The Capital Of Cool

Many of the new arrivals are putting down stakes, taking advantage of low start-up costs to open businesses and immersing themselves in the Porteño lifestyle. The local real-estate market, demolished after the 2002 currency crash, is on the rebound, thanks in large part to foreigners who are snapping up apartments for as little as $1,500 per square meter--a quarter of what property costs in London or New York. Dozens of blogs written by expats enthusiastically tout the good life on offer in B.A. On the popular classifieds site craigslist, the Buenos Aires city page has more listings than Prague, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney and Amsterdam combined. Some 22,000 Americans are currently registered with the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, but there are likely thousands more who are not on record. The British Embassy has 5,000 citizens registered, compared with 3,000 in 2002.

In a country built by immigrants from elsewhere in Latin America, Europe and the Middle East, many Argentines view this recent foreign influx as a colorful new chapter in that story. Local officials don't like to hear that B.A. is hot because it's cheap, but love the fact that it's emerging as an art colony. Not only are foreign artists settling here for the first time, but creative Argentines are returning from self-imposed, post-crisis exile abroad, creating the most vibrant cultural scene the city has ever known.

That atmosphere is encouraging all kinds of cross-cultural collaborations. The Los Alamos band had been playing punk and hard rock before lead singer and guitarist Pedro López met Jonah Schwartz in 2004, days after he had moved to Buenos Aires to "learn another language and try another culture." His bluegrass background intrigued López, who quickly invited the mutton-chopped American to join the band. Schwartz's presence has shifted Los Alamos's sound, blending the styles of Johnny Cash, Neil Young and Wilco into something they call "narco-country." The band's live shows are regular sellouts in Buenos Aires, and its two albums--with songs in both English and Spanish--have drawn rave reviews throughout South America. "That's the important part of playing music for me: to influence the culture that you're part of, rather than just replicating it," says Schwartz. "I do that here."

Some expats take longer to find their place in the cultural scene. When San Francisco native Gavin Burnett, 25, first moved to Buenos Aires in 2004, he was disappointed by the generic downtown music scene. It was only after digging a little deeper that he discovered a bustling underground movement in bohemian neighborhoods like San Telmo and Palermo. Now Burnett works the local circuit under his DJ name Oro 11, mixing American hip-hop with Caribbean reggaetón and Argentine cumbia. "There's music going on here that is completely original and not happening anywhere else in the world," he says. "Expats have a lot to do with that." Most Wednesday nights you'll find him working or hanging out at the über -cool Niceto Club at a party called Zizek , which has become the focal point of the collaborative Argentine/expat musical scene. It is promoted by another foreigner, Texan Grant Dull, who also edits the city's go-to bilingual cultural Web site, WhatsUpBuenosAires.com.

A large number of the recent transplants first got interested in Buenos Aires after meeting Argentines abroad in Europe. In Barcelona, Spanish filmmaker Moisés Torne was struck by the ingenuity and panache of the Argentine immigrants he met who had fled the country's economic meltdown. So when he needed a new place to jump-start his career, Buenos Aires became an obvious choice. Torne, 37, has directed several videos for Argentine musicians and uses Web sites like YouTube and Flickr to market his material worldwide. "Argentina now is like Spain was in the 1980s," he notes. "It is coming out of a period of severe economic depression, and that has created a really restless artistic movement which has encouraged me to stay." That's not all: "Let's face it; it's really cheap, too."

Argentina has a storied film tradition, and in recent years its movies have been gaining international acclaim, winning top honors at the Berlin, Stockholm and Tribeca film festivals. Local critics and directors confess that the economic crisis sparked a series of self-reflective feature films that examine both local and global themes, such as Rodrigo Moreno's "The Guardian," about a bodyguard who subsumes his own identity to the minister he protects, and Jorge Gaggero's "Live-In Maid," about a wealthy woman who loses her fortune--and eventually her maid--in the economic collapse. This creative environment appeals not only to natives but also to foreign filmmakers feeling constricted by Hollywood's conventions. "We felt an immediate connection with Buenos Aires," says Jane Hallisey, a screenwriter and film producer who moved from New York to Buenos Aires in 2003 with her Swiss partner and fellow cinéasteTomi Streiff, to escape the grim, diminished work environment of post-9/11 New York.