my waiter did a pole dance!

This city is amazing, outrageous, and completely heart breaking at times. I went to the most beautiful house concert at a friends house. It was an incredible indoor/outdoor patio space with everybody sitting on the floor, candlelight, wine, and panes rellenos. The music was beautiful, many guitars with a very gypsy swing Django Reindhart sound, some of the best and most passionate live guitar playing I have seen in my life. The man is a friend of mine - Elio Giraldi. He is INCREDIBLE! There was another man playing Brazilian bossanova as well - a beautiful intimate night, I felt very lucky to be a part of it. And nobody spoke any English! Forcing me to really pull out all the material I have been learning with Bueno, entonces... The next day I headed to the San Telmo street fair and played guitar in the streets with my friend Alicia and attracted a fun group of people who danced and clapped to our songs, we even sang a few in Spanish. We then headed to one of my favorite parrillas called Des Nivel and decided to split a steak because the portions are so huge, and the night was fairly young. This caused some serious eye rolling of our absurd waiter, who sighed, gestured as if he were annoyed, and seemed to try to ignore us in this very contrived way. It was so ridiculous I decided he was putting on a show and that I would break him down, and get his fun side to come out...well hell, I did better than that apparently because as we were leaving (and this is a pretty damn nice restaurant) my waiter grabs a vertical pole in front of me and straight does a pole dance, completely gyrating his hips all the way down the pole, then takes my hand and kisses it. I laughed so hard tears were spilling out - he was maybe 100lbs, 55 years old, classic Italian/Argentine looking guy. To much - only in Argentina!
Heart was broken this morning on the subte on my way to work watching a nine year old huff glue from a bag and just be completely out of his mind...the homeless and working children in the streets is nothing I will ever be able to get used to. The lack of love they have received in their lives is so overwhelmingly apparent that they almost feel like a different kind of human being, the energy is very primal and empty at the same time...it is so sad.