Dan Muirhead: Bogotá Letters

No.3 - Maña

Dan Muirhead — Fri, 29 May 2026 21:02:15 GMT

Dan,

During one of my first trips to Bogotá, I caught a man sprinting across a 4-lane Autopista on foot. It was midday and traffic was flowing. I was in the passenger seat as I caught a glimpse of him already between lanes heading toward the Transmilenio platform on the median.

The Autopista moves at 50-60 km/hr. Not the kind of speed that kills the way a Texas freeway would, but fast enough that a body without metal around it risks at least a limb, sometimes life. That man had found a break in the flow. Four lanes of open road, maybe three seconds of it. He took it, hit the median, jumped onto the platform.

Nobody in the car reacted. I was the only one on edge.

There was a perfectly good pedestrian bridge right there connecting the sidewalk to the same platform this man had just chanced his way onto. There was no reason for him to run this gauntlet. The city had already given him a way across.

But the bridge leads to the turnstiles, and the turnstiles come with a fare, and maybe that carried more risk than the sprint itself. Physical barriers, security, four lanes moving at speed — all of it serves as visceral guidance on how the infrastructure is meant to be used, but he read it differently.

I’ve seen it countless of times since. I’m accustomed to catch them before they dart across since I’m the one driving now. But back then, from that passenger seat, I was catching something else notably similar — license plates.

Bogotá restricts driving based on the last digit of your plate, a system called pico y placa. I used to try to guess which numbers were allowed that day by watching the traffic from the window like a code I could crack. I never cracked it though.

Turns out the real puzzle wasn’t which plates the city allowed on the road, it was how many plates a family could afford to stay on it. My suegro has five cars, but not as a collection. Five cars means five different plates that lets his family never have a restricted day. My wife’s mom’s side keeps two for the same reason.

When we decided to get our own car, we chose a hybrid. Not for the gas savings, tax benefits, nor for the environment really. Hybrids are entirely exempt from pico y placa.

So, a man will sprint across an Autopista to avoid a two-dollar fare while my suegro parks five cars to avoid a schedule. And, we bought a hybrid to avoid both. Different stakes, different means, same maña.

There’s a rebellious charm in all of it — a restless reading that runs right through every rule I was raised to respect. And, I’ve caught some of it, I think. My own subtle rebellion wrapped in good intentions and a tax incentive.

I drive the Autopista most days now, in the car I bought to avoid the rules in my own way. And most days, someone on the shoulder is doing the same.

Dan Muirhead spent 15+ years paid to make people pay attention. Now he is more interested in what is worth paying attention to. Based in Bogotá, with roots in Dallas and frequent time in Miami, he writes Bogotá Letters and profiles makers to document how cities are used versus designed, and how objects are made to be lived with. More at danmuirhead.co.

No.2 - Ciclovía

Dan Muirhead — Fri, 08 May 2026 20:11:23 GMT

Dan,

My first ciclovía, I didn’t realize it was ciclovía. I just knew the streets stopped being streets.

You hear it before you see it, but not in the way you’re thinking. It’s quieter, calmer. No horns. No bike motors. None of the intrusive elephant groans of trucks wildly too large and heavy for the roads they’re on. No, the city’s soundscape actually softens. It breathes. And in that breath are friendly voices, playful barks, the patter of runners, a distant stereo drifting behind a cyclist who coasted by, whispering wind of swaying trees.

My first ciclovía, I was walking with family as we turned a corner and arrived. The scale of it really hit me. Streets typically packed with buses, end-to-end cars, and bikes threading gaps that barely qualified as gaps — none of that was there. The street was filled with bodies instead of machines.

Not for a street fair or a race day, though similar in scale. Just the city deciding, collectively, that for half a day a week, its streets belong to its people. Over 120km of its streets, in fact. Streets that, on a Monday would make you late, surrender every Sunday to people moving at the speed of pleasure.

That first ciclovía, I watched a man lay his head in a grassy median between two major roads, close his eyes, and take deep breaths of the fresh breeze coming off the hills. I watched him as we walked, not because it was strange to see a person resting, but because it was unusual to see a person so certain he was allowed to.

At the next block we hit a convergence — another artery of ciclovía crossing ours. The people filled this intersection however they pleased. A blind man on the corner sang the classics over backup tracks from a speaker at his feet. Tents lined part of the street, some filled with people hanging out, others with vendors selling. Beyond them, picnics spread into the green zones. Slackliners played between trees. To the side, a guy swung from the overpass on aerial silks, spinning above traffic that wasn’t there.

