Avenida Santa Fe

Buenos Aires, Argentina 12.30.04

Pedestrians and traffic lust after each other in the late afternoon, but this is the last time you will see anyone on the streets for four days. Tragedy looms like a crane atop an unfinished highrise, eclipsing the skyline around it. The stores are filled with shoppers who are comfortable acquaintances as much as customers, the congenial elbows on the bar atmosphere in a shoe store. They don't have your size, but you sit there anyway. With its endless procession of shops, with beautiful residential streets too close to pull foot traffic away from it, Santa Fe nods to every major shopping street of any major city. It has its odd billboards to no one, its music spilling out, its air-conditioned fineries. Back on the avenue, the crowds are like your feet: swollen in a sneaker with a roof of laces, holding the humidity hostage between your toes. Tomorrow the streets will be deserted. And everyone will no why. Except you.