Back to the Future on Seventh Ave?

Seventh Ave. today: Chaotic, polluted and slow. 

The future Seventh Ave?

First, there were horse-drawn cars, then came streetcars, then buses, then private cars, then electric trolleys, then TransMilenio - and then back to streetcars, now known as tramcars or light rail?

Mayor-elect Gustavo Petro plans to build a streetcar line on Seventh Ave. It's just the latest of many transit schemes for the historic but chaotic and polluted avenue, including a subway, a TransMilenio line, a scaled-down TransMilenio line, an 'ecological corridor' and now light rail.

              Light rail has several positives:

* It's narrow, enabling it to fit into skinny Seventh Ave.
* It doesn't pollute.
* Light rail looks sleek and modern, gives a city a panache and can attract tourists.
* While light rail's construction costs and time might be greater than an express bus line's, light rail's operation and maintenance costs are lower.
* Perhaps most importantly, higher-income people, like most of the residents along Seventh Ave., are more willing to ride trains than buses.

Passengers in a light rail car.

               But on the negative side:

* Light rail lacks the flexibility of an express bus system.
* It'll probably take longer and be more expensive to build than light rail would.
* Most importantly, it'll require passengers to deboard and perhaps change stations when transferring from the streetcar to Transmilenio (or a subway) and back again.

If the tramway does get built, it'll take Bogotá back to the first half of this century, when streetcars -called tranvias - carried bogotanos from south Bogotá up to Chapinero (a separate city then). At first, the cars were pulled by horses and mules, then for a short time operated on batteries until power lines were installed.

Streetcars on Seventh Ave. near Plaza Bolivar.

Riders hang out of the doors of a streetcar on Seventh Ave. 

The streetcar system, operated by the Bogotá City Railway Company,  became a symbol of Colombian nationalism in 1910 in an explosion of resentment against the system's U.S. owners. Shortly before, the United States had separated Panama from Colombia and made it into an independent nation in order to dig the Panama Canal. When one of the Railway Company's American owners, Johnson Martin, insulted a Bogotá policeman, Bogotanos responded by boycotting the  streetcar system until its owners were forced to sell it to the city of Bogotá.

Streetcars burning during the Bogotazo. 

The municipal owners continued expanding the system and buying new streetcars. However, in 1948 tragedy intervened. The assassination of populist politician Jorge Eliecer Gaitan triggered huge riots, called the Bogotazo, in which many buildings were burned, thousands of people were killed and the streetcars pushed over and torched. Many believe that the owners of rival bus systems, eager to destroy the competition, paid rioters to destroy the streetcars. The streetcar system limped on until 1951, when the mayor ordered the rails paved over, killing the system.

It's sad contemplating what might have been if Bogotá had preserved, expanded and modernized its urban rail system. Today, clean and orderly streetcars might carry people across the city, without the pall of smog now enveloping many Bogota avenues, and also serve as a tourist attraction.

Streetcar tracks can still be seen on Seventh Ave. and Jimenez, apparently left there as a memorial to Gaitan, who was assassinated nearby. 

A map of Bogotá in 1910 shows the streetcar line running along Seventh Ave. and then north to Chapinero. 

Find more info at: The Tramways of Bogotá (from wich I borrowed several pictures.)

Wikipedia: Los Tranvias de Bogotá.

Del Tranvia del TransMilenio


By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Stuff for Sale Around San Victorino Plaza

A water pistol and a swimming pool.

Inflatable plastic hammers. 

Bags and more bags to carry other stuff in. 

Men's underwear. 

Shirts from these human clotheshangers. 

Corn to feed the pigeons, as well as an odd camelid like Lorenzo. 

Swimming pools. 

Fishing poles.

 

Board games. 

Mirrors, mirror on my back.

Rat poison, hopefully not for the neighbors or in-laws. 

More mobile shirt hangers. 

Colorful shoes.

Buy my Sesame Street dolls. 

Christmas carpets make nice coats. 

And Christmas decorations. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Hello Christmas, Good-bye Public Space

Human clothes hangers at work. 

With the approach of Christmas, retail space is rising in value, and that includes public spaces such as Bogotá's plazas and sidewalks. This was today's scene in Plaza San Victorino, which informal vendors had invaded with their clothing, toys, Christmas decorations and lots of other stuff. 

Usually, the vendors spread their wares out on plastic sheets in order to be able to gather them up and escape when police approach. Here, the police go about shooing the vendors off, knowing that they'll return at their first opportunity. 

Naturally, as Christmas nears, the need to sell turns into desperation, and I've seen street battles between the police and vendors involving tear gas and arrests. Many of the informal sellers on the plaza are indigenous people from Ecuador, who sometimes feel that the police unfairly discriminate against them. 

