Talk about "Dead Money"

Golden Lotus informed me that it was bad "ju-ju" (sp?) to "tour" where dead people are laid to rest.

Yet here I find myself, along with a fair number of tourist walking through the cemetary in Buenos Aires, fairly fascinated. This "graveyard" stretched on for blocks and blocks, with each mosoleum uniquely designed.

I was left to imagine what it must be like to be lost in the maze of gravemarkers at night as several of the rows are quite narrow to pass through, nooks and crannies abound, and there is no shortage of the "heebie-jeebies" i'm sure.

Stray cats are plentiful enough here for any number of cliche, hollywood style "faux scares" if one were to try to circumnavigate the space after dark. ("faux scares" of course are when a kitty jumps into the screen and scares the actors at the height of tension....only to be followed moments later by a knife-weilding masked psychopath).

However, during the day when we visited my mind was drawn towards one of the real, deep, dark, bone-chilling fears of fuBarrio.

TAXES!!!

In California, and some other locations I'm sure, they have passed laws to "protect" long term homeowners from property tax hikes driving them from their homes.

Is this how gravesites work? How are the property taxes on a graveyard paid? By the new entrants? btw, indirectly, that is what happens when you have property tax caps. Newcomers and those not lucky enough to have owned their home since the 70's are stuck paying vastly more property tax for the same amount of services.

In addition to the taxes of course, these monuments take a fair amount of maintenance. Most of the owners' sites were relatively well cared for, beautiful examples of late 1600's "creepy-revival" architecture. However, some had obviously fallen into disrepair (a disproportionately very small number.

I wonder if this was from a lack of heirs, their "HOA" fees going overdue, or the annuity they set up to pay for the maintenance being leveraged into drkoop.com stock.

Anyways, points to ponder in one of Buenos Aires' more beautiful areas.

ciao for now,
fuBarrio