Encounter on El Once
El Once (The Eleven) does not, strictly speaking, exist.
It refers to a specific area in Balvanera, one of the forty-eight legally delineated neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. Through the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, El Once became a thriving market neighborhood for immigrants bearing textiles and other merchandise. While the zone itself cannot be found on official maps of the city, any cab driver worth their salt knows precisely where to deposit you upon its mention. Like a fabled island, it seems it can only be found by those who already know where it is.
That’s where I was headed.
Once my guide spoke the magic words to the driver, I found myself in the backseat of a Buenos Aires taxi, winding through the concrete labyrinth of Balvanera’s streets to an impossible destination. To test my mettle, perhaps, he was giving me the tour in overdrive – a thousand humble storefronts and hole-in-the-wall eateries whipped past in a whirlwind of signs, slogans, political graffiti, and venerable concrete.
My life never felt endangered, but boy, I hadn’t felt this alive since…well, since my last cab ride.
The journey, taking half its forecasted twenty minutes, ended as we emerged from the maze of side streets and onto El Once proper – a wider, two-way thoroughfare bathed in midday sunlight and bustling with pedestrians. At its borders, the latest generation of merchants continued the family tradition, vending wholesale without prejudice or pause to anyone in earshot. Like other market communities around the world, the energy on this street hasn’t slept or tired in decades, kept alive by the ceaseless urban artery of tourists, travelers, and tradesmen.
Tempting and invigorating as it all was, I wasn’t there to buy.
I had come to this secret community to have an experience – to be experienced, like the man once said – and the peculiarities only began with the ephemeral Once.
My guide located the nondescript entrance to what I had been told was an apartment building. Upon being buzzed in, though, I looked up to see no roof – only the sides of the neighboring buildings and clear sky above me, casting a natural glow over the otherwise unlit lobby. We were inside, but…not. Even this threshold had a surreal quality to it, making the street we had just entered from seem grounded by comparison.
From within came the distant sounds of activity and the faint murmur of music, so I followed my guide into the building’s open courtyard and up the stairs. As we padded down the tiled hallways, I couldn’t shake a feeling that we were somehow backstage, peering past the presentational veil of Balvanera’s streets and into some secluded scene shop. Looking beyond the neighborhood’s sights to see where the je ne sais quoi was made. Unstuck in space.
Quite fitting, for as we neared our appointed door, the faint music from the entryway grew louder – unmistakable – on our approach.
For all I knew, a full banda típica played behind that door.
And me without my dancing shoes.
To Be Continued