Every Sunday, this city takes its barely sufficient infrastructure and transforms it into excess. Streets that spend six days not being enough become more than enough on the seventh. A sabbath not in scripture but in asphalt — the city keeping a commandment it wrote for itself.

Think about what it takes for a city to commit to this every week — plus holidays — not as an annual festival or a pilot, but as a covenant with itself. There’s a trust in that. A bet that if you create the space, life will fill it in a way that’s worth more than the “efficiency” you lost.

A city infamous for its traffic forfeits a tenth of its roads, and driving actually gets better. It creates more room by offering more room. Most cities I’ve lived in would never take that bet. They’d optimize for throughput instead of asking what the throughput is for.

Sunday after Sunday, I’ve returned to ciclovía. I’m slowly breaking a stride that doesn’t serve me here, seduced by streets that serve something softer - a surrender of structure to stage space for something I’d stopped making room for.

Every Sunday, Bogotá makes room by opening its streets and lets its people remind each other what they’re for.

No.1 - "Onces"

Dan Muirhead — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 22:54:07 GMT

Dan,

I don’t know the origins of “onces,” but it’s feels like a way of life in Bogotá. “Onces” literally translates to “elevens.” I asked someone from Bogotá once why it’s called “onces,” and he told me because it aguardiente has 11 letters in it. IYKYK.

A watched a person run her day back once, and she listed “onces” twice — once at 11am and once again at 4pm. On its surface, “onces” is just a time of day to grab a snack, but it shouldn’t be a solo act. It’s one of the most consistent social moments of any given day for most Bogotános. A parenthesis that the city opens twice a day, and everyone steps inside.

Morning “onces” — or first “onces” — falls sometime between 10am and noon, typically 11. This is the part of my day I walk to a cafe for my own sustenance. I walk by, through, and around “onces” on nearly every other street corner (more than 11, for sure). Huddled compatriots surrounding street vendors. Thermos-dispensed coffee, empanada or palito de queso in hand. Something warm, something savory.

Each group I pass is distinctive despite sharing the same moment. Construction worker “onces.” Food delivery app rider “onces.” Younger professionals emerging from their office “onces.” I catch fragments of connective tissue conversations as I pass. Reliving a gol from the recent match. Making jokes at someone’s expense. Commiseration of a personal challenge. It’s whatever it needs to be for that group, in that moment. The custom provides the space, the people fill it with what’s alive between them that morning.

I never catch more than a snippet though, because I don’t pause and participate. My pace persists with purpose to my place of pouring coffee for one.

When I pop into a cafe to grab and go, older folks are inside, settled into their own “onces.” Same warmth as the street corner version but slower, steadier. They aren’t going anywhere, but I am. I watch them for a beat longer than I need to while I wait for my coffee. I take it to go.

Second “onces” looks different than first “onces” at 11. In the afternoon, without needing to know the time, you know it’s “onces” by the sidewalk-hogging formations. Walls of shoulder-to-shoulder lined friendlies walking the street with an ice cream cone or maybe an occasional cigarette, canvassing a block or two. Laughing together, taking a drag of ice cream, some walking arm in arm. For whole parts of a day the sidewalk stops being a route to somewhere and becomes the somewhere. The whole city pauses, and the pause has a shape. Not planned by anyone, not on any calendar, but more reliable than anything designed.

When I first encountered afternoon “onces,” I was... annoyed, let’s just say. My pace is a brisk big-city pedestrian pace. A purpose-based pace. And sidewalk-lined walking walls of leisurely strollers blocking that pace, they... perturbed me. Their moment interrupted my momentum.

But when I think about it now, I scratch my head. I got bent out of shape by their social connection? It offended my determined stride? It’s more like I didn’t want to stop. Like I wouldn’t give myself permission to pause. Years of conditioning trained my body that moving with purpose is purpose. That the space between destinations is dead time to be compressed, not inhabited. And here was an entire culture that had decided, collectively, that the space between things is also where life happens.

I still walk fast most days, but I’m learning to slow it down. I still regularly enjoy a coffee for one these days, but that’s happening less and less now. I appreciate this parenthesis more. The way the city opens it, the way the people step inside it instinctively, the way nobody has to justify it, the pause, to anyone. Bogotá built more room into its day than what productivity calls for. And every morning and every afternoon, that excess room fills with the sounds of people who didn’t forget what it’s for.