Augosto Tango

The month of August is synonymous with Tango. The city hosts the International Tango World Championships, and for the month a selection of Tango events are held at venues around the city. All the events are free, but do involve getting a ticket.... well that's a story all on its own.

In calle Florida, which is the main pedestrianised street down town, there is a building called "Harrods". Yes, it was part of the famous London store. In 1912 - Harrods opened its only foreign branch in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The store was modeled on the Knightsbridge store. It continued to be associated with the parent store until the 1950's when links were severed. It continued to trade under the Harrods name until the store was closed in 1998.

A little extract from the history book.........

" The fortunes of the store have mirrored that of Argentina. When Harrods Buenos Aires opened, it was among four subsidiaries of the London store, the others being in Manchester, Paris and Berlin. At that time Argentina, "the grainstore of the world" was the sixth-richest country on earth. The Buenos Aires store immediately became a symbol of exclusivity and refinement among Argentine high society.
Amelie Zanini, 95, remembers Harrods in 1930 when valets in green and gold brocade suits would open the car doors of patrician Argentine families and usher them in to take cream tea in the grand salon, where the shop's own orchestra played jazz. "All Argentine high society took tea at Harrods; it was a very posh thing to do." She recalls taking her children to the lavish Harrods Christmas party, where a Father Christmas would give out toys in Buenos Aires' sweltering December heat.
In the golden years of the 1940s and 1950s, when the Perons were in power and the country had got rich exporting food to a war-torn Europe, 45,000 people a day passed through the store. Eva Peron was a regular, always dressing impeccably in the height of European fashion like the Argentine high society she despised, while professing to identify with the "shirtless" masses.
During the 1960s, the shop became independent from the London Harrods Group, changing its traditional jagged signature for a curly version.
Argentina's hyperinflation crisis in 1989 was the start of its decline, when Mr Gibertoni, got into debt and was forced to close it floor by floor. Its fate was sealed as it struggled to compete during the 1990s with the US-style shopping centres that sprang up in the city. By the time it closed in 1998, only 50 people worked on the last floor."

Now the store is empty and the ground floor is used by the Ministry of Culture for various events. The building is huge, 6 floors and takes up a whole block, it still is very grand and one can imagine how it used to be in its prime. Anyhow, for this month, the whole ground floor has been transformed into various Tango Dance floors, a concert hall and a movie cinema. There are two restaurants and stalls selling all things Tango... it was really incredible to see. Apart from professional shows, there have been dance lessons, and public Milongas, wonderful concerts with Tango singers and orchestra and also Tango cinema, showing the old black and white features of the history of the tango. Tango is not just the dance. Tango is divided into 3 main areas, the music - the song and then the dance..... The Dance world champs were last night, it was free entrance, but you had to have a ticket to enter. Ticket collection was open 2 Sunday's ago, I went down to get us some tickets... (ha ha hee hee) I stood in the queue for over and hour and didn't move more than 1m. The line was so long, I was in block 7... I figured if this is the queue for the tickets, there will be another queue to get into the venue and then there will be so many people that we probably wouldn't see the dancers anyway... spirit of adventure disappears rather quickly waiting in line!!! Ah well there is always next year......................