Lufthansa in talks to buy SAS

Germany's Lufthansa is in talks to buy Scandinavia's loss-making SAS as it hunts for bargains among airlines hit by crippling fuel costs and economic weakness, sources familiar with the matter said.

"Exclusive negotiations are being held," one of the sources told Reuters, adding that SAS had approached Lufthansa about a possible deal in May.
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The sources stressed that a takeover of SAS, which is 50 percent owned by the Swedish, Norwegian and Danish governments and over 7 percent by the Wallenberg family, was not a foregone conclusion.

"Whether this leads to a deal remains open," said another source with knowledge of Lufthansa's strategy. "It's not fully clear yet where this will go."

SAS confirmed in a statement on Friday that it was evaluating "various structural possibilities for the group", but a spokesman declined to say whom the carrier was talking to.

"It must be emphasized that no decision has been taken," SAS said.

Norway's Trade and Industry Minister Sylvia Brustad told Reuters on Friday that SAS was mulling an ownership change: "We are aware that SAS is considering whether it is an advantage to bring in other owners."

A spokesman for Lufthansa declined to comment.

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How Adriana Lima Heads To The Hamptons

Everyone’s always looking for a better way to get to the Hamptons.

Even supermodels.

So when we got word that the lovely Adriana Lima was boarding a V1 Jet Seaplane to Long Island for an autograph signing, we were intrigued. V1 Jets are known for flying passengers on the “dead legs,” or the unused trips back to their original departure point. Their newest offering, V1 Jets Seaplane, caters to the Hamptons set - making travel to East Hampton a breeze. You, along with seven passengers, depart from the Seaplane Port at 23rd Street and the F.D.R. Drive. Buckle up and in you’re in for an exhilarating forty-minute commute that lands in East Hampton Airport.

All for a mere $495 each way…

Adriana Lima not included.

To plan your getaway to the Hamptons, Montauk, or Martha’s Vineyard by seaplane, visit jetcharter.com/seaplane.


V1 Jet Seaplane
For booking or more info, call (866) 469-5381, or visit jetcharter.com/seaplane.

***

Copenhagen: A local's view

Tim, 33, is a Canadian who moved to Copenhagen in 2000 to study at Copenhagen Business School. He has been working full-time in Copenhagen since 2004, currently as a journalist for a bank.

Tim moved to Copenhagen in 2000 and says the city has an enormous capacity to surprise.

CNN: Copenhagen was recently voted the world's best city to live in -- what's your opinion?

Tim: It's absolutely true! Of course, it's somewhat subjective. For somebody who puts a high value on surrounding themselves with friends and colleagues who generally have a very outward, international perspective, desires a high degree of organization in both their business and personal life, likes being close to the sea, prefers biking to driving, and perhaps has one or two children but still wants to live in the city, then the high ranking of Copenhagen makes perfect sense.

CNN: Is there anything you especially like or dislike about Copenhagen?

Tim: As a northern city, it's a bit too cold and cloudy for my preference and the city is a bit quiet during the first part of the week, which changes from Thursday onwards.

As for the positives, Copenhagen is generally a very liberal place, which reveals itself in interesting ways. It's not a politically correct city, which is a relief to me. I don't mind a bit of graffiti from time to time or hearing a bit of noise on the streets at night. I love that people can have noisy parties until very late into the night. People generally respect this freedom by not abusing it.

***

Spanair Press Release

Palma de Mallorca, 20th of August 2008, 15.45 p.m.

Spanair regrets to confirm that its flight number JK 5022, from Madrid to Las Palmas de Gran Canarias was involved in an incident at Madrid, at 14.45 hrs local time today.

JK is a code share* flight with Lufthansa LH 2554

Spanair is doing everything possible to assist the Spanish authorities at this difficult time, and has established a local help-line number for relatives or friends of those who may have been on board.
The number is. +34 800 400 200
Spanair will provide further information as soon as it becomes available.

Note to Editors: we ask journalists to contact the media information centre that has been specially established to provide you with updated information. The number is +34 91 625 87 03. Please do not call the passenger help line.

Friends & Relatives phone only: +34 800 400 200 Media only: +34 91 625 87 03

*Code-share – When two or more airlines state their flight number in the timetable for the same flight, while only one of the airlines operates the flight.