"Away with you folks!" 

The crowded San Victorino market area.

Caps and glasses anybody?

At least they left this sidewalk walkable. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Transsexuals' Anti-AIDS Campaign

A group of transvestites get ready to perform on Plaza Bolivar. 

Transsexuals were out in force this afternoon on La Plaza del Chorro, participating in a consciousness-raising program about HIV/AIDS.

A poster of a transvestite says:
'I live my life, and if you don't
like it that's your problem.'

Colombia's AIDS infection rate is, fortunately, much lower than many other nations - less than one percent of adults - and has actually declined over the last several years. The epidemic here is also still a mostly-male, mostly-gay phenomenon, altho that's no comfort for infected people.

Colombia's armed conflict has, however, worsened the AIDS problem, both because fighters can be AIDS vectors (violence against women is a continuing phenomenon in Colombia's conflict) and because victims of the conflict are more vulnerable to AIDS and other diseases.

As for transsexuals - they seem surprisingly common in Bogota, both in their own 'separate-but-equal' part of the city's central red light district, as well as in the city's parks and neighborhoods. And, of course, in Chapinero, Bogotá's gay neighborhood. Sure, many other people treat them as a spectacle, which is probably inevitable. But, at least, I haven't seen them abused or ridiculed. And, they sometimes seem to want to be a spectacle, with their often flamboyant dress and behavior, particularly during the annual Gay Rights Parade.

A group of transvestites walk down Bogotá's Sunday Ciclovia. 

I won't pretend that I feel comfortable with transvestisism. But, to each his or her own. Still, I can't help but wonder about a few things: Why are almost all transsexuals men turned into women, rather than the reverse? What sort of person goes to a transsexual prostitute, when real women prostitutes are working the streets just a few blocks away? Do almost all transsexuals want to convert themselves into a person of the opposite sex, or are they satisfied just acting like it?

Back on La Plaza del Chorro, a transsexual gives a pep talk.

Finally, I can't resist recalling the only conversation I've ever had with a transsexual, which took place in a women's prison in La Paz, Bolivia.

I was working as a journalist then, and I was interviewing a young South African transsexual who had wanted to have sex-change surgery. But how would she pay for it? She decided to travel to Bolivia, buy cocaine, and smuggle it to Europe, where the profits would pay for the surgery.

But she got searched in the La Paz airport and they found the cocaine, as well as something else which showed she was not born a woman. In court, the South African pleaded guilty: 'Judge, I confess it, I did it, I'll do the time - but please don't put me in the men's prison because God only knows what they'd do to me!'

The judge felt sorry for her and put her in the women's prison, where she was living happily with 300 women. She had decided, however, not to become a woman.

A high-risk population: Transsexual prostitutes in Bogotá's central red light district, in the Santa Fe neighborhood. 

Colombia's National Plan to Combat HIV/AIDS

Colombian League Against HIV/AIDS

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

New Life for the Old Odeon Theatre

The slightly art deco Odeon building, on Jimenez Ave. 

In another sign of central Bogotá's rebirth, the old Odeon Theatre on Jimenez Ave. is alive once again.

Inside, exposed girders. 

The Odeon, on the south side of Jimenez a block east of Seventh Ave., opened 71 years ago, when it was one of the city's principals theatres, along with the venerable Colon and the Faenza theatres, both of which are being restored to their original glories.

The building's spiral stairwell. 

A cracked wall with a photo of a decaying wall. 

The Odeon, in contrast, has been restored to life without a physical restoration. The building's interior girders are still exposed, its walls have cracks, doors and walls are missing and it all looks sparse and bare-bones. But for art expositions, all of that contributes atmosphere, producing an informal space for are shows and forums. It recently held a contemporary art exhibition. The building's spiral staircase, however, adds an element of elegance.

....and rounded, almost Arabic, windows. 

Less than a decade after the theatre opened in 1940 the building was severely damaged during the Bogotazo riots triggered by the assassination of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan. The theatre closed and the building experienced various transformations into other theatres, most famously the Popular Theatre of Bogotá, the TPB, which shut in 1996. For the next 15 years the building sat vacant, filling with vegetation and rainwater.

The Odeon's latest encarnation has come thanks to a group of Los Andes University students, who created Fundacion418.org, and others, who created the Odeon Theatre Foundation.

The view of Jimenez Ave. from the Odeon. The curved building on the right used to house the El Espectador newspaper, where Gabriel Garcia Marquez once worked. 

A short tour of the 69/71 exhibition, which ended today, guided by my dog Parchita.

Parchita checks out this box structure containing electrical objects. 

Parchita studies a sack containing plastic guns. 

Parchita on the stairwell. 

A couple talked via cups attached together with a taut string.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours