Flighty Nighty

In my barrio, magic oozes up from the cobblestones, cracked adobe walls, abandoned buildings glistening with photogenic color and the crooked iron railing that lines the crumbling sidewalk. If there's ever a place where the astoundingly beautiful decay of Chile's cultural patrimony is evidenced in Santiago, it is here.

Neat, intriguing -- the magic is black, invariably. Get your gusto from sorcery cheap and abundant, inflict the terrorism of the evil eye. Nothing more than a dirty look, but it's not every day that the dirty look unsettles one to the core of his being, like the bogey man that one time.

What was it about yesterday, from the friendly kid who ran up to greet at the subway on my way to work to the junkie who followed us around trying to cell his sell phone to the drugged out chick who got kicked out of the tavern, our regular feed and watering hole. They closed early; something strange in the air. The girl stayed outside the window, staring inside, as we left, she turned to give us the same, the evil eye.

Luckily, I didn't see it. But apparently it was one of those next-level evil eyes.

Someone thinking in less mystical terms, more socially conscious, would describe the riff raff roaming last night's streets as delinquent, indecent, and the excellent Chilean word for low life gangster, knacker: "Flaite". Equally interchangable with the telecommunications company Telefónica, in my humble opinion. Anyway, pronounced FLY-tay, this word is apparently a Spanish acronym for the following:

flacuchento, lansa, antisocial, indecente, traficante, engrupio. That's according to an "diccionario de modismos" a Chilean slang dictionary which I won't reference because they're slightly fascist. But I do like the acronym. So, let's begin the lesson in Chilean slang. First in an indefinitely parted series.

Flacuchento - skinny
lansa - thief (i think)
indecente - indecent
traficante - drug trafficker
engrupio - soon to be defined