***

Snoozing at the airport terminal in a tent

Sleeping at an airport overnight, once almost a sport for the young and short of cash, has become a lot more common lately, affecting even older and professional travelers. And a big reason is that airlines are no longer as free with complimentary hotel vouchers as they once were.

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What's Up Buenos Aires (Online City Guide)

Change Your Life (Move to Buenos Aires)

A Moveable Fiesta

Buenos Aires has become an expat haven like Paris in the twenties–except with girls in bikinis.

• By Ian Mount

Dominic LoTempio leans back in his deck chair and surveys the grounds of the second home he rented for the year: a sleek, modernist two-bedroom in a gated retreat 30 minutes north of Buenos Aires. Ten feet from his toes, a stiff putting-green-style lawn continues uninterrupted to the border of a heated, infinity-edge pool and then eases down to a man-made lake with a dock for canoeing. And half a mile down the street is the field where he takes off and lands his paraglider. “It’s like living in the Hamptons,” he says. Except the whole thing costs just $1,400 a month.

It’s these economics that have led LoTempio, a 31-year-old former senior vice-president of bond sales with the Belgian banking conglomerate KBC, to step off the Wall Street treadmill and join the growing number of New Yorkers who’ve taken their year-end bonuses or real-estate winnings and relocated to Buenos Aires. “I came to live life as a rich guy,” he says. In fact, he lives like a Master of the Universe—not like some Wall Streeter who checked out with enough to be technically, barely, a millionaire, but like the young, loaded Hollywood version.

“I remember when I decided to move,” says LoTempio. Working in bond sales, he was keenly aware of the various financial crises around the world. “Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea, Japan, Russia, Mexico. Every time this would happen, the office would go bananas. Things would be melting on our screens. And somebody would look at their Bloomberg and say, ‘You know what, ***, I could move to Thailand, convert my dollars to baht, live like a millionaire, and never have to work again. But nobody would ever go. They were trapped. I was the only one who was young and single and could do it.” And he knew he had to make a change—he was already beginning to feel the physical effects of an all-work lifestyle. He started seriously considering expat life when Brazil devalued. “It hit me: That’s it. I could live there.” But just as he was getting ready to quit, Argentina crashed. If he’d needed a sign, this was it. The culture and climate of Buenos Aires seemed “more American” to him. He could imagine feeling at home there. In October 2003, he traded in 6:15 a.m. wake-up calls and 60-hour workweeks for his expat fantasy: late nights, no work, massive spending power, and beautiful Argentine women. LoTempio still thinks of it in Wall Street terms. “Lifestyle arbitrage,” he calls it.

Since Argentina’s 2001 financial collapse put a two-thirds-off sign on everything in B.A., the city has become a playground for Europeans and Americans looking to relax or reinvent. The exact number of transplants is hard to pin down—under Argentina’s lax immigration regulations, many expats live illegally for years on 90-day tourist visas—but signs point to a boom. The number of Americans registered with the embassy jumped nearly 13 percent between 2004 and 2005.

There are other cities across the globe that offer relatively inexpensive living, of course: Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Bangkok. But potential expats generally cross them off the list because prices have started rising (Mexico City) or they’re too culturally different (Bangkok) or because the rich-poor conflict makes being a “rich American” too dangerous (Brazil). Buenos Aires mixes a potent cultural cocktail: low prices, a familiar-but-different (and sexy) vibe, good weather, great food, and the chance to start over.

For New Yorkers, the draw is particularly strong. “I find Buenos Aires to be as much like New York as you’re going to get in the world,” says LoTempio. The architecture, the culture, even the neighborhoods make New Yorkers feel comfortable: The expensive boutiques of Recoleta are reminiscent of Fifth Avenue, the family-heavy quiet of Barrio Norte is the Upper West Side, the vaguely tough San Telmo is the East Village of a decade ago, the hippest restaurant-and-boutique zone is called Palermo Soho, and Las Cañitas is a mini–meatpacking district. “People try to tell you where to go, and you say, ‘No, I already know,’ ” says Alfred Abraham, a 32-year-old New York doctor who recently finished a four-month trip to Buenos Aires in preparation for a move there.

What better place to take your year-end bonuses or real-estate winnings and turn a life of subway rides and work into one of multiple homes, fancy restaurants, and weekend jaunts to Uruguay’s chic Punta del Este? I should know, I did it. In May 2005, after our Lower East Side co-op rose 75 percent in value in two years, my wife and I left New York in a quest to live cheaply, learn a second language, and work on long-dormant book projects. Life in B.A. isn’t perfect by any means. The litany of expat complaints includes one-ply toilet paper; slow restaurant service; strikes that shut down subways, airlines, or highways nearly once a week; and, as LoTempio puts it, an “embargo on cool ***” like plasma TVs, which arrive six months late and cost twice as much. But from a wallet angle, it’s hard to deny the attractions of Buenos Aires. The average price for a square foot of Manhattan real estate—about $970—will get you ten times the space in a tony neighborhood here. (LoTempio’s tricked-out pied-à-terre on the trendiest street in B.A. set him back just $68,000.) And a three-course meal including rack of lamb and a nice bottle of wine will only set you back about $40 a head at Sucre, one of the best restaurants in town.

But the point isn’t just cutting costs and living Soho lite. It’s about deciding that maybe you weren’t meant to be a banker/lawyer/consultant/ad exec after all. That maybe, if you just had the time and brain space and a good exchange rate, you could make it big with that business or artistic project you could never start in New York. With half a chance, you could be who you really are, and if you tried, you could be huge. That’s one of the most appealing parts of the Buenos Aires fantasy—that you can become the Player, the Mogul, the Entrepreneur, without paying the dues that New York would require.

LoTempio hadn’t planned to work when he moved to Buenos Aires, but after early retirement got boring, he started thinking about doing something productive, but not too productive. The answer seemed obvious. “Clearly, one of the attractions here for single 20- or 30-year-old guys is the girls,” he says. In fame-struck Buenos Aires, bikini-clad women will chat with anyone who might be able to get them into a magazine or, better yet, on television. And what would be better in high-definition television than “stunning footage of exotic travel, girls, bikinis, beaches?” thought LoTempio. “If I’m a miserable, overworked single guy back in the U.S., that would be my dream to flick on.”

So LoTempio and a few friends ponied up $20,000 and partnered with Tamir Lotan, the co-host of an extreme-sports show on Fox Sports en Español, to launch MariposaHD, an Internet-distributed fashion-and-babes-and-travel show that sells the escapist fantasy LoTempio is living. “What would you do if you could just walk away from your life, start over, and do whatever you want?” teases the Website.

Whether the show is a success is sort of beside the point. It’s already meant raised profiles and can’t-lose opening lines for its creators. LoTempio spends a lot of his time scouting for beautiful “talent” at clubs or on the beach, and there isn’t a velvet rope he isn’t ushered past. “We’re just meeting all these celebrities and models. And I was like, This is something I can’t do in the U.S. I can’t go to parties and hang out with movie stars, and I’m doing it in Argentina, and I don’t know these fucking people.” He almost can’t believe his good fortune. “If I go back and tell my friends what I’m doing, that’s more than every guy’s dream,” he says. “That’s the icing on the cake.”

Steven Blackman knows all about making sure people in New York are aware of How Great His Life Is in Buenos Aires. He visits the city every six weeks to tell them about the dinners at Sucre, the drinks at Gran Bar Danzon, the fashion events in Punta. Not to mention the fact that he pays $800 a month to rent two adjacent apartments from the son-in-law of Susana Giménez, Argentina’s surgically enhanced version of Oprah. Or that his maid comes five days a week: “She cleans over the same places every day, even though nobody’s been there. It’s insanity. But it’s something like 10 pesos a day. I’ll deal with it.”

In May 2004 Blackman was a burned-out Mercer Delta organizational consultant in a Canali suit. After sixteen years in the business, “I was so done,” he says. “And they were done with me too.” So, with a six-figure golden handshake that pushed his net worth “easily into the sevens,” he sublet his Central Park West one-bedroom, hung up his Canalis, and left town.

