Lust for Life

The residents of Buenos Aires, porteños, are major night owls. Dinner out at at 11pm, discos empty until 2am and rocking until 8am, overnight movie screenings at every theatre, cafés and ice cream shoppes bustling and the streets and busses packed well into the wee hours. There's a woman that sells newspapers all night on a busy street corner near my house and business is good. And this behaviour isn't just limited to young people or the over-the-hill party animal; the nighttime streets ofBuenos Aires are filled with porteños of all ages and social classes.

And this is not a weekends-only thing. Things are buzzing in this city any night of the week, with activity only getting more intense come Friday and Saturday nights.

But as much as porteños love their nightlife, the early morning demands of the modern workplace are the same as in any other city. So you may stay up until 2am on Tuesday night drinking espresso and talking politics with your pals in the café on the corner, but you still have to make it to work for 9am the next morning.

Does this stop porteños from enjoying food, wine, music and films, coffee and the company of each other, any night of the week? Not one bit. They'd rather not sleep than stop enjoying the finer things in life.

And if you ask anyone, they'll justify their sleepless existence in exactly this way. Yesterday in line at the drug store, Granny asks the cashier who can barely keep his eyes open if he'd had a late night the night before. As he yawningly answers yes, she comments that indeed, life is for living and basically encourages him to keep on givin' er.

It's your doctors, lawyers, accountants, bus drivers and store clerks that are sitting next to you on a Wednesday as you finish that last bottle of wine at dawn. They get up the next day on a few hours' sleep and perform surgery on you, oversee your personal affairs, serve your food and take down your credit card information.

Scary? I don't think so. Everyone seems to function just fine. You see, as opposed to someone who rountinely stays up late working, studying or performing some other disagreeable task, porteños are taking part in the the things they love. They love the night, they love discussion, conversing and debating with each other. And I think that's what gives them the energy and the motivation to live the routine parts of their professional lives. They've figured out what's important in life, and as opposed to letting the demanding realities of paying the bills distract them from the finer things, they've realized that it's these very things that make life worth living. And this allows, like, all of Buenos Aires to function on 5 hours sleep very night.

And there's this city's delicious espresso...