I’m humbled that Fritz and I had the opportunity to run press coverage for Lollapalooza: Argentina this year. You can read up on our formal report of the festival over at Consequence of Sound.

Music festivals aside, I thought I’d put together a short list of the most peculiar, odd, memorable, remarkable aspects of the trip. Some things to do, some things to look for, some things to think about. Sort of a list of reflections, sort of a travel guide.

Here’s my (of course) Top 11:

1. Everyone loves Jamiroquai. He was on the radio, he was in the background at bars, he was on the playlist at house parties, the live band we saw Sunday played a (tremendous) cover, a friend of ours had his logo tattooed onto his arm.

I mean, Jamiroquai’s great. Listen to this. You might also recognize him from Napoleon Dynamite. The thing is, Jamiroquai’s last album came out 4 years ago, and his last worthwhile album I’d argue was A Funk Odyssey which was released in 2001. Not to say that sort of popularity model is impossible—Daft Punk managed to stay highly relevant throughout the twelve muted years between Discovery (2001) and Random Access Memories (2013). It’s just surprising.

2. When you go out, you’re going to start drinking at 8 or 9pm, you’re going to get dinner at 11 or 12, and you’re going to stay out until something like 7am. It’s a lifestyle choice, it’s probably not a healthy one, it’s certainly not a sustainable one, but it’s a thrill and it’s what all the cool kids are doing.

3. Everyone still uses old-school, heavy-duty style keys for their apartments. Like this. These are super cool. Until you’ve left the keys on your host’s kitchen counter upon your departure because you’re switching to your next homestay, and find that for some reason, you need a key to unlock the front door of the apartment building from the inside.

…So we got stuck inside the apartment lobby twice. I don’t know, I thought that was funny.

4. Pizza is a big deal in Buenos Aires—which obviously makes me incredibly happy—but the most prolific chain is called “Kentucky Pizza.”

…What the hell is “Kentucky” pizza? That doesn’t make sense. I know there’s Kentucky bourbon, Kentucky chicken, and Kentucky (Louisville) baseball bats. There’s no such thing as Kentucky pizza. We made Kentucky pizza jokes relentlessly, which all fell flat because none of our local friends could commiserate on how preposterous a concept this was.

In any event, Argentinian pizza most closely resembles Chicago style. Not quite as thick. Very heavy on mozzarella. Reliably delicious, worthy of a meal (especially if you’re hungry at 5am).

5. Speaking of jokes: We found that poking fun at “Paco” was the only joke you can consistently make as a gringo who can barely speak Spanish. And we tried, frequently, to be funny.[ref]Arguably the problem is that I’m actually not very funny in the first place.[/ref]

But Paco, a horrific street drug with ingredients including cocaine waste, rat poison, and kerosene, unified as a concept both mutually understood and utterly ridiculous.

6. Using the Argentine Peso pretty much felt like the equivalent of going to an amusement park and being given Disney Dollars.

Some illustrations:

• I think we managed to find two restaurants during the entire trip that would accept credit cards. I’m told that businesses don’t want to wait to get paid at the end of the month by the credit cards because the peso will probably be worth less by then.
• Nobody—not Bank of America, not the official exchange companies in the airport whose ONE JOB it is to execute this exact transaction—accepts Argentine Pesos in exchange for USD.
• The stated exchange rate from USD to ARP was about 1:8, but the effective exchange rate was about 20% better if you go to the black market… which, you know, is in the middle of town and out in the open. There’s one street with just a bunch of guys yelling “cambio!” at anyone who walks by.
• My personal favorite: At these currency exchanges, there’s a better exchange rate for $100’s than there is for smaller bills. Come on… that’s just silly, right?

7. Bomba de Tiempo on Monday nights is utterly sublime and exactly the kind of experience you should seek any time you would ever want to go to a foreign country. Oozes with local culture, suitable for pretty much all ages. There’s space in the back if you want to be quieter and less sweaty, no space in the front if you want to get dancy and meet people, and it’s a totally unique spectacle that’s impossible to do justice by sharing a Youtube clip or a photo.

8. The McDonald’s downtown serves a hamburger with an egg on it during lunch hours. I don’t even remember what it was called (McTasty? McHuevo?). All I know is it’s exactly what I’ve always wanted from McDonald’s. It’s a favorite travel tradition of mine to explore the local Mickey D’s menu, which consistently surfaces items that are simultaneously home-y and otherworldly.

Though I guess if that’s not your style, go to a parilla—a cheap, hole-in-the-wall barbecue joint—and eat whatever they’re cooking because it’ll be cheap and savory and fun and an extremely local experience.

Though maybe that’s also not your style. In which case…

9. You can go to Cabrera and that’s all well and good, and everybody knows about it including all our friends who’ve visited Buenos Aires and wrote us guide notes, including Fritz’s guidebooks, including the locals, the cab drivers, everyone. And it was good. Worth a trip because it’s a fine steak and it’ll cost you like $15 USD ($30, I suppose, if you want side dishes and want to split an entire bottle of wine).

But for the real deal, for possibly the best steak I’ve ever eaten, you have to go to a place that nobody had even heard of except for one in-the-know friend. The restaurant is called Dada.

Sacha writes:

You have to eat the Lomo Dada / get it ‘bien Jugoso’ / write all that down / it’s a filet over au gratin potatoes / it’s the best meal on the fucking planet.

And he’s right. He’s absolutely 75% right. Because I’m an idiot and didn’t listen to instructions and didn’t write it down, and once we got there I had to guess which menu item to order, so we wound up with one Lomo Dada and one Ojo de Bife.[ref]Also because I know he reads this and it’s funnier to not give him 100% correctness, just on principle.[/ref] It turns out the Ojo de Bife was equally transcendent.

In any event: Dada is the one completely non-interchangeable thing in my list. No other guide will tell you to go here, and there’s no way you can proxy it by eating something else at a different restaurant. Go here. Better yet, go here at 2am when you and everyone else at the other tables have already had a few drinks.

I’m loathe to give Sacha’s contact info out semi-publicly, but feel free to send royalty checks my way addressed to him and I’ll forward them accordingly.

10. The people are amazing. I occasionally feel like kind of a sap for saying this, but really. The amount of generosity and hospitality we received from nearly complete strangers was utterly ridiculous.

Ben offered to meet us at our hostel on Day 1 to help us get our footing. Celina took out an entire afternoon to offer a guided tour in the footsteps of Borges. We met up with Rocio & her crew four times. Barbie invited us to a show she was performing and also graciously hosted us for an odd night we were left without other housing. Luke gave us an invite and the password to a divinely cool secret house party. Ivi picked us up at the hostel and drove us across town to go out drinking and clubbing. That was within the span of a week, and I’m sure I’m forgetting other acts and actors of kindness. In any event: I send them my deepest, truest thanks.

Also worth calling out my friends Mel, Luciana, Kate, Seth & Steve, Sacha, and Nelly, whose contacts and local insights proved indispensable. Thanks and cheers to you guys, too.

11. To go out with a, erm, punch: Apparently, Captain Falcon has Argentinian heritage—and a history of Captains in his lineage. You can check out his ancestor’s tomb in the Recoleta Cemetery. Here’s a picture. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.