The idea to move to Buenos Aires had come to him while he was riding an exercise bike at New York Sports Club—and happened to be pedaling next to a former Meredith Corporation exec named John A. Kuhn who wanted to start South America’s first city magazine. Blackman, Kuhn, and their partners put up about $250,000 to launch Buenos Aires Metrópolis, a Spanish-language magazine that features fashion spreads, articles about surviving the single life, and news from New York. Last fall, after the first issue hit the newsstands, Blackman and his cohorts threw a well-attended launch party complete with a half-nude lingerie show (required at all top B.A. parties). At the end of the event, Blackman mounted the stage to cheers and whistles. “Más, más, más,” he hooted into the microphone.

“It doesn’t take long here,” he tells me later. “I’m a bigger fish here after a year than I’d ever be in New York.” That status bump to Big Fish—instant glamorization—is a typical thrill for expats used to being ants in Manhattan, says Margaret Malewski, author of GenXpat: The Young Professional’s Guide to Making a Successful Life Abroad. “You may be middle class back home, and suddenly you’re dealing with the upper classes,” she says. “That’s one of the tough things when you come back: You become a nobody again.”

Blackman’s friend Heather Willens agrees with that assessment. “He’d be nothing in New York,” she says, without cruelty. Her tone says she could be talking about herself, me, or any other expat. “It’s just so hard in New York. There are a million smart, interesting, wealthy people. Whereas here, it’s easy to be the most sophisticated person in the room because, like, you’ve gone to Thailand.”

Willens herself didn’t move to become a big fish; her goal is to be able to live “half fucking around” without skating too close to the economic edge. In New York, she had a fashionable job at Daniel Johnnes Wines that offered her plenty of free meals but a salary under $60,000 a year. She couldn’t save any money, and she could never splurge. “I never realized how much I was treading water,” she says.

Since moving to Buenos Aires in December 2004, the 34-year-old wine broker can afford to work a more relaxed schedule—her commission on one recent sale was more than the average annual salary in Argentina—and indulge hobbies that were out of her reach in New York. Her $500-a-month two-floor apartment is decorated with paintings from Recoleta galleries that, at prices below $600, allow her to be a collector of sorts. And she pays about $55 a month for her membership in the swank Buenos Aires Lawn Tennis Club, which is akin to a $20,000-a-year Westchester country club.

There are opportunities to be found in Buenos Aires’s bargain-basement pricing—especially when it comes to real estate. B.A. offers New Yorkers the chance to turn back the clock on the boom. Property values have gone up 14 percent here in the last year, but nice two-bedrooms still go for under $100,000. Mark Morgan-Perez, a 34-year-old Wall Streeter turned nonprofit real-estate developer, moved to Buenos Aires after clearing more than $400,000 on the sale of his 16 Park Avenue one-bedroom. Now he’s looking to transform his tidy profit into Trump-style moguldom. “A one-bedroom apartment in New York can become two buildings, three buildings here,” he says. He’s in the process of buying a four-bedroom house with a terrace and garage for $170,000. He plans to turn it into a bed-and-breakfast or boutique hotel.

But it wasn’t just the economic opportunities that attracted Morgan-Perez to Buenos Aires; it was the lifestyle. For one thing, he was drawn to the city’s gay life, which he describes as more “mixed” than New York’s, not defined by the “Chelsea gym-bunny scene and the East Village snobby scene.” (In fact, B.A. is a very progressive city—the first in Latin America to approve a civil-union law.) But he was also looking for the work-life balance that had eluded him in New York. “I want to sit around and play piano and collect rent and read. Life in New York had become too much of a grind. Everybody’s time is so precious. People are so wrapped up in careers,” he says. “Here, I can invest and do projects and make money and not have it dominate my life.”

And like all the New York expats I spoke with, he has no desire to go back. As Dominic LoTempio puts it, “Doing what I’ve done is an interesting study in happiness. Psychologists will tell you changing your station in life doesn’t change your level of happiness. But am I happier now than I was getting up at a quarter after six every morning? The answer is yes.”

***

Trendsetters of the world, Unite (in Buenos Aires)

By Denny Lee

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Buenos Aires: The tango dancers took their places inside a cramped apartment in central Buenos Aires, as David Lampson, a 29-year-old television writer from Boston, wiped his brow. Despite the hot weather, the fans had been shut off, spotlights switched on and windows blacked out with trash bags. The cameraman waited until the smoke machine blurred the parquet floor before yelling "Action!" Then just as the iTunes track reached its dramatic crescendo, the fuse blew. For the fourth time.

