Man asleep on a bench outside my apt.

This man was asleep yesterday on a bench in the little plaza across from my apartment here. This is a frequent site, people catching a little nap out there.

Looking at this picture closely, I noticed a couple things. First, the guys clothes are nice and clean. So he's not living on the streets. I'd guess that he lives way out of the center of town, and probably has very badly paying work around here. He might even be working a couple different jobs, and so catching a nap between them.

Buenos Aires proper isn't that big of a city, it's about 3 million people. But the metro area is huge, it's 13 million people. And the outskirts are usually less dense than the center, so lord knows it spreads way, way out. I always feel bad for guys like this (if in fact he lives on the outskirts) who have to travel so far for menial work. Just another reminder of how well some of us have it.

Oh, one other thing I noticed is that he's not wearing socks. I was really surprised when I noticd how expensive socks and underwear are here, relative to other clothes. My guess is that all the socks we get in the US are from bangladesh or vietnam or some place with absurdly low labor costs, whereas here they minimize imports and so these things are probably produced domestically.

So, dude on the bench probably travels three hours each way to his lousy job, and still can't afford socks.