We were walking down the very hip Avenida de Gurrachaga when we spotted a very long line of people across the street. We wondered why so many folks were lined up on the street so early in the morning, so we decided to find out where the line lead.
It went all the way down the Gurrachaga before turning left into an alley. It then snaked a full block down that alley before taking another turn at the next block. We were not about to give up at this point, so we followed it the full length of that city block and then turned left again and followed it all the way down that street. If you’ve been keeping track, you know we’ve made three left turns and that means the line wound all the way around the city block and discovered that the end of the line had almost reached back around to the beginning of the line.
Hundreds and hundreds of people — maybe thousands — were lined up for…well, you just won’t believe what they were lined up for.
Turns out that this is the 25th anniversary of the premiere of the television show Friends. Warner Bros Television has taken over an empty building in Buenos Aires, gutted it, and recreated some best-known Friends vignettes so fans can have their photos taken in settings that look identical to Friends set — sitting on the sofa in the Central Perk coffee shop, for example. Or playing fooz ball on a replica of the table that sat for so long in Chandler and Joey’s apartment.
But there is something even more amazing than the fact that Friends has so many rabid fans in Argentina. And that is the fact that none of those fans appeared to be old enough to remember the show. Everyone in line looked to be a teenager except for the parents of a few kids who were too young to be there on their own.
Who knew that Ross and Joey and Chandler and Monica and Rachel and Phoebe were still so freakin’ popular in Argentina?
As an aside, the show is called Friends here even though you might expect it to be called Amigos.
where are the selfies?