The great Buenos Aires shoe hunt

Every tanguera who visits BA has shoes on her mind. Accordingly, the three of us set out to find our fantasy shoes at what reliable sources assured us would be a fantasy price. The Faithful Reader might recall that I was pinning my hopes on Darcos. The reality was profoundly disappointing.
We found their "megastore", where craftsmen were working away at the back, and we fell on the shoes. These were arranged on racks according to size, but ours - 39, 40 and 41- were nowhere to be seen. Neither, apparently, were we.
The one or two assistants completely ignored us, until we finally bulldozed our way into their consciousness with a request for our sizes. No eye contact, and a dismissive wave towards the gloomy interior was all we got. There we found a couple of meagre racks of footwear for giantesses suffering from the delusion that they deserved decent tango shoes.
A day or so later we visited one of Darcos's normal retail outlets, in the hope of more choice and better service. Again we were dismissed with a wave, and when one of us dared to pick out a shoe from the 36 rack and ask if it came in a 41, the gesture was repeated. It might as well have been two fingers.
On the way out, I snapped this surreptitous picture of the couch, where, if you're lucky enough to get to the point of actually trying any of their shoes on, you will be invited to sit. It probably tells you all you need to know about Darcos's customer relations.

To be continued.

Post-BA posts

Plaza Dorrego, last Sunday evening; a test of nerve:
the band had just begun playing; S was first on the floor and I was second (photograph by Cheryl Brown)

Before I left home three weeks ago, I fondly imagined I would be posting from Buenos Aires at the rate I do from here, on all manner of appearance- and tango-related topics, liberally spiced with on-the-spot pictures.
Huh. I was far, far too busy doing it all to record any of it. All I managed was this list of blogs-to-come:

• The Eva Peron Museum - in particular, her dresses and shoes
• Tango-proof mascara - does it exist?
• BA's beautifully dressed older men and alarmingly dressed older women
• The great shoe hunt - down with Darcos and up with Comme Il Faut
• Milonga banio ladies
• Excess baggage - or, how much better I'll do in the packing department next time. Because, oh yes, there will be a next time.

Your foot bone's connected to your/ hip bone ...

The better I dance, the more painfully I walk. Is this fair? No, it's not! Turns out that 14 months of high-heeled tango several times weekly has produced a bursitis in both hips. And, predictably, a flurry of anxious internet research to try to establish what exactly bursitis is, whether it's curable or only treatable, whether the boring exercises the physio has me doing will actually make any difference, and whether it makes a hip replacement or two sooner or later inevitable.
None of this would have happened, I suspect, if I'd shunned heels from the outset and danced, as L always does, in flats. Now it's too late. I tried recently and felt so utterly wrong-footed that I nearly fell.
It's also too late because now I love high heels, and within 10 days will buying more, just for dancing, in Buenos Aires.

Comme Il Fauts are too high and needle-thin for me, so I shall try to avoid them for fear of falling in love.

Right now, this is my must-have pair - from Darcos. I saw someone wearing them on Saturday night at Nina's milonga and couldn't take my eyes off that glowing red suede and those sexy straps. 
Plus - albeit a dreary little plus - they look as if they might also be comfortable.



But then, look at these ...


And these ...

And these ...