"Let's unplug the other fan and try again," Lampson told the polyglot cast and crew, which included a Greek mother, a Colombian architect and an Argentine shoemaker. Also present was a New York City film student, who was editing the footage for YouTube distribution. Lampson likened the process to creating art from garbage. "There is a tango dance based on this idea," he added, "called cambalache."

A better term might be bohemians-in-exile. A new kind of tango is taking shape along the crooked back streets of Buenos Aires. At a former furniture factory on Calle Honduras, the British music engineer Tom Rixton, who has worked with top acts like Depeche Mode, runs a stylish boutique hotel called Home with his Argentine wife. Nearby on Calle Garruchaga, Amanda Knauer, a fashion designer from New York, sells a chic line of leather handbags at Qara. And at Zizek, a weekly dance party run by an expat from San Antonio, the cha-ch-ch-cha rhythms of cumbia folk music quivers to an electronic beat.

"There are expats everywhere tapping into the city's thriving cultural and arts scene," said Grant Dull, Zizek's founder, who also runs the popular bilingual Web guide WhatsUpBuenosAires.com. "And it's not backpacker types, but people with money and contacts."

Drawn by the city's cheap prices and Paris-like elegance, legions of foreign artists are colonizing Buenos Aires and transforming this sprawling metropolis into a throbbing hothouse of cool. Musicians, designers, artists, writers and filmmakers are sinking their teeth into the city's transcontinental mix of Latin élan and European polish, and are helping shake the Argentine capital out of its cultural malaise after a humbling economic crisis earlier this decade.

Video directors are scouting tango ballrooms for English-speaking actors. Wine-soaked gallery openings and behemoth gay discos are keeping the city's insomniacs up till sunrise. And artists from the United States, England, Italy and beyond are snapping up town houses in scruffy neighborhoods and giving the areas Anglo-ized names like Palermo SoHo and Palermo Hollywood.

Comparisons with other bohemian capitals are almost unavoidable. "It's like Prague in the 1990s," said Lampson, who is perhaps best known for winning a Bravo TV reality show, "Situation: Comedy," in 2005, about sitcom writers. Despite his minor celebrity, he decided to forgo the Los Angeles rat race and moved to Buenos Aires, where he is writing an NBC pilot, along with his Web novela, www.historyandtheuniverse.com. "Buenos Aires is a more interesting place to live than Los Angeles, and it's much, much cheaper. You can't believe a city this nice is so cheap."

That wasn't always the case. For much of the 20th century, Buenos Aires ranked among the world's most expensive capitals, on par with Paris and New York. Broad boulevards were lined with splendid specimens of French belle époque architecture that evoked the Champs-Élysées, and tree-lined streets were buzzing with late-night cafes and oak-and-brass bars. Locals, it is often said, identify more as European than South American.

Then came the financial crisis of late 2001. The Argentine peso, which was once pegged to the United States dollar, plunged to a low of nearly 4 to 1 in the face of mounting debt and runaway inflation. (It holds steadily today at about 3 to 1.) Overnight, Buenos Aires went from being among the priciest cities to one of the world's great bargain spots.

There was a silver lining. Even as local artists flocked overseas, producing a kind of creative brain drain from Buenos Aires, foreigners arrived in record numbers. And what they discovered was that this fast-paced city of three million offered more than just tango and cheap steaks. The Argentine capital also had balmy weather, hedonistic night life and a cosmopolitan air that thrives on novelty.

Situated at the wide mouth of the Río de la Plata, Buenos Aires sprawls across the flat landscape with the force of a concrete hurricane. It takes more than an hour to traverse opposite ends by yellow-and-black taxi. And that's not mentioning the 48 barrios that creep inland, each with a distinct personality and crisscrossed by a web of cobblestone alleys and 12-lane mega-streets. There are business districts like Microcentro, leafy barrios like Recoleta and manufacturing sectors like La Paterna.

And nearly everywhere you turn these days, the new arrivals seem to be planting their flags, whether at a so-called chorizo house in historic San Telmo or a glassy condo in Puerto Madero. Or, for that matter, a former door factory on Calle Aguirre, which Sebastiano Mauri, 35, a painter and video artist from Milan, recently bought with several artists on the industrial outskirts of Palermo.

