The Mexican Wrestler Dances a Jig

The day before St. Patrick’s day, I asked an Argentine friend of mine when I should plan on getting to Kilkenny’s, one of the city’s most well known Irish pubs. “Probably seven,” he told me, and I simply didn’t believe him. Nothing in Buenos Aires starts at seven. When I told my American friends that we should be there by seven, they blew me off. Eight at least. But someone had dance class until 9:30 and someone else was going out to dinner, which couldn’t even start earlier than eight.

I ended up meeting my friends outside of Kilkenny’s at nine and found myself alone in a line that stretched down the sidewalk and half way around the bar. The whole of Reconquista was closed off, made into a pedestrian-only zone that was brimming with drunk partiers. As I waited for my friends, I fought off the question I have learned to hate, “Where you from?” by insisting that they speak to me in Spanish and accept my answer, “I live here.” The line didn’t move and by the time my friends got there I had learned that entrance alone was forty pesos, which none of were willing to pay. We found some beer being vended from a pizza stand and decided to enjoy the party in the humid Argentine evening.

The party in the street, however, lacked direction, even towards the beer. “Where is it?” people would ask us when they noticed the plastic beer cups in our hands. “Down the street two blocks. It’s a thirty minute wait,” we would reply and they would swear a little in Spanish. An enterprising Argentine with a cooler full of liters of Quilmes could have made a fortune that night. Every once in a while, yelling would start up, at first making us worried that a fight had started. It always turned out to be a camera crew though, around which knots of people formed, screaming “San Patricio,” jumping up and down, and spilling their hard won beer. The patches of television-illuminated partying looking nothing like the scene surrounding them.

St. Patrick’s Day in Buenos Aires was the least Irish Irish festival I have ever seen. You could spot a foreigner a million miles away because that person was actually wearing green. Three men playing Aeolian pipes were the highlight of my evening and created a crowd around them. After the first song or two a large man wearing a Mexican wrestling mask began break dancing in front of them. As he kicked out his legs and did a flip, the crowd clapped and we couldn’t help but smile at what we supposed was an imitation of Irish folk dancing. We took a few turns ourselves, linking elbows and skipping our own awkward homage to the holiday.