What's going on in Buenos Aires
Dickhead,
You have GOT to stop trying to send these guys to places that haven't been destroyed. If you don't you will soon have no place to go. You are telling everybody: "Don't go to 1707, the tourists destroyed it. Go now to Maipu 359 and destroy that. Hopefully by then we will have found another place."[/QUOTE]This is a real dillema because when I find a great thing I usually want to share it so that others can experience something great too. The problem is that we come from countries where the women are so fucked up and the men are bending over backwards like assholes to kiss there asses. I can only imagine what would happen to someone who came to Buenos Aires without reading the forum and was happy to go to some bullshit stripclub in the U. S. where some stripper with too much make-up, fake titties, and a bad attitude is asking for $300US to go in the back room and roll around on him naked while he has his clothes on. They come here and really get fucked and, like the princess kissing the frog, instead of turning into a prince they turn into a fucking ATM. The problem also is that a lot of guys are more into being "the man" than into getting fucked. I want to give all men like this some good advice. GO TO COSTA RICA. The whole system at the DelRay is designed for you to go spend way too much money for a hot girl to treat you like you are "the man" in front of other people but not fuck you. I am down to one apartment where I know, guaranteed, that I can get my rocks off and that fucking sucks. I really have to consider what Lexton is saying because I can remember when the girls at Santa Fe 1707 used to try to fuck you. What the fuck happened there?
Tipping in Argentina doesn't get you better service
And one more thing. TIPPING DOES NOT GET YOU BETTER SERVICE IN ARGENTINA. Especially with whores. Please grasp the concept. This is not a tipping culture. Tipping someone here makes it look like you are a person who likes to give away money for kicks. In other words you are a "boludo". A fucking idiot. Do the tipping Pepsi challenge at the local joint of your choice if you don't believe me. It's not going to make you a VIP. It's going to make you the person in the joint with a bill that is 25% more than everyone elses.
Overtipping and Overpaying Issues
First, on tipping and all sorts of overpaying tactics:
[QUOTE=JoeNasty]Thats funny that you say that, because I know for a fact that tipping does get you better service here, at least in some cases. My food delivery person (a really friendly and hard working young guy from Peru) who I give one or two pesos to every time (it doesnt take much! Has gone the extra mile for me on certain occasions when it was neccessary and has explained to me how he brings my orders first when he has more than one order, even when it means he has to go back to the restaurant an extra time, or he has to go on a longer route to finish his deliveries. I never have to wait more than 15-20 minutes for my food, and if they get my order wrong he goes back and fixes it for me right away.
But thats not why I do it. I do it because I want to. I'm happy to give him a little extra cash, which I know for a fact he definitely appreciates.
You don't get the same kind of appreciation at a restaurant in most cases, because here in Argentina they split all tips amoung the waitstaff. This is, in my opinion a bad system, for both the customer and the staff.[/QUOTE]The problem with this is the same with all: It can be seen from the above that it only works when your tip or payment is EXCEPTIONALLY HIGH, and then only at the expense of the service to others. If the others begin tipping in retaliation, to improve THEIR service, then you will no longer receive exceptional service, or they will not receive exceptional service. No other options are possible. The delivery boy physically and mentally cannot give exceptional service at this level to everyone. However, he will begin to downgrade service to those who do NOT TIP, to the point of a NY taxi driver. Thus, a new price point is established, and the cycle continues.
Secondly, tipping is grossly unfair and extortionary, so the argument of helping people does not work well. Why does one tip the bartender in a pub, but not the bartender at McDonalds or the kiosk, who works harder for less? Why does one tip the waiter but not the dishwasher, who works harder? Or the toilet attendant, but not the person who cleans the floors? I assume that the toilet attendant at Black must PAY for his position in some way, because of its value. Tipping is perpetrated in situations where it can be JUSTIFIED and EXTORTED in any way whatsover, just to extract more money from customers.