"Some are now calling this area Palermo Brooklyn," said Mauri during a recent visit of his renovated factory, a bright yellow building on an otherwise gray street. Cost for the entire four-story factory? $130,000. "Buenos Aires makes Milan look like a neighborhood. It's lively, multiethnic and you have Europeans from all over."

After gutting the third floor, Mauri spent the past year converting it into an artist-in-residence studio with hardwood floors, stainless-steel kitchen cabinets and midcentury-modern furniture. To celebrate the near-completion, he held a rooftop barbecue on a breezy Saturday in January that drew a cross section of Buenos Aires's art elite.

Drinking malbec out of plastic cups and eating steaks with dollops of ratatouille, the crowd of about 20 artists, curators and collectors chatted easily about the hyper-commercialized state of art, a towering sex hotel (known as a telo) nearby and the city's obsession with ice cream. "Artists come here because they can be free," said Florencia Braga Menéndez, whose namesake contemporary art gallery is arguably the city's most influential. "As a gallerist, I never tell my artists what sells. They must create for themselves."

That creative freedom has fueled plenty of cultural cross-pollination. Dick Verdult, an avant-garde musician and artist from the Netherlands, began toying with cumbia around 2000, manipulating the childish rhythms of the South American folk music with electronic bass lines, time delays and sampled voices. "Cumbia is like a ball of clay," said Verdult, 53, who is better known by his stage name, Dick El Demasiado. "If you stick to the simple laws" — a 4/4 rhythm that he likens to a galloping horse — "but disregard the tradition, you can do a lot with it. Argentina has a very elastic culture."

His first cumbia album, "No Nos Dejamos Afeitar," released in 2002, was so well received that Verdult decided to move to Buenos Aires. "The reaction blew me away," said Verdult, who is regarded as the unofficial godfather of this new electrotango sound known as experimental cumbia.

Not surprisingly, many of his disciples are fellow expatriates. "There's a group of maybe 10 producers and DJ's who are really pushing these new styles," said Gavin Burnett, 26, a DJ from San Francisco who blends cumbia with hip-hop and Jamaican dancehall under the pseudonym Oro11. "If you're an artist looking to be inspired and have $10,000 saved up, you can basically come down here and work, and not worry for a year."

It's not only artist types who are soaking up Buenos Aires's budget bohemia. Stumble into many of the city's trendy restaurants, bars and hotels, and there's a good chance a foreigner is behind it.

One of the newest is Le Bar, a martini lounge and restaurant in Microcentro with sunken seats, cool lighting and a rooftop terrace. It was started by several French expatriates including Manuel Schmidt, 40, an architect from Paris who sailed to Argentina with his wife and young daughter three years ago, and basically didn't sail back. Brasserie Petanque, a new restaurant in San Telmo, looks as though it was transplanted tile by tile from the Left Bank. "When I came in 2003, there were no French restaurants, so I stayed and opened this," said Pascal Meyer, an owner who was tending bar on a recent Sunday night. Before becoming a restaurateur in Buenos Aires, he was a culinary tour guide for the United Nations in New York City.

And then there are the novelists, journalists and screenwriters, quietly tapping away in their $600-a-month apartments, seeking to make a name for themselves on Argentine soil. Nate Martin, a 24-year-old from Wyoming, moved to the city in November and took a job as an editor at The Buenos Aires Herald, an English-language newspaper, because, he says, "I didn't want to be a waiter while writing." For his creative outlet, Martin maintains a blog, Grating Space. Like dozens of similar blogs written by foreigners, it rhapsodizes about the Argentine good life. He also DJ's on the side.

"We play stuff that they've never heard of," said his friend, Tom Masterson, a 35-year-old transplant from Chicago, during a night out at Bahrein, a stylish sweatbox in Microcentro where the headlining DJ hailed from Belgium. "They love me here."

Some literary efforts are starting to bear fruit. The writer Marina Palmer quit her advertising job in New York City, moved to Buenos Aires and, in 2005, published a "Sex in the City"-like memoir set in the city's vampish tango scene. "Kiss and Tango" has been optioned by Hollywood, with Sandra Bullock recently floated as a possible lead. (The film that has everyone buzzing these days is Francis Ford Coppola's "Tetro," a drama about Italian immigrants in Argentina that is being filmed in the city.)

