Bogota Blogger

Chapinero is a large district that also has a few sort of smaller neighborhoods within its borders. I would call Chapinero the section roughly from Calle 69 in the north to about Calle 40 in the south, and from the mountain heading west to about Avenida Caracas or even further to Avenida Boyaca or so. It’s the most diverse and most interesting neighborhood that I know of in Bogota. I would describe it as similar to the Village in New York or Dupont Circle in DC back before those neighborhoods got so outrageously expensive that the diverse part of the diversity couldn’t afford them anymore.

The Most Diverse Neighborhood in Bogota

Chapinero is mostly stratas 3 and 4, and of course, as with most neighbnorhoods, the closer to the mountain the nicer. The part above the Septima (going up the mountain), in fact, is known as Chapinero Alto (High Chapinero). Here you can live in an upscale apartment in an upscale building for a reasonable price, and still be in walking distance of some pretty funky places.

 Who’s in Chapinero

Everybody. 

In certain sections, near the various universities, includes a lot of students. So, Chapinero is maybe the closest thing Bogota has to a college town (in parts). There are also lots of families, as there are all over town, but Chapi (the nickname) has a reputation for many artists, writers, philosophers, etc. That is to say, it’s also the gay sector.

Here also are the trendy folk mingling with the rest of the poplulation. Not the kind of trendy that you find in Jet Set Magazine, however–more the kind of trendy who don’t give a shit about Jet Set Magazine. There’s a theatre scene in Chapinero that covers the whole range of possibilities (again, think The Village in New York in earlier times). You’ll see teenagers dressed in leather and metal, kind of like teenagers from the East End of London in the mid 1990’s. And there are more “moving statues” per block in Chapinero than anywhere else in the city (or the world, actually) that I can think of.

Septima is the main north-south road through Chapinero, followed by Avenida Caracas. Caracas has the transmilenio, so it’s easy to get around in this sector. Carrera Once is the main commercial street in Chapinero. Since it’s a big district, there are many, many little sections of shops, and in Chapi you can get almost anything for a reasonable price. It’s not overpriced like the north, and the shops are all a little more bohemian, but it’s the kind of place where, if you look hard enough, you will find what you are looking for.

The district is a real mix of the rich and the poor, and is considered “cool” by just about everyone. You can go for dancing or to listen to music in a place that’s full of students and artist-types, and pay something like $0.80 for a beer (or, you can pay about 7 times that for the same beer in Parque 93). Lots of restaurants with typical Colombian food, for cheap, of course, and also lots of more upscale-type places. Street vendors everywhere, crowds and crowds of people; this is the type of neighborhood that the guide books refer to as “bustling Latin American city.”

Walking Down the Once (Eleventh Avenue)

To get a sense of the place, just take a bus or taxi to “Parque Lourdes,” which is a huge square near the large Cathedral Lourdes, and within half a block of Lourdes in any direction you can find a sample of just about everything Chapinero has to offer. Parque Lourdes is on Carrera Once (11) between Calles 63 and 64.

First of all, you’ll see masses of people, even on a cold or a rainy day. Start walking south down Carrera Once, and first you’ll pass a district of shoe stores where every other store is blasting music out onto the street, with a guy (or a girl) on a microphone announcing the great bargains you can find.

Meanwhile, you’re having to move pretty slowly to get through the crush of people and street vendors. The vendors are selling socks, shoes, belts, purses, little plastic religious icons, watches, sunglasses, reading glasses, fruit, cell phone covers, coloring books, crayons, pens and pencils, scarves, sweaters, drain covers for your kitchen and bathroom sinks, plastic strainers to attach to mop buckets for ringing out the mop, and a billion other things that I wouldn’t begin to even know the names of but which you can figure out the uses for once you see them. If you slow down at all or even think about making eye contact, you’ll immediately be surrounded by 4 or 5 vendors shouting “A la orden” (at your service).

Then you’ll come to a similar district where the shops change from mostly shoes to mostly men’s dresswear. Then comes the district of music/CD shops. These places advertize their low prices with huge signs and blaring music, and want to swear that all their music is original (as opposed to pirata, or bootleg). There’s about half a chance that this is true.

So, Chapinero is the place in Bogota where everything happens. It’s heavily residential, heavily commercial, a little industrial, has probably more bars and restaurants per square acre than anywhere else. It’s where the two ends of everything can meet and everyone feels comfortable.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 13th, 2007 at 12:40 pm and is filed under Neighborhoods. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.