it look like the light is radiating from the tree?

It was a beautiful day for a walk and the park is lovely. Buenos Aires has a lot of public art which is fun to see as I explore.

You would almost think I was in Africa, but no, still South America

This walk was again around two hours. I was doing okay for the first hour and a half, maybe even hour forty-five. But the last part of the walk, my shoes were done. Horace and Shirley were like, "Sorry, Erich. We got nothing left to give." My feet were so sore when I got home. Alrica even suggested going out to buy new shoes. But I had no desire to take another unnecessary step that day. It's pretty bad when I shrink away from the idea of walking.

It's like faces on drumheads. Maybe that's why they are drumHEADS.

So instead we went out on Thursday. We walked to a bus stop and took a bus to a neighborhood called Palermo Soho. I find this interesting, because having a neighborhood called Soho is something I am familiar with. My first Soho was the one in New York City where it stands for "South of Houston". (It's the neighborhood bordered on the north by Houston Street. Incidentally, that is pronounced HOW-ston and not HUE-ston. It isn't named for Sam Houston of Texas fame. It is named for William Houston. He was one of the delegates from Georgia to the Continental Congress and to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Sam Houston came later, but being the more famous of the two, most people think HUE-ston when they see the name.)

But New York didn't start calling that part of town Soho until the 1960s. The, so far as I can tell, original Soho is a section of London. There aren't definitive records for how Soho got its name, but the most accepted idea is that origially it was a very open area of countryside and farming just west of London. Londoners came here to hunt and "So-ho" was some sort of hunting call. Whether or not that is the true origin, London's first written record of the area being called Soho is from 1636, way beating out NYC.

Here in Buenos Aires, one of the nice neighborhoods is Palermo. In the 1990s, marketers started referring to one part of Palermo as Palermo Soho. It was changing from a working class neighborhood into one full of artists studios and nightlife, gentrifying. Soho was specifically chosen as a reference to the neighborhoods in NYC and London, both considered trendy and artistic.

While in Palermo Soho, we ate at a Vietnamese restaurant called Saigon. Probably had I just told you the name of the restaurant you would have guessed it was Vietnamese. If you wouldn't have guessed that, just don't admit it to anyone. The food was great, but most amusing was Alrica's lemonade. It came with slices of cucumber. Needless to say, I didn't take a sip to taste it.

Who puts cucumber slices in lemonade? Not something I ever saw in Vietnam.

But lunch was not our primarily reason for visiting Palermo Soho, nor did we go for nightlife or art. We went to buy shoes. That's how loyal I am. Just days after Shirley saved me from dangerous spikes, I replaced her with a younger, newer model. I wanted to hold out for Santiago, but life had other plans. Still, I did name these new shoes Horace and Shirley, so their legacy lives on.