But moviemaking is hardly restricted to foreigners. Argentina has a storied film history — notable examples include the 1968 political documentary "The Hour of the Furnaces" and the post-junta feature, "Official Story," which won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film in 1986 — and, in recent years, a so-called New Argentine Cinema has emerged, thanks to a new crop of directors like Daniel Burman and Lucrecia Martel who are winning prizes in Berlin, Toronto and other film festivals. They have set up shop along the fringes of fashionable Palermo, in an area now known as Palermo Hollywood.

As with other creative fields, the cinematic revival got some unexpected help from the financial crisis. Not only did the industry benefit from the influx of foreigners looking for cheap production costs, but the peso meltdown also provided grist for creative self-examination. "People were no longer talking about pretty dresses or soap operas," said Tomi Streiff, a filmmaker who moved to Buenos Aires from New York City with his partner and fellow screenwriter, Jane Hallisey. The couple is now working on a romantic comedy about a priest. "Everybody was hurt, so their skin was open."

The wellspring of creativity is starting to leech out of Buenos Aires and onto the larger cultural stage. Local fashion designers, who flourished when European imports tripled in price, are making inroads into the global marketplace. Tramando, a high-end fashion store in Recoleta started by Martin Churba, now has boutiques in Tokyo and the meatpacking district in New York. And Maria Cher, a London-trained designer who has an airy boutique in Palermo SoHo, exports her glamorous dresses throughout South America, as well as to Tokyo.

Experimental cumbia music is reverberating beyond the city's packed dance floors. Burnett, the DJ, just started his own cumbia record label, Bersa Discos, and is playing shows in his native San Francisco. Zizek, the weekly dance party, is taking its urban tropical beats throughout the United States, with stops this month in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin.

Buenos Aires's buzzing art scene, meanwhile, is being touted as the next big thing. Or that's the hope, anyway, of the city's eager artists and wide-eyed gallerists. "This city reminds me a lot of Berlin," said Elisa Freudenreich, 27, a gallery manger who recently moved from Berlin and sees parallels in the profusion of street artists and graffiti-splattered spaces. "The scene is very fresh, very underground."

Scruffy galleries have gone up along the city's edges, most notably Appetite, an irreverent, punk-inflected gallery in San Telmo started by Daniela Luna, a feisty 30-year-old known for her shrewd eye and cool parties. On a steamy Thursday afternoon, as office workers were climbing aboard buses back home, Luna was flitting through her grungy gallery in a brown miniskirt and sparkly pink T-shirt, like a teenager in a vintage clothing store.

"My first gallery was so messy that when people came to my parties, they didn't know if the stuff was art or trash," Luna said, as she showed off works by Santiago Iturralde, a local artist who paints portraits of narcissistic young men based on their Facebook-like Web profiles. "We're growing fast and furious." So fast, in fact, that she is exporting her cheeky blend of trash art to the real Brooklyn, where she just opened a small gallery.

Her gallery will get additional exposure in Milan when the contemporary art fair, MiArt 2008, spotlights emerging Buenos Aires artists in April. Adriana Forconi, a jet-settling consultant to the art fair, was in town recently to scout for worthy galleries, and was struck by what she calls the city's "frenetic and blissfully chaotic" pace.

"There's definitely something happening here," said Forconi, who was among the guests at the artist-filled rooftop barbecue. Dressed in a flouncy party dress and strappy sandals, she looked ready for another long night on the town. "There's a clash between European and Latin American cultures that's fascinating."

"And unlike Milan, there are no rules," Forconi added, as she looked out at the twinkling city and took a sip of wine. For a moment, she sounded like someone toying with a move to Buenos Aires. "You can do whatever you want here."

FROM PALERMO HOLLYWOOD TO PALERMO BROOKLYN

GETTING THERE

American Airlines and Aero Lineas Argentinas fly direct from Kennedy Airport to Buenos Aires, starting at $762 for travel in April, according to a recent online search. The 20-mile taxi ride to the city costs about 100 pesos, about $31 at 3.2 pesos to the dollar. Buses and subways are fast and inexpensive. Taxis are plentiful and cost 10 to 15 pesos for a typical trip.

