4 ms·

La Boca still has some pretty bad spots, despite being a tourist trap in two or three streets.

by dep_b 5y ago

otrahuevada 5y ago
I'd say unless you also started calling Retiro -which holds one of the oldest actual slums, Villa 31-, Flores, Floresta, Colegiales, Paternal, San Justo and Avellaneda slums, hosting a couple sketchy places does not a slum make. I grew up in there and up to a couple years ago when I emigrated I visited regularly. Yes, it is a dock workers neighborhood packed with immigrants, not a cool location with 5 usd empanada-in-a-jar type restaurants but it's not a slum unless everything is.
- kragen 5y ago
  I remember one day in Boca I went out to the grocery store and noticed a curious deep round dent in the metal counter. "What's that?" I asked the cashier. He looked a little embarrassed, then a bit proud. "A bullet hole," he explained. Boca is also where Gastón Aguirre lived (and maybe lives), the guy who went on national TV to criticize the Canadian tourist who made him world famous for filming his attempted armed robbery, defending it as "thinking of getting money for my son": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EIkCTkcrDA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EIkCTkcrDA When I moved to a sixth-floor walkup in Boca I discovered mushrooms growing from the ceiling where a hole was blown open in the roof. Later I learned that our downstairs neighbors were cocaine dealers, and their customers had robbed one of my roommates in the stairwell. I moved out not long after. I agree that there's a significant difference between Boca, which was historically a slum but is now just a dangerous, poor neighborhood, and Villa 31 or Isla Maciel. But Boca, with its unbelievable levels of police corruption, its place of honor on lists of the most polluted places in the world, and its ongoing violent crime problem, is very different from Retiro, Flores, and Colegiales.
  - otrahuevada 5y ago
    I literally grew up in there and my experience could not have been more different than yours lol. Also, it's mold. If you literally had mushrooms that's like an entirely different, more premium, experience.
    - kragen 5y ago
      Yeah, literal mushrooms. I didn't realize it was possible for mushrooms to grow downward from a horizontal surface.
- dep_b 5y ago
  We were clearly warned by people at the shops and the restaurant what streets what and what not to take in broad daylight. Being Argentinean and looking Argentinean, not some expensive camera strapped around the neck expensive brand clothing tourist screaming "I'm not from here" without a word. There are worse places, of course. And people get robbed in San Telmo in broad daylight as well.

La Boca still has some pretty bad spots, despite being a tourist trap in two or three streets.

by dep_b 5y ago

La Boca still has some pretty bad spots, despite being a tourist trap in two or three streets.

I'd say unless you also started calling Retiro -which holds one of the oldest actual slums, Villa 31-, Flores, Floresta, Colegiales, Paternal, San Justo and Avellaneda slums, hosting a couple sketchy places does not a slum make. I grew up in there and up to a couple years ago when I emigrated I visited regularly. Yes, it is a dock workers neighborhood packed with immigrants, not a cool location with 5 usd empanada-in-a-jar type restaurants but it's not a slum unless everything is.

kragen 5y ago
I remember one day in Boca I went out to the grocery store and noticed a curious deep round dent in the metal counter. "What's that?" I asked the cashier. He looked a little embarrassed, then a bit proud. "A bullet hole," he explained. Boca is also where Gastón Aguirre lived (and maybe lives), the guy who went on national TV to criticize the Canadian tourist who made him world famous for filming his attempted armed robbery, defending it as "thinking of getting money for my son": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EIkCTkcrDA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EIkCTkcrDA When I moved to a sixth-floor walkup in Boca I discovered mushrooms growing from the ceiling where a hole was blown open in the roof. Later I learned that our downstairs neighbors were cocaine dealers, and their customers had robbed one of my roommates in the stairwell. I moved out not long after. I agree that there's a significant difference between Boca, which was historically a slum but is now just a dangerous, poor neighborhood, and Villa 31 or Isla Maciel. But Boca, with its unbelievable levels of police corruption, its place of honor on lists of the most polluted places in the world, and its ongoing violent crime problem, is very different from Retiro, Flores, and Colegiales.
- otrahuevada 5y ago
  I literally grew up in there and my experience could not have been more different than yours lol. Also, it's mold. If you literally had mushrooms that's like an entirely different, more premium, experience.
  - kragen 5y ago
    Yeah, literal mushrooms. I didn't realize it was possible for mushrooms to grow downward from a horizontal surface.
dep_b 5y ago
We were clearly warned by people at the shops and the restaurant what streets what and what not to take in broad daylight. Being Argentinean and looking Argentinean, not some expensive camera strapped around the neck expensive brand clothing tourist screaming "I'm not from here" without a word. There are worse places, of course. And people get robbed in San Telmo in broad daylight as well.