Joe, you admit that when the tips are shared, one does not receive better service. But that is certainly more equitable, particularly with employees who do not have direct client contact, like the cleaning people. So you accept the idea that tipping eventually creates a new price structure without better service. Further proof of this is the escalation of restaurant tips during MY memory from 10% to 15% , 20% , and now pushing 25% in the guides.
Second, on the idea of doing what one likes:
This is, in a sense, a fair argument. Every time this subject is discussed, the people defending their position essentially say: "It's my right to do what I want with my money". So it is, in a way. But these people who insist on using their money to my detriment must understand something:
If you insist on doing this, it is in MY best interest to help you spend your money as fast as possible on arrival, receive as little value as possible for it, and have the least contact with the local population in the process. Do you think it is fair for me to act in MY best interest, then? For me, the ideal big money tourist is then one who comes and goes to the casino, and loses their money there and goes home. They help everybody, and don't hurt me.
So in that sense, I am beginning to change my attitude toward the tourist exploiters on this forum and elsewhere. Perhaps they are rendering me a valuable service? Why then, should I go out of my way to expose them? And this is an idea that others have alluded to.
The highest ideal of this forum is the idea of education for the unaware. But that education has to include more than just a "Tip Sheet". If it doesn't, the "Tip Sheet" quickly becomes "Sucker Traps" due to basic economics. That education has to include education on the economy and culture. Most of all, I resent all of the attempts to deny the need for that education and belittle it. In some way, we HAVE TO RESPOND to this threat.
You are right Lexton- this is a serious dilemma
I can tell from the response that you received from JengisKhan what the real problem is. I now realize that having great places get burned by blockhead tourist big spenders is almost inevitable. I think that I have been in Buenos Aires for just the right amount of time to see both sides of this problem. On the one hand you have me, the guy who is living here, and planning to stay for a while. I'm not on vacation and my priority is to find the providers that perform the services that I enjoy cheaply and dependably. For me the expense of doing this is a recurring bill. For me it is a lot like paying the electric bill or my gas bill. If I turned around one day and my gas bill was suddenly $20 bucks more than it used to be I would be pissed off and call the gas company and make them explain to me why the same service suddenly costs more. HOW MUCH MONEY I MADE OR HAD IN THE BANK WOULD BE TOTALLY IRRELEVANT. When I find some pussy for 80 pesos I am obviously happy about it but I don't say anymore, "Wow, I would have to pay 12 times as much for this same pussy in America." I don't feel guilty about that because this is NOT America. This is Argentina. I don't even say to myself that I'm paying $27USD for pussy because that is irrelevant if you live here. You are paying 80 pesos.
Then you have the other scenario, let's call him Yahoo tourist. It may seem like I'm bashing him by really I'm not because I have been a lot like this idiot myself in the past. He's on vacation and he's so glad to be away from his bullshit job and his bullshit girl that this place and the freedom that he is experiencing is like a paradise. So what does he do. He decides that he's going to totally give himself over to this paradise type fantasy and treat himself to the time of his life. So he goes to Black sees some blazing girl who comes up to him with an attitude and asks for $300USD. He says, "Gee what the hell, I'm on vacation and in the U. S. This experience would cost X so even though I know it's too much I will treat myself. I don't want to negotiate because I have the money and don't mind spending it in the name of fun" Then he fucks her and it is a bullshit fuck where the chick lays there waiting for it to be over, does everything covered, treats you and your body like you are radioactive waste, gets up right after and says that she has to leave. And Yahoo tourist says to himself, "Wow, What a looker. Now I've got a great story to tell my friends at home."
Then heaven forbid he meets a local monger or reads the forum. He goes to a joint that is a mere fraction of what he pays the Black hooker and the service is immeasurably better. He says to himself, "Wow, this place is so great. This is the experience that I have been looking for and if I had been in Black I would have paid $300USD but since I only paid X and I had the time of my life I want to reward the provider by passing on a signifigant gift." In doing this it is almost as if he wants to share the happiness that he is feeling (from being in a special place and getting to do all of these things that he doesn't usually get to do in his regular life) by giving the money. Also he knows that the provider needs the money probably a lot more than he does and maybe deep down he feels a little bit guilty about using her for his own pleasure. So he pays her extra and at the same time that he does it he turns the monger who gave him the valuable advice into a second class customer.