WHERE TO STAY

Unless you're packing a business suit, consider the neighborhoody barrios of Palermo Viejo or Recoleta.

Home Hotel Buenos Aires (Honduras 5860; 54-11-4778-1008; www.homebuenosaires.com), opened by the British music producer Tom Rixton and his Argentine wife, Patricia O'Shea, is a boutique hotel on a quiet block in Palermo Viejo. The 17-room hotel features midcentury-modern furniture, a pool and a restaurant. Rates start at $120.

Designed by Philippe Starck, the Faena Hotel + Universe (Martha Salotti 445; 54-11-4010-9000; www.faenahotelanduniverse.com) offers over-the-top elegance in Puerto Madero, a planned waterfront district. The spacious hotel, which occupies an old grain silo, has everything from a cabaret stage to a hammam, with 110 rooms starting at $425.

There are plenty of great hotels for under $100, like the Art Hotel (Azcuénaga 1268; 54-11-4821-4744; www.arthotel.com.ar). For longer stays, apartment rentals offer even better deals. Two reputable agencies include For Rent Argentina (www.4rentargentina.com) and ApartmentsBA (www.apartmentsba.com). I paid $125 a night for a modern two-bedroom apartment in Palermo Soho that slept three comfortably, and included a large terrace and pool. WHERE TO EAT

Olsen in Palermo Viego (Gorriti 5870; 54-11-4776-7677) serves a chic blend of Scandinavian and Argentine cuisine in a modern space seemingly plucked out of Copenhagen. Dinner for two with wine, about 250 pesos, or $78 at 3.2 pesos to the dollar.

Le Bar in Microcentro (Tucumán 422; 54-11-5219-0858) evokes a space age bordello, with red-velvet sunken seats, a rooftop lounge and a global tapas menu. Dinner for two, 200 pesos.

Brasserie Petanque (Defensa 596; 54-11-4342-7930; www.brasseriepetanque.com) brings Parisian comfort food to San Telmo. Dinner for two with wine, 200 pesos.

WHERE TO GO OUT

Zizek is held on Wednesdays from midnight at the Niceto Club in Palermo (Niceto Vega 5510; 54-11-4779-9396; www.whatsupbuenosaires.com/zizek).

Bahrein (Lavalle 345; www.bahreinba.com), in a century-old central building, has a popular Tuesday drum-and-bass party.

Kim y Novak (Godoy Cruz y Güemes; 54-11-4773-7521; www.kimynovak.blogspot.com), a drag-queen-friendly bar in Palermo.

WEB SITES

What's Up Buenos Aires (www.whatsupbuenosaires.com) is a bilingual guide to the city's arts, music and cultural offerings.

bue (www.bue.gov.ar), the city's official tourism site, has event listings, useful tips and directories.

TangoSpam (www.tangospam.typepad.com) is among dozens of blogs written by expatriates. Links to other blogs can be found on it.

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American Air cancels flights for MD-80 inspections

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American Airlines, a unit of AMR Corp (AMR.N: Quote, Profile, Research), canceled up to 500 flights on Tuesday to conduct additional safety inspections of its MD-80 aircraft, the airline said.

American said in a statement that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) raised new concerns about recent MD-80 wiring inspections that resulted in canceled flights two weeks ago.

The current and previous inspections stem from an industry wide FAA review of airline compliance with agency safety directives.

Several carriers have grounded aircraft as a result of the audit, which was triggered by inspection and maintenance lapses at Southwest Airlines Co (LUV.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and pressure from government watchdogs and congressional investigators to take action.

American said additional cancellations were likely on Wednesday.

"We've been working in good faith to ensure that we are in compliance with this airworthiness directive," said Gerard Arpey, AMR's chairman and chief executive.

American operates nearly 300 MD-80 aircraft, about half its overall fleet, mainly on routes servicing the carrier's Dallas and Chicago hubs.

The inspection at American relate to a 2006 FAA order that wiring in MD-80 wheel wells was properly installed and secured. The FAA had additional questions about how the work was performed at American.

Any plane that does not conform to detailed technical specifications of the order will be grounded while the work is completed, American said.

American re-accommodated passengers on other American flights or those operated by other airlines.

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