[Tango-L] Club Gricel in Buenos Aires

[astrid]

 Well, a nearby ballroom studio (you know,
> one of the chain, cheesy ripoff ones like Fred Astaire
> or Arthur Murray) got wind of our milongas, and decided
> to take some of their students there on a "starlight."
>      So anyway, these studio people (none of whom could
> dance a lick of anything) would just march in, take over
> our floor (...)making any kind of real social
> dancing impossible, and then leave, a few hundred dollars
> richer each, having fleeced their students' pocketbooks
> and trashed our milonga with no compensation to us
> whatsoever.

Oh, what a nightmare! That sounds worse than this group of tango
afficionados in Tokyo that call themselves "Tango NPO" (does that stand for
non-profit-organisation ????) that offers to get visas negotiated for
visiting teachers from Argentina (it was probably them who informed
immigration the time when one got busted at the airport, before they offered
to do this), holds tango classes in the sterile linoleum-and-aluminum
chair-decorated therapy room of the shrink and his gold-digging mistress who
head this "NPO", gave a milonga with Gabriel Misse and partner for a flat 65
dollars in a dentist's assistent's college hall right in the middle of the
lower class red light district down a dark alleyway (talk about a cheap
location!) which also bought you half a cup of oolong tea and a few peanuts
(half a paper cup of wine cost extra). When people complained about the
prices, they indignantly said:"We have to live too. We are doing all the
work, after all!" Next they organised "amateur demonstration contests" and
invited me to join, given that I find a partner and come up with a song and
a choreo, and then informed me that me and my partner would have to buy up 4
tickets a' 40 dollars each and try to sell them to friends who would come
and watch this event.
Talk about trying to cash in on the tango scene ! Jeez !

Astrid