It's very ironic that this happens because the very reason that the local monger gave him the advice in the first place is because the monger probably had some bad experiences and wanted the tourist to benefit from his experience and not be taken advantage of. I was reading another forum recently and I read a trip report by a monger who came to Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo and completely missed the scene here. He was here for 4 days and managed to find every jick-jack clip joint in the Microcentro and didn't have a decent lay in his entire trip. His conclusion was that Buenos Aires sucks as a monger destination. I felt the same way the first couple of weeks that I was here because I didn't know about the forum and had some horrible experiences. When you look at the reason why the experienced monger gives the information and also why the tourist monger wants to give the extra money to the girls you can see that the motivations for doing these things are actually almost admirable. The sad thing is that, over time, these actions destroy the scene.
Unfortunately there are some very ugly truths behind the realities of these situations that both mongers don't want to see. The first is that the tourist monger doesn't want to admit to himself that he is on vacation and the hooker is not. There is nothing that you can give a woman that will make her be happy about having a stranger's cock in her mouth, pussy, and ass for an hour. You are happy because you are on vacation. She is not happy because she is at work. No amount of money that you give her will change this fact. She is feeling, at best, like you felt when you were at your job looking at an inbox with papers piled up to the ceiling but you may be doing a job that you love or that at least that you don't mind doing. That would be the best case scenario for her. She probably hates her job and has financial responsibilities and obligations in addition to family situations related to her upbringing that got her involved with this kind of work and you are using her for your pleasure. If you can't accept this DON'T MONGER. Nobody says that you have to monger there are plenty of other things for you to do in Buenos Aires and you will have a great time. But don't become the typical 1st world hypocrite who is going to help the homeless, help the battered women, help the Argentine economy, and all the while he's pumping gallons of jizz into every local hole that he can find and living a lifestyle that is entirely supported by these economically depressed conditions. In a nutshell, you are here because things are going badly here. Deal with the reality of that. Once you destroy the scene by either trying to be a bigshot or by trying to be a bleeding heart liberal crusader you will not be coming back because this place will be as fucked up as it is at home.
Then there's the reality that the local monger doesn't want to accept. That is that the people that he's helping really don't give a fuck about him and don't respect, at all, the help that they are receiving. How their actions will effect the future is irrelevant to the tourist monger because in the future he will be back at home and will have the memory of this great time that he had here. Buenos Aires for him is like Disneyland. It is not a real place with its own culture and traditions. It's as if the place doesn't exist if he is not here. It's a fantasy shangri-la where all the women want to fuck him and the dollar is actually worth something. The great irony is that he is going to go home to his bullshit life with the memory of how it was when he came and as the routine of his real life starts to get to him he will keep bringing back the memories and maybe even idealize them. In time he may decide to come back and he will see that the place that he visited really doesn't exist anymore because of his actions.
When I first started using the forum I would see posts with members trying to actually stop people from coming here. Sometimes they would give them really bad info on purpose or recommend the services of a fellow expat whose services were extremely overpriced and I thought the worst about these people. But imagine how you would feel if you fell in love with a place to the point of breaking the ties with your country of origin rearranging you life to travel to this place. You struggle to learn the language and the customs and then people from you own country, who you were trying to help, come and destroy everything that you loved about it. And after doing it. After taking your advice. After using your experiences to avoid bad situations they say, "Look bub, I don't give a fuck. I'm on vacation and I'll do whatever the fuck I want with my money."
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Big Bob 7,
Well said, but let me add a couple of points.
1. Black is a isolated island, and whatever tourist monger pays in Black has little or no effect on those of us who live here. That's why I generally encourage the "high rollers" to spend their time there.
2. Given the reality of the Internet information age wherein we can't keep BA a secret, the next best thing we can do is educate tourist monger in the hope of minimizing his detrimental impact on the local scene that we all enjoy. This is an important function of this website.
Thanks,
Jackson[/blue]
